Jack could see why Daniel liked him. He was tall and lanky with a trim waist and a toned but not particularly defined physique, like Jack himself. His hair was definitely pushing regulation length, but this was Antarctica - a guy could use a little extra fur, couldn't he? Hell, Jack would use any excuse to keep his long - including telling them that he was a Jehovah's Witness and couldn't get it cut on Sundays. And the kid had the most brilliant green eyes - eyes that would look through you and past you and inside you and... well, he had really nice eyes. And a nice ass. Jack had to admit that he was an ass-man, and this kid had a nice firm one - narrow hips, toned flanks.

In fact, the kid reminded Jack of Daniel in a lot of ways. He seemed smart - kept to himself most of the time, though, if you put him on the spot, he'd turn on the charm, just like Daniel, who seemed to attract damsels in distress and revolutionaries and all that like a goddamned bugzapper. But the kid had this long stare, and in the few days Jack had been down here, he'd seen him sitting outside in his parka, curled up into a ball watching the sun set across the glacier. Daniel'd get like that sometimes... so silent and still that Jack had to resist the urge to poke him to make sure he was still alive.

Jack liked to move. Sure, he could stand still if he had to - he was military, after all. But if given a choice, Jack would keep moving, boxing, playing ping-pong. He thought he'd go stir crazy posted down here, stuck inside most of the time, not able to really roam. But Daniel, and this kid, apparently, could sit for hours with their nose in a book, or just contemplating some abstract concept that Jack usually worked very hard to keep out of his head, like death, or the existence of God, or -god forbid- math. Daniel said the kid was 'good at math. Really good at math,' whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Daniel was impressed.

Of course the more striking Danielism was the tosseled-innocent look. Sometimes you'd look at him and see a little boy, eyes alight in wonder, but steeped in confusion. It was adorable, but when Daniel got it, Jack always worried a little - like all those reincarnations had finally fried Daniel's brain. On this kid it was different, like he really was confused - as though this great wave had just washed over him and he'd wiped-out... bigtime. Now, Jack was no stranger to nightmares -and he could read them on this kid's face the same way Daniel could read history in a bunch of scratches on a cave wall somewhere- but there was something there that Jack hadn't seen until he'd lost a son and seen it on his own face one day - and that was ghosts.

Now, Daniel had done this whole ghost thing with a crystal skull and being invisible and all that fancy-stuff, and he'd certainly earned his merit badge in being dead. Jack had too - if you counted that sarcophagus nonsense, but Jack wasn't talking about those kinds of ghosts. He had realized a long time ago that you didn't need funky alien crystals that made images of your dead son, or light beings or ancient Mayan temples - every culture, at least the ones that Daniel could tell him about, had ghosts. They were the memories that haunted you of those that died.

But it was more than that, because Jack had been haunted by old special ops buddies night after night, seeing them blown to pieces, hearing screams of other prisoners in that jail in Iraq, images of people he once knew with their eyes glowing. Ghosts were different. Ghosts were the people that were still alive to you even when they were gone. Daniel had once philosophized to him that a ghost was someone who refused to conjugate the verb 'to be' properly - people who your mind wouldn't let become 'was.'

Of course, what Jack really didn't like about the kid was that he was too cocky. Jack liked to fly, sure, but he was special ops to the core - paratrooper. This kid was a flyboy; he could tell. You just had to watch him in the hanger with the planes - checking them over, polishing the sides. Kid had watched Top Gun one -or maybe one hundred- too many times. You could see the 'I'm on top of the world' bounce in his walk. Sure, he wasn't one for boasting - he was quiet, but he still went around as though he owned all this wide open air. Jack hated that about the Air Force.

Plus, the kid was a chopper pilot, though he had trained on the jets before. The nuance, for once, was completely lost on Daniel. Chopper pilots had this lazy swagger about them - they were all about hovering and banking and intricate landings and shit like that. It was small maneuvers - rescues, medEvac, tricky situations, not the focused targeting of a bomber. In bombers you found soldiers, in choppers you got the guys who wanted to be heroes. And Jack knew all about people who wanted to be heroes - they ended up dead or they ended up a thorn in your side, or, worse case scenario: they became politicians. If you were smart, you did everything in your power to not be a hero. If you had Jack's bad luck you ended up one anyway.

Daniel thought Jack was making it all up. Daniel tried to be a hero, and it always, without fail, got them into what Jack liked to refer to as 'a unique Daniel brand of deep deep shit.' Jack supposed you needed people like Daniel who believed in the good of the universe, yadda, yadda, etcetera, etcetera, and it was one of the things he loved about him, but there was only so far you could glide on good intentions.

This kid knew that, at least. Jack could see it in his eyes right alongside the ghosts. He knew that when push came to shove you couldn't be the nice guy, because -unlike Daniel- he didn't have anyone there to bail his ass out when he got up to his neck in heroism.

But that didn't stop the thing Jack hated the most in the kid - the grin. It was the grin that said, 'fuck your orders, I know better.' Not that Jack didn't disobey orders, it was just that he actually did know better. Most of the time he did, anyway.

Jack had told Daniel that he saw that cocky little grin of his and wanted to wipe it right off the kid's smug little face. Daniel had responded by saying, 'He reminds me of you.' Jack supposed that's what he loved about Daniel, and had only shrugged. Daniel could make fun of him without triggering his punch-back reflex. And that was definitely... well, it was something.

But why did it have to be this guy? This flyboy? Why couldn't Daniel have picked some anonymous model-type? They could have vacationed to Denver to whatever strip clubs were available, maybe gone down to the Keys even. Hell, the Air Force owed them a trip to anywhere in the world. They could have gone to China or Egypt or to any of the places where Daniel could melt them into the crowd - find someone who would never know them - never care. Hell, they could even go to Russia, though Jack hated admitting that he'd learned Russian. Stupid Special Ops people. If they'd know how badly the USSR was going to fizzle, Jack wouldn't have bothered. He always knew the Russians were a waste of time.

Of course, if this was anyone other than Daniel, a couple of pornos and the six instructional manuals he'd already read would be enough. Daniel'd even tracked down some insane Hindu text about the fundamentals of homosexual love, and read it in the original Sanskrit. And he kept going on and on about some prophet-guy -Reeces' Pieces?- who'd turned into a woman and told Zeus it was really better, or something like that. Apparently the guy got blinded for it though... But it really didn't have to be that hard - Jack had managed for... well, for an embarrassingly long time. He still had his sight and quite a lot more.

But Daniel didn't want to see some cocky Hollywood starlets devirginizing young college boys, or whatever was the porno of the week, and he didn't want to see oddly feminine looking Hindi cartoons going at it either; he wanted to see Jack. And he wanted to see Jack with another man.

Not just any man. No, no. It had to be someone of Daniel's choosing. It had to be someone that he could watch and background-check and study in every detail beforehand to make sure that he wouldn't tell anyone, and that they'd be safe from blackmail and subterfuge and all that corporate inter-bureaucratic crap that Jack ignored for as long as humanly possible - which was to say, until the shooting and assassinations and kidnappings started.

Of course, someone Daniel could observe in such detail had to be in the Air Force or on-base, because when was Daniel ever anywhere else? But it couldn't be someone that Daniel might have to see again afterwards. What if something went wrong? What if it was just too awkward? Blah, blah, blah. Jack hated Air Force goons, especially flyboys. He'd had to deal with them all his life, in ever aspect of life, couldn't Daniel give him a break? But, then again, who else was there? They couldn't just ignore the scientists or wait until their next tour of duty shipped them out or whatever.

But Jack supposed he'd put up with all this crap, if it made Daniel happy. If it made them both as happy as he hoped it would, Jack would have put up with a hell of a lot more. Daniel, despite his infuriating attention to detail (unless, of course, that detail happened to be Jack himself), was willing to go through a lot in order to please Jack. Jack reminded himself of this as he sat poking at his blue jello and watching the kid sitting in a corner sipping coffee and reading some gigantic Russian novel - The Brothers Karamazov. No wonder Daniel liked him. They could discuss the nuances in modernist Russian literature afterwards.

Daniel was reading, but sitting in that prim uptight way that told Jack that he was simply passing the time until Jack finally got bored and spoke what was on his mind. Daniel was patient - he dealt with people's who'd been dead (or not so dead in the case of the Goa'uld) for thousands of years, of course he was patient. Jack snorted. They were like an old married couple, not that he'd ever admit to Carter that she was right about that.

They were fine that way. Maybe a little sexually frustrated, but fine. There was none of this scheming. And none of the waiting. Jack could put up with Daniel's political business -everyone had to have a hobby, right?- but all the waiting was driving him nuts. They were fine before. They could spend time hanging out at Jack's house, watching TV, laying curled together on Jack's couch sipping beer, going out to fancy restaurants and making flirtatious small-talk, sleeping together in Jacks gigantic king-sized bed, sometimes kissing, but never really doing more than that.

Then Daniel had read some book by this guy written when Jack was too young to care and Daniel wasn't even a fuzzy conception in his parent's brains, that had said that sexuality was a scale between zero and six and nobody was ever zero or six. Jack had no idea why it was six and not ten. Ten was a much nicer number, even if it was metric... damn Canadians. Anyway, Jack thought Daniel was a one... or maybe it was a five. He forgot which end stood for straight and which for homosexual, but Daniel was definitely one number away from absolutely one-hundred-percent heterosexual.

But Daniel was an open-minded kind of guy. He'd dressed up like a giant chicken and eaten live slugs for some weird alien ritual that got them Naquahdah mining rights. Jack supposed this wasn't all that different. He'd have sex with a man over slugs any day. Then again, Jack was a five or a one, too, just in the other direction, so it was kind of a give-in.

Yes, he'd had that whole marriage thing, but that's what made him believe that Daniel could 'give this a try.' Sarah was different. Jack had never believed in the, 'want to have her children' expression until he met Sarah. And that's exactly what he wanted. Sarah was spunky and brilliant and sweet in all the right ways. She was like the little girl you used to sneak out of Sunday school with to build mud castles with and ruin her perfect white dress. She was the perfect friend, would have been the perfect mother if she were given more of a chance. And she didn't care that he had other men. Hell, sometimes she'd even share with him! But it wasn't just about the having the picture-perfect military family. He loved Sarah, still did, but after Charley... well, there just wasn't much of a reason for them to stay together anymore - it was too painful.

And Jack hadn't met anyone else whose children he wanted to raise -who he wanted to grow old with- until he had met Daniel. Except that time when he wished Harry Mayborne would have to have his kids, only because Sarah had informed him it was an incredibly painful experience. Of course, by the time the light bulb went off in his head -and when light bulbs went off, Jack always listened, 'cause he found that bright lights were generally important- Jack was so set in his ways that he was not to be deterred by a little detail like Daniel's sexuality.

And, surprisingly enough, Daniel returned the feelings, if not necessarily the attraction. At one point he had stuttered out that he didn't find Jack unattractive -which was reassuring, considering that Jack was trying to stave off the mid-life crises at the time... unless he counted that little infatuation with Major Carter as his crises. Hell, Jack was entitled to two crises, wasn't he? But that didn't necessarily mean Daniel was into sex.

He did a lot of rambling about soulmates and reincarnation and lifelines and new-agish mumbo-jumbo that Jack never really listened to, but Daniel really did love him. They just complimented each other so perfectly, made each other so much more together than they were apart. It was the kind of love you might want to haul you ass back from all the lines there must be in the netherworld to get back for you next reincarnation or whatever. Jack, at least, recognized that. It was a love beyond sex.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with sex. In fact, Jack liked sex very much. It was an incredibly nice perk. And, while he would be willing to give it up to be with Daniel, he crossed his fingers (and his toes just be safe) and hoped that, if the universe owed him any more favors than he'd already asked of it, it would make it so that he didn't have to.

As long as he didn't have to do anymore waiting.

Jack watched in horror as the kid, one Major John Sheppard, chewed on his lower lip and flipped back a chunk of well-worn pages, to read something he must think 'profound' over again. He simply could not stand it anymore. He blurted out, "You're sure about this, Danny-boy? I mean... the higher-ups really have it in for this kid."

Daniel didn't even look up from the book he currently had his nose buried in. "He's not a kid, Jack." Well, he was only two years younger than Daniel, but, despite his little-boy-lost looks, Daniel always seemed older. Maybe dying all those times had something to do with it. "I watched him; he's safe."

"Are you sure? Because I'm kind of thinking... not so much."

"Who's the culture and diplomacy expert, Jack?" Daniel raised his eyebrows, talking down again.

"But that's with aliens."

Daniel gave Jack the Look, piercing blue eyes peering over the rims of his glasses as though to say, 'why do I even put up with you?' Good question, in Jack's humble opinion, but he wasn't going to push his luck by asking it. He was still astounded that he managed to keep someone like Daniel in his life, let alone in his bed... well, sort of, literally. And Daniel was willing to try more, even though he was strictly a one... or was it a five? Perhaps he had no right to ask for more.

Daniel went back to his book, too deliberately nonchalant. "Besides, you do know his name, don't you?"

"Um..." Jack winced. He wasn't really a names kind of guy. "John... um... Smith?"

Daniel gave a dry little chuckle, but kept reading. "No, Major John Sheppard."

Some bells were ringing in the back of Jack's mind, but they were too far away for him to really pay attention too - more like church bells than alarm klaxons, and everyone knew that you ignored church bells. "You know what that means, Daniel? Squat."

Daniel sighed and put his book down, folding a corner of the page down carefully. "It means, Jack, that his father is Colonel David Sheppard."

Jack nearly dropped his jello, he sat up so fast. "You're kidding."

Daniel just smirked and lay back in his chair. "No, I'm not."

"And you think sleeping with the son of the most homophobic SOB in all of the goddamn service is somehow a good idea?"

Daniel smiled his 'I know something you don't know' smile. "Yes."

"Daniel..." Jack used his warning voice.

Which was absolutely no match for the Daniel pouty-face. "You trust me, don't you Jack?"

"I..." Jack spluttered. "Of course I trust you, but that's not the point. The point is: I don't trust him." His parents had said the same thing about a lot of Jack's dates. Was he turning into his father? Jack shuddered to think.

"Come on, Jack. Don't tell me you wouldn't get some satisfaction out of sticking it to the guy behind a lot of the ridiculously homophobic loopholes in the current policy."

"Well, I wouldn't be sticking it to him, would I? I'd be sticking it in his son."

Daniel guffawed. "That was bad." But Daniel had laughed anyway.

"I know. Besides, how do we know he's not just going to turn around and report us?"

"I've gotten to know him, Jack. He's not a bad guy. He got court marshaled for going behind enemy lines to rescue a couple of special ops people. Then he was down at Fort Dix for nearly a year after a helicopter crash, where he lost his copilot and was nearly paralyzed. And he's still here, Jack. You have to admire that."

If Daniel was impressed by that, Jack wondered what he would say if he knew even half of the stuff in Jack's classified files. Though, Daniel probably already did know it. He could get pretty chummy with the people who could access those kinds of things. When he wanted it bad enough, Daniel always got his way.

"He's probably still here to spy on us."

Daniel chuckled. "I never figured you for the paranoid type, Jack." You didn't do what Jack did for the last thirty years and not be the paranoid type - not if you wanted to stay both alive and employed.

"Oh, the things you don't know, Danny-boy," Jack quirked his eyebrows in a joking way to cover up the fact that there was still so much that Daniel didn't know... about Jack, about the kid. Daniel could have gotten to know the cold-blooded killer in Jack, but he'd been too deep in denial to ever try. As for the kid, there was so much they didn't write into those files. Daniel knew about ghosts, but he'd never understand the silence - when it came down to it, Daniel was a civilian, free to both ask and tell.

"Besides, he propositioned me."

"What?!" Jack dropped his spoon and it went clattering to the floor. The kid looked up from his seat in the corner and grinned, stretching his legs out onto the seat across from him, then went back to that damn book.

Daniel bent down to grab the spoon, giving Jack a perfect view of his tight round ass, and reminding Jack once again, why he was putting up with all this. No one had an ass like Daniel's.

"He propositioned me." Jack fought down the little green monster he felt getting ready to throw a temper tantrum on the inside of his chest. Daniel was his, goddamnit.

"And how would you know that?" Daniel was good with the cultural stuff, but when it came time to actually understand his own relationship to other people, he sometimes got a little far-sighted.

"We were discussing Greek Mythology and..." Jack doubted anything good could come out of a sentence starting with 'we were discussing Greek Mythology.' And what the hell kind of Air Force officer randomly discussed Greek Mythology? This kid was another intellectual, great. ". . . he said that he impressed by my understanding, and would gladly play eromanos to my erastes."

Well, Jack had never head that one before. "In English, please, Daniel."

"Well, traditionally in Ancient Greece, erastes was the teacher and the eromanos was the student in a ritualized homosexual relationship in which..." Jack wished he had lived in Ancient Greece - though he wasn't so keen on the idea of wearing a toga, a little breeze down their was nice, but he was kind of embarrassed by his leg hair.

"Maybe he didn't know the history. Not everyone is as brilliant as you, ya know."

"He winked."

"Maybe he had something stuck in his eye?"

Daniel gave him a stern look. "Jack, if you're going to veto this choice, go ahead." He crossed his arms over his chest.

Jack looked from Daniel with his liquid puppy-dog eyes to the man sitting in the corner, dark hair tumbling down in front of his face, lips pursed in a near-frown of concentration.

"You're sure?"

Daniel smiled mischievously and rose. Just as Jack was about to protest, an Airman came rushing in the door, scurrying over toward where Jack and Daniel were seated. "Colonel O'Neill," he squeaked. Why were the communications people always the ones with the most annoying voices? "A message from General Hammond. He says they are some issues with the new administration, and perhaps the presence of yourself and Dr. Jackson may be required."

Great, politics, just what he needed. Jack rolled his eyes. The Airman shuffled nervously. "Oh, fine. C'mon, Daniel."

They both shot a longing look at the solitary figure still seated calmly in the corner, who grinned at them and waved. Yes, Jack would very much like to wipe that cocky little smile off that boy's face.

Daniel was determined not to cry, and he was determined not to whine. He'd spoken to everyone he knew - he'd even been to see the president a few times. But in the end, they all said the same thing: "if you can do something, do it." Even Dr. Elizabeth Weir, who he'd grown to respect and admire, despite the fact that she was no General Hammond, couldn't offer him anything. They had tried to contact the Asguard repeatedly - had their best people working on the problem. Even this brilliant Scottish medical doctor they'd stolen from the Emerging Pathogens division of the UN Biological Weaponry SWATT team, couldn't make heads or tails of it, and he was supposedly the best of the best.

Daniel was at the point where he was coming to realize that even if he could move mountains, no amount of favor-calling was going to bring Jack back. They were at the mercy of fate.

He shut his eyes against the tears that had been threatening to spill for weeks now. He couldn't afford to mourn - he couldn't bring himself to believe that he might never see Jack again - that they might have come so close only to leave things forever unrequited. And that's what tore at him the most: that Jack might never know how much Daniel really did love him. He would do anything to bring him back.

And he hated himself for how much he had dragged his heels - how picky he had been. Jack was right; it would have been better with an anonymous stranger. Daniel had seen enough death and destruction to know that he had to live each day as though it might be his last. Life was too short. He had hesitated. And now, Jack was frozen down in Antarctica and there was nothing he could do about it.

He had gone to see him. He had even been foolish enough to think that if he talked to him a little bit, Jack would suddenly wake up cured. Daniel had even tried speaking a little Ancient. He didn't remember everything from when he was ascended, but he could hope that if Jack's brain didn't do whatever that guy... Dr. Beckett, said it would, then they could still at least communicate. But even the romantic in him had to give up after a time. The world still needed him. Even when they were both happy and relatively healthy (Jack had a big complaint about his knees) they weren't free to do what they pleased. The world... the galaxy, owned them.

Then his world began to spin - literally.

Daniel opened his eyes to find the empty whiteness that had so well mirrored his state of mind weaving side to side in the dash, his world dipping toward the harsh crags of the snow-kissed mountaintops and swerving to just avoid them. Years ago this would have made him sick to his stomach, but years of gate travel had toughened him - toughened him to a lot of things.

John Sheppard's voice crackled over the radio - though he was sitting right beside him, smiling like a little boy just stumbling off his first roller coaster ride. "So, he knows Greek Mythology and he doesn't mind sudden and outrageous g-forces. Gee, Mom, I think it may be love."

Daniel forced a weak smile. He was tired of hearing about love, even if he knew John didn't mean it. "What'd you do that for?"

"You looked like you could use a distraction. And I like going fast." John grinned. Hiding the depth of his empathy with a joke, just like Jack.

When Sha're was gone, Daniel felt only burning anger and determination. When they thought they had lost Jack and Sam in a gate accident, even though they were only just friends at that time, Daniel had felt nothing but the drive - the sick desperation to push onward. But things were different now - each breath infused with regret. There was so much left undone. He felt defeat, this wrenching sadness in his gut - like the universe was somehow twisting in upon itself in outrage... it just wasn't right. The hero was supposed to make a triumphant return - Odysseus journeyed to Hades and back, Jesus rose from the dead, Mwindo killed the god of the underworld to return, and Luke Skywalker escaped the Death Star, But now Jack was frozen, immobile, still alive, inches that might as well have been light-years, eons, universes, away. Whatever happened to reviving your beloved with a kiss?

"It's not supposed to be this way," he mumbled.

John couldn't possibly have heard beyond the roar of the rotating blades above their heads, but he gave this sad sympathetic smile, and, for a moment, Daniel felt as small wave of comfort treading against this vast current of despair: perhaps there was someone else in this universe who could understand.

And then a black strip of concrete appeared on the horizon and John was all business again, checking the readouts and flipping all sorts of switches Daniel didn't understand, the vulnerable understanding companion gone in favor of the precise soldier. "Five minutes."

Daniel looked at the line of the lips - so like a frown, even though it still radiated a certain kind of tentative joy. He watched the long fingers working the controls, so naturally and with such respect. The determined set of the head, the strong profile, the confidence, and the need to hide the very human soul beneath. God, he reminded Daniel so much of Jack.

He didn't know how he had made it back to John's quarters on base. One moment they were discussing the mythical elements in the movie *Platoon* while John did the post-flight check and handed over the helicopter to the maintenance people, and then they were standing outside of John's quarters.

"So..." John said with a look somewhere between sly and shy on his face.

"So... um... I guess... I should..." Daniel focused very hard on his shoes - they were boots Jack had bought him when he began making regular trips down to Antarctica. Jack didn't trust the military-issue ones, which was odd. Perhaps nearly freezing to death had influenced him more than his other near-death experiences. Or maybe he just didn't like the color. With Jack you could never really tell.

"Would you like to come in?" John's voice had this confident finality to it, just like Jack's often did, as though he was daring Daniel to defy his expectations.

"I... um... well... I... have a lot of... I would love to." Daniel didn't really know where the 'I'd love to' came from, though he had his suspicions - probably something having to do with how innocent and well... harmless John looked in the soft lighting of the harsh base corridor, so like the SGC. Maybe it had something to do with the innocent eyebrow quirk that reminded him of on of Jack's favorite expressions. Maybe it was that, despite the fact that they'd never really discussed anything besides vague intellectual pursuits, Daniel felt he trusted this man. John had the same gentle fierceness about him that Daniel so admired in Jack, and the playful side that he always used to cover up the scar tissue beneath.

John stood aside politely and let Daniel enter first. The space was small and, though John did have the light-sealing thick cloth curtains opened wide, it still had a cave-like feel to it. But, despite the fact that he kept an apartment, and had shared a house with Jack the past months, Daniel had grown accustomed to the bland grey walls and flickering florescent lighting of the SGC. These walls were covered not in posters of beautiful women or slogans, but with rich batik tapestries, authentic ones, from the looks of it. A polished red and white guitar leaned precisely in the corner in such a way that suggested that it was either there just for show or taken care of near-reverently, and he had a stereo system that looked as though it might accommodate an electric guitar. John also seemed to have accumulated an impressive -at least for this environment- collection of books: half classical literature, half collection of aviation magazines and mechanical engineering journals, all stacked haphazardly in army-green packing craters.

John moved silently to the window, sealing them in momentary darkness as he tugged the curtains closed. A second later he had flipped on the reading lamp by the bed. In the shadow-filled lighting, Daniel could almost fool himself into believing this wiry thin figure was Jack, returned from a coma, or whatever the doctors were calling it these days.

Daniel closed his eyes, breath hitching as John stepped closer. He could smell the soft woody scent of whatever aftershave John wore, and the slight hint of mechanical grease. Jack never smelled like that... and then there were soft lips on his own... and Jack didn't taste like that. Jack tasted of mints, his breath sometimes slightly sour, like a well-aged wine. John tasted of coffee grounds, zesty almost. Jack's lips were rougher, and his muscles tight and wiry beneath Daniel's fingers, like the short strands of his silvery hair, but his kisses were always soft - lackadaisical like his laid-back drawl. Jack would never pressure him.

But John's kisses were fervent, insistent, desperate with this inexplicable pressure, like being sucked spiraling endlessly inwards into those delicate lips. His skin and lips and hair were all so soft, but it seemed to lend to this feeling of falling... didn't John say he liked going fast? Daniel felt as though he were on a roller coaster, stomach doing flips as he sped over the precipice and into the whirlwind that was John Sheppard.

They parted just long enough to catch their breaths. It was not so much hungry as it was desperate. Daniel at once hated himself for doing this when Jack was suffering God-knew-what, but he *needed* this - needed it so badly he could feel it drawing him back in every time he pulled away, keeping him trapped as John pulled off both off Daniel's fleece pullover and his own jacket.

John was pretty much the same height as Jack, just an inch or two taller than Daniel, so he just had to tilt his head only slightly for a kiss. Sha're had been much shorter, it had hurt Daniel's back. John... like Jack, just fit. And Daniel felt himself responding. He'd only ever grown semi-hard in response to Jack's patient reverence, but faced with this unbridled need that suddenly seemed to burn through him, he found himself straining against his pants uncomfortably.

As John pressed up against him, tilting his hips to thrust just slightly against Daniel, to increase the fiction, he must have noticed the need, because he sank to his knees, running his fingers over slick synthetic of Daniel's long underwear top, rubbing it against him in a way that made Daniel squirm. Then John had Daniel's pants unzipped and was urging him to step out of them. Daniel could do nothing but obey.

He and Jack had cuddled and maybe stroked a little in the process, but Daniel had never had another man actually touch his naked cock. And now John Sheppard was on his knees, grinning to hide the sadness in his eyes. And then he had Daniel's burning erection in his mouth and was blowing air on it in nice little gusts, sucking and licking up and down the sides, all the while massaging the head with his tongue. Daniel had never been partial to blowjobs. His girlfriend in college had once tried to perform one on him while he was driving... and he'd nearly had an accident. After that he'd just preferred the real deal to oral sex, which had not been one of his wife's customs anyhow.

But this... if he had known having a warm mouth on your cock could be this good, he and Jack would have done it much earlier. Daniel shuddered and stumbled, weak in the knees as the pleasure burned through him like a hurricane, destroying everything... even thoughts of Jack.

John caught him as he faltered, guiding him delicately to the bed, without ever removing his busy mouth. John Sheppard certainly was very good at this. Daniel fell back onto his narrow bunk, and John moved over him, swallowing suddenly. Daniel cried out, blinded, vision blurring. Normally he felt some sort of hint of pain along with his orgasm. It wasn't real pain, it was just strange tightness, like something that had been pain before it transformed into this new glorious thing, beyond beauty and into the realms of pleasure. This time, however, there was no hint of pain. The orgasm rolled through him like a sigh, so unexpected, intense, yet... incomplete, leaving him feeling this wonderful numbness, like he hadn't felt since Sha're's death.

And then, in that blinding nothingness with all barriers laid down, the tears came. They flowed out of him, as natural as the orgasm of a moment before. It wasn't loud, or uncontrollably watery; his eyes didn't squint, and his face didn't turn red. The tears just spilled like a gentle rain, as though they were just overflow from the frigid sea that was the deep blue of his eyes. *My cup runneth over...*

John Sheppard stood, grin fast fading from his face as he saw Daniel crying. He looked away, as though embarrassed, and closed his eyes, speaking to what power, Daniel did not know, but he was sure that John was either praying to or cursing at some god.

Daniel closed his eyes as well, trying to force the tears in, ashamed to be crying in front of this man - a familiar stranger, the object of so many nights speculation, a man Daniel was sure had more than enough of his own ghosts. It was supposed be simple lust, a fulfillment of sorts, pleasure and nothing else.

And then Daniel felt warm arms encircling him, shielding him from the cold without and within. He returned the simple embrace, buried his face in the soft material of John's shirt, feeling the other man shake just slightly. Was he crying as well? Or maybe he was shaking because he was trying not to. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. This was a brief brush with fate... a coming together in two lives so different, though obviously somehow the same. It wasn't an earth-shattering moment. But there was something in the lifeless stillness of this room, lit by the harsh glare of artificial light when the sun shone all day outside. It was a certain resigned calm, an easing in the tensions, a conviction that the world would continue to go on... that Daniel might not ever be truly happy again, but that he might at least find peaceful moments like this one.

He did not know how long he spent crying on this stranger's shoulder, but when he finished and drew back with a sigh, he noted that though John Sheppard's eyes were glazed, his cheeks were dry. "I'm... I'm sorry, John. You didn't ask for me to come here and break down crying. I didn't even come looking for that."

John smiled slightly, almost as though laughing at Daniel, or more at the situation. "It's okay. I didn't expect it, but I guess its good to be reminded that everyone has reasons for doing the things they do."

Daniel nodded. "Everyone has reasons, but that doesn't make some things right."

John shook his head, smiling challengingly. "And just because some things are right that doesn't mean they don't feel like shit."

Daniel smiled, wanting to say that he was in awe, wanting to know this man with the short melancholy insights better, wanting to do something for him the way he'd just done something for Daniel - to help ease the great weight he saw in every calculating movement, in those sad eyes that never quite met his own directly. There was so much pain in this life... even in ascension he couldn't escape it.

He leaned in slowly, recognizing a certain tenderness so like supplication, as he gave John a delicate kiss, teasing his lips apart. John sighed, but pushed away. "You don't have to do this, Daniel. Whatever... whatever it is *will* get better. You find ways to deal." Daniel's heart almost broke at the bitterness in John's tone. Was this how John dealt? Daniel knew of loss. He'd lost a wife, lost his parents, thought he'd lost Jack so many times... .

"Who did you lose?" Daniel asked softly, the familiar stirring of sympathy rising within him once again. At last he still had that.

John studied him for a moment - really looked. Daniel recognized the familiar collected concentration he often found on Sam's face in the middle of technological crisis, the calculating scrutiny that made you wonder about the power that lurked beneath the deceptively beautiful exterior.

"It's not important," he seemed to growl, voice so surprisingly deep. "I'm over it." Daniel thought he felt his heart break then and there, knowing that John Sheppard was far from over whatever it was. But, he'd been around a lot of military types... been around Jack long enough to know that he couldn't always take in every 'stray' that came across his path. Jack had once told him, 'not even *you* have a heart big enough for all the bad things in the world, Danny. Oh, and remind me never to take you to visit the pound.' He was in this man's bedroom to share a meaningless one-night affair, what power did he have to mess with his problems? He hated not being able to do anything.

"I know why I made such a horrible Ancient," he mumbled.

"What?" John seemed to startle out of his angry trance.

"Oh, nothing," Daniel pasted on what Jack told him was his most disarming smile and leaned in for another kiss. Before John had a chance to think things through, Daniel was on top of him, covering him in sensuous kisses. For some reason it reminded him of the first time he and Sha're had made love. She was a virgin, and despite all the heroics, one of the only things he knew about her was that he loved her. He remembered kissing her through the pain of the first time, trying to explain in words she didn't know that it would not always be like this. John Sheppard was no virgin, but he wanted to tell him the same: it would not always be this way.

John pushed up against him, unzipping his fly, hands roaming across Daniel's bare ass. It felt good to be squeezed... possessed... desired. Daniel bit down into John's shoulder, the thin black fabric of his top still tasting of John's sweat. It was comforting and down to earth and real.

And then one of John's fingers was probing his entrance and Daniel's eyes flew open wide. This was for Jack. Even if Jack was never waking up, Daniel would keep that for him. It would be the least he could do, already having let another guy, a stranger, suck him off. He pushed himself back off John and would have tumbled off the bed it John hadn't leaned forward to grab him.

"Hey, hey, Daniel it's okay." John held up his hands placatingly, leaving Daniel panting at the end of the bed. "I... well, this certainly wasn't what I signed up for. You looked like the bottoming type, but I'm flexible." John flashed him a grin and dropped his own pants, shucking them off in one fluid motion to reveal long legs dusted in thin black hair. John was so pale... like a ghost almost. Daniel found himself entranced. He couldn't control his hands as he scooted forward, running his fingers down John's thigh, licking his lips. John whimpered. "God... I should do archaeologists more often," he said to the ceiling, a smile on his face.

Daniel laughed a little, but soon stopped when his hands reached around John's legs to come across ten perfect little bruises, almost as perfect as John's straining cock, so strange and yet so familiar. But Daniel made his life in noticing the details, making connections. "John... what happened?"

"Oh, it's nothing. I'm a popular guy." John winked and flipped himself over, tossing Daniel a tube of something he recognized to be lubricant; it looked as though John had just grabbed it out of thin air. Daniel fumbled with the cap, frowning at it. He knew what he was supposed to do with it in theory. One finger, then two, spread the partner wide in preparation. He bit his lip. He could do this. He was good at delicate motion. John grinned over his shoulder, "anytime now, Danny."

"Sorry." Daniel squirted some of the lube onto shaking fingers.

"It won't take much, trust me." John was driving his hips into the mattress now, squirming in pleasure.

"I just..."

John flipped over. "You've never done this before, have you?" He looked both smug and intimidated. "Well, we'll get you up to speed, no problem," he drawled, imitating so many gung-ho trainers and military-types that Daniel had to laugh, the fear and tension flowing out of him.

John's hand captured his, and they were probing John together, widening him. Daniel gasped at the heat and John swallowed the gasp with a kiss, rolling onto his back and pulling his legs to his chest, "Oh god," he squirmed as Daniel continued to open him, determined to open him as wide as possible, make this as painless as he could. He moved his fingers wider, pushing hard and John whimpered. "That's what you're aiming for, Danny, right there. Oh god. Now would be a good time to take her in for a landing."

Daniel chuckled, unable to hold himself back as he surged forward, kissing John so hard he was afraid he might cause more bruises. "You just referred to my penis with a feminine pronoun."

"Ships and planes are feminine. I was being... instructional," John murmured into his ear.

"I'm a linguist. In some cultures..."

John hand reached out and grabbed at Daniel, pulling him close and lining him up. "Now do me. Please, Dr. Jackson, quit stalling. You won't hurt me. I promise."

So Daniel pushed forward slowly, nearly melting into the bed as he was engulfed in this warm heat. He didn't think he could push any further, though he wanted to. He felt as though he would explode then and there, looking down into John Sheppard's wild green eyes, watching the muscles strain in his throat as he called out Daniel's name.

"I'm not hurting you, am I?"

John answered by thrusting his hips, clenching that wonderful tightness down around Daniel until he was seeing stars and strips and suddenly being far too patriotic. And as the haziness enfolded him, clearing out even the stars, he saw Jack's face. And he screamed his name.

Daniel returned to the dulled edge of reality when he felt a warm towel drop onto him. Watching, mesmerized as John cleaned his own deflated member, tossing the towel back into the bathroom and collapsing back onto the bed. "So, when you're with this 'Jack,' I suggest that you try to jerk him as you're fucking. It's not necessary, but some might consider it courtesy." It was a statement, not an accusation. John didn't sound as though he cared at all. But, then again, judging by the bruising, Daniel definitely wasn't his priority.

"John... I'm sorry." Daniel couldn't believe he was here, doing this to this man. And where was Jack? It had been great, but was it worth it? Did he need it that badly? He felt the guilt weighing down and him, crushing him. Jack was in a fucking coma and here he was giving some stranger the thing he had refused to share with Jack. But he wouldn't let anyone penetrate him - not even the charming and strangely intellectual John Sheppard.

"Don't sweat it. You needed this. I wanted this. We all had a jolly good time and I get the take-home prize of knowing I turned another helpless archaeologist over to the dark side." John's voice oozed sarcasm. "And you got up to speed, right?"

Daniel grinned lazily, still steeped in the post-coital glaze. "Mmmhmmm. Incredibly speedy."

"I told you I like going fast."

It wasn't long before John was up and dressing again, letting the harsh Antarctic sunlight back in to trace the lines and angles of reality into the shabby one-man closet he inhabited. Only then did Daniel stop to consider that John hadn't removed his shirt the entire time. He frowned. But, he reminded himself, it was not his place.

Jack hated the man sitting calmly next to him, pressing buttons and fondling the joystick in front of him. And that grin. He thought he hated it before when Daniel had first proposed the whole ludicrous deal. But he hated it more now... oh, he definitely hated it. That smug bastard. That bastard had fucked his lover. And he hadn't even meant anything by it. No, he hadn't. He hadn't meant a single thing. It was just another in a long stream of buddy-fucks for him, the little slut. Now, Jack was the general, so it was bit harder to get the base scuttlebutt that it used to, but he could still do the casual shrug and the not-so-put-on airheady drawl with the best of them. 'So, what do you know about this guy, John Sheppard?' And he hadn't had to dig deep to find out that Sheppard was a slut to the somethingth-degree. And it hadn't taken him even less time to determine that he would crunch his nuts into pulp and then use them to make coffee... or... er... something horrible like that - something cool and intimidating like Big-T would do.

Of course, the second he'd seen the 'coffee-grinder' look on Jack's face, Daniel had given him a long steamy kiss and made him promise 'not to do anything stupid like beating up hapless Air Force Majors, no matter how cocky you think they are.' Stupid Daniel. Why did he have to be so damn... good? He was such a bad influence.

Jack scowled and looked straight ahead, clenching his hands in front of him to keep from doing something that Daniel would punish him for later, because now Daniel had leverage - too much for a do-gooder like him who actually had the willpower to restrain himself for some stupid cause or another.

They still hadn't done the big one... well, they had, but not the way Jack had expected. They had barely gotten through the door to Jack's house before Daniel was upon him, licking and kissing like a wild animal, practically tearing his clothes off. Not that Jack had objected much at the time... until he realized that it might be bad for his back to do it right there on that hallway floor. He wasn't as young as he used to be, after all. They could always try the floor later, when he'd amassed a sufficient cushion of pillows for it. Oh... maybe he should write that down... buy pillows.

And he hadn't even understood how Daniel could be so hungry for him... not really until he found a tongue on his cock... a tongue doing things that he was pretty damn sure that Daniel did not know how to do, despite the whole linguist thing, considering his previous history with blow-jobs. And even then, Jack hadn't stopped to question it. It felt so good, a thawing of the pervasive cold he'd felt for months... with only the occasional soft whispers of Daniel's voice to keep him company. . . and someone repeatedly cursing in Gaelic. It was only afterwards when they were laying sweaty and sated in Jack's bed and he had bite marks on his shoulder and a slight soreness in his ass, that he realized that Daniel had gotten some experience somewhere else. It hadn't taken long, even with Daniel's stuttered admissions and just short of teary eyes, for Jack to figure out exactly who.

And once he'd coaxed the whole story out of Daniel -the crying, the cavalier attitude, the clever seduction, the flippant comments afterwards- Jack wanted to catch the first flight down to McMurdo and kill a certain major who would remain unnamed... because his name might actually cause Jack to sprain his thinking muscles in an attempt to contain the rage. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of anywhere worse than Antarctica to send the guy as punishment (Well, maybe Newark, but not even he was *that* cruel). Damn Colonel Bratt had already taken care of that for him. Jack wasn't an emotional man. Well... he did have some pretty severe emotions, but most of them were anger. But even *he* knew that a guy's first time was special. He knew that you didn't trivialize it, even if you did leave the next morning. It was something that the guy would remember his entire life, and it was just... it was plain old decency that you made it memorable for him. You didn't have to be emotional, or caring, or whatever... you just had to be *human.*

And Daniel deserved more than just memorable. Not because of all that he'd lost: his parents, his wife, Jack himself. And not because of the times he'd saved the world, either. No, Daniel deserved it because he had a beautiful soul. He deserved it because he still believed in people after all the times that they'd betrayed him. Because, even after John 'slutboy' Shepwhore had treated him so callously, he had begged Jack not to do anything... even sympathized with the guy!

But this kid didn't warrant sympathy. Shit happened in warfare. People died. Jack had seen so many friends and colleagues die over the years. Hell, he'd even lost his son. But he got over it. He had to get over it because that's what being military was all about. You'd drink a beer. Maybe you'd cry. You'd do your best to honor them as you stood at attention at their funeral. And you probably were never quite the same again. But you moved on. When they ordered you, you went. You went and you did your duty. You didn't turn into a disgusting little slut. Hell, the only reason the kid wasn't already booted out of the service was his father, the stupid homophobic asshole that he was. Daniel didn't understand. He could never understand. There were some things... there were some things that were never justifiable. There were some things, like using innocent children as bombs, or taking people as hosts against their will, or waging war over racial purity, that just were not acceptable. He was a soldier. He knew that killing was part of the job, even if he never enjoyed it. And he knew that if there was a hell, he'd probably go there a hundred times over for all the times he'd violated that commandment, but the thing about being a soldier was that once you made it okay to cross that line, you had to draw others. You had to have things that the enemy might use that you never would, because you were good and they were not. You had to have things that kept you human.

And this kid did not have that basic human dignity. Jack didn't care how fucked up he was. He'd seen guys at the VA, come back from Vietnam and Iraq with more than a few screws missing, and he felt sorry for them. But if they killed a child or beat a woman, or ever even tried to hurt someone as good as Daniel, he'd have no problem giving them what they deserved.

And John Sheppard deserved to rot in hell.

Jack only spared the kid a cursory glance. He knew that if he looked too long he might let his rage get the better of him and accidentally cause the chopper to crash. What would Daniel say then?

But what he could do, while he was trying not to strangle the kid, would be to gather some intel.

What did they say about interrogation? *Start with questions to which you already know the answers.* "What kinds of choppers do ya fly?" He could culminate in, 'how did you like the sex with my soulmate, you cocky little shit?'

The kid smiled and started rattling them off. ". . . apache, black hawk, cobra, osprey."

"That's a lot of training for the Antarctic." Because he wasn't trained for the Antarctic, though Jack doubted the smug bastard would admit it.

"It was the one continent I'd never set foot on." Oh, there was the pride showing through. The kid was going to make like he had chosen this post. Jack had read his file - he didn't have any other choice. Antarctica was the only thing on the table.

Well, Jack certainly wasn't going to give his stamp of approval to that little fib. "It's one of my least favorite continents." He and Sam had almost died here, after all. And then there was the whole frozen-alive thing - not so fun. Plus it was really freakin' cold.

"I kinda like it here." There went the cocky grin again. Jack squeezed his fists in frustration. Was this kid just saying this to stick it to him, the higher-up and thus the perceived distributor of his punishment? People were sent to Antarctica as *penalty.* Though, in Jack's eyes, the kid should have been punished more than enough. He didn't act like it though. *Who the hell undergoes a frickin' year of physical therapy and comes back just to serve in *Antarctica?** A small voice in Jack's head reminded him that he himself had suffered 13 broken bones and trekking back from behind enemy lines, and he still came back. But Jack never listened to that stupid voice, even though it was beginning to sound a lot like Daniel. Especially when that voice was telling him that he should reserve some sympathy for the evil archaeologist-stealing toy-boy.

"You like it here?" He made his disdain clear. What the hell did Daniel ever see in this guy? Contraire to the point of stupidity.

"Yes, Sir. Be there in about ten minutes, Sir." Thank God. He thought he could restrain himself from killing the guy for about that long... maybe.

Well, they were still alive – he'd give the kid that one, he supposed. But the smug little brat hadn't followed orders. Jack had told him to go one way and he'd very deliberately gone another. And Jack was a General... and the only one in the chopper with alien-missile-dodging experience; the kid should have listened.

The kid... . His train of thought was interrupted by the sight of a certain sexy anthropologist wearing a parka that brought out the green in his eyes. It'd only been what? Five days, and he missed him already. Jack had a distinct feeling that this whole new deskjob thing was really really going to suck - and not in the whole Bill Clinton way either.

"Jack." Daniel smiled, looking appropriately relieved to see him, considering he probably had something to do with the whole getting shot at thing... either him or that asshole, McKay.

Jack smiled nonetheless, trying not to look too happy. Wouldn't do to be too conspicuous, especially now that his imagination was providing him with even more food for thought. It was good food too, a delicacy – but not French... he hated French. "Daniel. Warm welcome."

"Wasn't me. How'd you manage to uh..."

"Keep my ass from getting blown out of the sky? The exceptional flying of Major John Sheppard. He likes it here." Well, at least he could prove Daniel wrong there. This kid might actually re-up. And *then* what would they do about the whole anonymity factor? Of course it was too late for that, wasn't it? Daniel'd feel guilty making the kid transfer if … no, when, things went south. Daniel was good at feeling guilty.

"That's excellent." Daniel pointedly avoided looking the kid in the eyes, though he did ask,

"You like it here?"

Jack tried to hide his frown with his normal stoic-face. He didn't want to give those two a chance to talk – or worse, flirt. Or discuss... literature. He suppressed a shudder. "Let's say we cut to the part where you start talking - real fast."

"Ah, Weir's in here."

Jack turned back to the kid, giving him his best warning glare, the commanding one that made anyone from airmen to Colonels (with the exception of Carter) quake in their boots. "Hey, don't touch anything."

"Yes, Sir." The kid was looking around in wonder. Jack wasn't entirely sure he was listening. Jack couldn't even remember the days when he'd been awed by his job. When had alien technology and religions come-to-life start becoming just another day at the office? He left the kid to it, following Daniel around a corner, where his hapless lover nearly collided with some guy with a James Bond accent and a very bouncy British ass.

"So..." Daniel raised his eyebrows.

"So *what?*" Jack responded, watching the flustered scientist in red scurry around the corner.

"So, you were alone in a plane with John." Jack didn't like this whole first-name-basis thing - not at all. It didn't matter that Daniel called *everybody* by their first name.

"Helicopter." Daniel was a linguist; he should know that sort of thing. He must have been doing it just to piss Jack off. "And the fact that he was the one flying the thing was the only thing that stopped me from giving him the smack upside the head he deserves."

"C'mon, Jack, don't you think you're overreacting just a bit? He's a good guy."

"Oh, Danny-boy, you haven't seen me overreact." Daniel raised his eyebrows at that. "Not for a while."

"You just said he could fly."

"Look, Daniel, you better not be suggesting what I think you're suggesting." Then Daniel got the furby expression: cute but definitely about to be annoying in a second or two when he was going to start beeping incessantly.

Daniel opened his mouth; Jack winced. *Here it comes.* "I think we should recruit him."

"Have you seen his file?" Daniel rolled his eyes. Of course he had - smug bastard. "He's psychologically unstable. He doesn't have the experience."

"Because so many people train in fighting aliens, Jack."

"That's not the point."

"What is the point then?"

"The point is that I'm sitting in the big chair, not you. And I say, 'No.'"

Daniel frowned for a second and then brightened. "He speaks Chinese."

"Good for him," Jack growled. He wasn't jealous or anything; he was just... jealous. It was like this kid was everything Daniel admired plus the good-looking soldier-thing Daniel seemed to like in Jack. And he needed to be saved (from himself) which made him an excellent chewtoy for Daniel's rabid humanitarianism... and young... luckily, he was also a total brat, so Jack didn't have to *really* worry.

"But you already gave him clearance."

"If I made him stay up on the surface after almost getting shot down by a glowy squidmissle, I think we'd be worse off, Daniel. People around here are busy and they know it's classified. Nobody's stupid enough to say anything to the shuttle service. He'll think he's in on some super secret research. Doesn't need to know about the whole aliens thing."

"But, Jack..." Daniel was in full whine-mode now. Jack needed to prove that this whole... new development between them didn't mean he was going to let Daniel make command decisions. They all knew what kind of trouble they'd get into then, especially since Daniel's mere presence seemed to attract danger.

"No, Daniel. This is a military thing. And besides, I don't like him."

"Jack..."

And then he heard the telltale whine of McKay bitching about something or another, probably the whole random alien missiles shooting at very important people – not that Jack's ass was ever McKay's concern, despite how much time he spent staring at it instead of listening to the general. God, Jack really didn't want to deal with him. He'd finally gotten used to Carter and her geekgasms, but he wasn't looking forward to dealing with McKay and people like him for the rest of his career – especially after what Carter had said about the slimly little shit. Jack didn't particularly like women, as far as the whole sex thing went, and he definitely didn't care about them in the military, but he did feel as though there were certain times when you just needed to be a gentleman. McKay wasn't an officer –far from it- and he was cowardly Mr. Doom the times Jack had seen him in action. Plus he was *loud.* With that, the noise reached a sharp crescendo. Yep, the desk job was going to really suck.

"What'd'ya say we get in there before McKay makes Weir's head explode?" Jack raised his eyebrows. He liked Dr. Weir. At first he didn't think he would, not with the whole 'her taking over the SGC' thing. But now that she was down in Antarctica and not staring over his shoulder all the time, or trying to civilianize everything, she was growing on him. She was enthusiastic, but not in that bunny-on-amphetamines sort of way. And she had a sense of humor. And as far as Jack was concerned, if you weren't trying to shoot or enslave him, his team, or his species -or steal his lover- a sense of humor would get you a long way.

"Play nice, Jack," Daniel admonished.

"Don't I always?"

"So, does this mean you're one of those cool treasure hunter archaeologists, with a whip and a gun and all that? Like Indiana Jones?" John smirked mercilessly. It was the playful flirtatious smirk that Daniel had gotten to know and love in such a short time... he could only imagine what kind of damage it could do over extended periods of time.

"No whip. No hat. And I generally try not to have Nazis and crazy natives running after me, but... actually, I do tend to have crazy natives running after me more often than not." Which wasn't what Daniel had signed up for when he decided to study Egyptian artifacts, but he'd grown to deal.

John nodded to himself, murmuring, "Disturbingly, I can picture that. Too bad about the whip, though." He winked.

"All right, all right, can we puh-lease stop with the flirting and get on with it?" McKay. Daniel rolled his eyes. He'd almost forgotten about the guy in his happiness to see John again. They hadn't talked since they'd had sex, and Daniel found himself missing it. Jack would be jealous, he was sure, but he really did enjoy John's company.

John turned to McKay with a smirk and said, "Yes, Sir," flippantly and just as flirtatiously. Daniel could only imagine how well John did in the armed services. No wonder he was stuck down here at the end of the world.

"Good. Good. Now sit in the chair."

John sighed, flopping back into the chair like it was a recliner. Daniel could see McKay cringe out of the corner of his eye. After what happened with Beckett, Daniel didn't blame him. John wiggled his butt around a bit, getting settled. "Comfy."

"Good, because we have a lot of work to do. Now, Major, I don't want to do anything with the weapons systems just yet - not after what happened before."

"Like you guys almost shooting us out of the sky?"

"Yeah, like that." McKay didn't even miss a beat. "So, why don't you um... think about the layout of this base."

John nodded and an image flashed above him, including several layers of corridors that they hadn't excavated yet. McKay snapped his fingers in Daniel's general direction. "Get someone from the excavation team here, ASAP." He seemed to forget that Daniel was what amounted to one of the head honchos of the whole program, not that it was a job he particularly cared for.

Still, McKay sure was arrogant, and didn't particularly deserve to be waited on hand and foot. But Daniel wasn't being exactly fair, he supposed, considering the amount of bitching he'd had to undergo from Sam when he got back from Russia. McKay had been working with her for a mere thirty-odd hours. You'd think it was years from the amount of repressed anger she seemed to carry over from it.

Jack didn't care much for the man either, but Jack didn't care for most anyone that wasn't a skilled warrior not trying to kill him (there were relatively few of those) or a little kid. He wasn't a very reliable judge. So, Daniel'd really just have to see for himself. John seemed to like the guy well enough, though Daniel was finding it hard to imagine someone John wouldn't like – or at least appear to.

"No, no, Major, not the temple from Indiana Jones. And it didn't even have those hooks on the wall, by the way. I want you to project a map of a place where we might find a ZedPM."

"Ya know, McKay, it might help if you could explain to me what a ZedPM is before you ask me to locate one," John replied flippantly. It didn't sound as though he really cared, though.

"Oh, yeah, right. Well, a ZedPM is an energy storage device that utilizes a localized vacuum of subspace to extract Zero Point Energy, which..."

"But I thought that was impossible? You couldn't possibly risk isolating the energy without bending the laws of thermodynamics..." Well, John certainly was full of surprises... not that McKay noticed. He was too busy jumping down the throat of any supposed challenged to his intellectual superiority.

"Well, they said the same thing about creating wormholes through subspace and timetravel and..."

"Wait? You guys can timetravel?"

"Not at will, no, but..."

"It's not that fun, trust me," Daniel interrupted, remembering life in the 1960s. Sure, it'd been fun seeing General Hammond as a young man and Jack making random Star Trek references left and right, and Teal'c with an Afro... he wished he had pictures of that. But, the uncertainty of it all, the fear of changing the history Daniel loved so dearly, had been too stressful. Not to mention the fact that Jack got really grumpy when he wasn't able to get his weekly Simpsons fix.

"Like in Back to the Future?"

"Sort of... except no Delorian." Daniel smiled.

"No Delorian? Bummer. I used to want one of those. Zero to sixty in..."

"Okay, okay, we can discuss the finer points of out-of-date ridiculously impractical luxury cars used in scientifically incorrect scifi movies at some other date..." McKay obviously didn't like being left out of the conversation. "Now, you, what are you still doing here? You need to get an excavation team to C section, stat." And to John: "And you, please stop thinking about Michael J. Fox's butt. Now that I've explained a ZedPM to you, concentrate on finding one."

Daniel watched as the grin faded from John's face and a look of intense concentration replaced it. He remembered a similar intensity from when John knelt over him, looked into him and seen every part of his grief. Even after being with Jack, loving him so much, glorying in expressing the feelings that he'd been fumbling with for so long, he missed some of John's haunting melancholy, like one of those sad melodies that played in open air cafes in Paris, the violin slow and sweet and deep and rich all the same time.

And then, above them, was a beautiful teal ocean, extending for miles around, and a city, rising from its depths, great grey towers vaulting out of the ocean like the spears of King Neptune himself. And Daniel could almost feel the hope – feel the wonder as the sun shone through the turrets, making the ocean come alive, dazzling.

"All right, all right, Sheppard, stop fooling around."

"I'm not..."

"You're taking that from the Disney movie, Major. Now, I know we're talking about Atlantis, but try for something closer to home, and not popcorn and necking during a kiddie flick, okay?"

John rolled his eyes, the image of a desert and familiar pyramids coming up out of the sand appeared. "Great! That could be any number of worlds. Try to narrow it down a little, will you?" McKay didn't seem capable of doing anything but bitch. Daniel could see why Sam had so little patience with him.

John's mouth dropped open. "Wait. Any number of worlds? I was thinking about the Mummy."

McKay just rolled his eyes. "Oh dear God, why? Why does the man with the most natural showing of the gene have to be the walking talking bad science fiction movie dictionary? You're punishing me aren't you?"

"I like horror too." John said with a grin, and Daniel couldn't help but smile.

But as McKay and Sheppard continued to argue and banter like they'd known each other for years, Daniel was still haunted by the image of the city in the sea and the sense of wonder he felt even now in its wake. He needed to get Jack to let him go to Atlantis. He needed to see it for himself.

The universe either really loved him or really hated him, Jack decided. Either she was like his Great Aunt Sally who took care to always send him dorky sweaters and ridiculous postcards from her latest roadtrip to see the Giant Donut in Nowhereville, Indiana or pinch his cheek until it was so red and raw that he couldn't even snap at her sarcastically, since she doted on him so much that the attention nearly killed him. Or the Universe just wanted him to suffer, and continued to let him save the day or come back to life or whatever miraculous and impossible feat of the week so that he'd live to be tortured another day.

Not that Jack was scientific or anything like that (that's what people like Carter were for. And that's why assholes like that guy McKay were so screwed up) but he did have some good evidence on either side of the argument. The universe loved him, so it gave him Daniel. The universe hated him so it made Daniel straight – like the fruit... juicy yummy fruit of temptation or something like that. The universe loved him so it made Daniel willing to rethink his straightness. Or it hated him because the rethinking occurred in a far too academic discombobulated Danielesque fashion. But, then again, it loved him because he loved that about Daniel. But it hated him because it made John Sheppard and that ridiculous 'did I do that' smirk and that stupid hair and the goddamn wounded puppy thing that Daniel was so attracted to and the frickin' ancient gene. Jack had the ancient gene. He was advanced. It was *his* thing.

But that could actually be love, because this whole chair thing –as much as it had made Jack want to strangle that arrogant little order-disobeying (because when the general says 'Don't touch anything' you don't goddamn touch anything) bastard- was his chance to package up this little problem and ship it the hell out of here. *Bye-bye Sheppard, try to steal my lover from another galaxy.*

So this meant that the universe... the universe was just too damn complicated and it could go do whatever the hell it wanted for all he cared. All he wanted to think about right now was not running into all these confusing people and ridiculously baroque ceiling beams and... was someone talking to him?

"We could be on our way to discovering an entirely new ancient civilization. Best case scenario, we meet actual Ancients who would be willing to help us. But if we don't...General, we need him." Weir. He was talking to Weir and she had that doelike glassy-eyed look that all the civilians seemed to get when you showed them something shiny. And she was a politician, so of course she had to *talk* about it.

He fought to keep it casual. "Sorry Doc, I need Daniel here." And that was the truth. *He* needed Daniel. Was he endangering this mission because of personal preference? He was in charge now. He realized now that he might have to make those hard decisions - maybe the ones to sacrifice people under his command. But he would never sacrifice Daniel. Never. He was just glad that his rank meant he didn't have to justify this to Dr. Weir - she looked like she could win almost any rational argument.

"I'm talking about Major Sheppard." Thank god. Well, shipping him off to another galaxy would certainly be convenient: wham, bam, don't let the wormhole hit your pretty-boy ass on the way out. No way he could expose them out there.

*Okay, Jack, make some token resistance. You can't let her know you want this boy out of your hair. You can't let her suspect.* "Oh. Don't you have a dozen people already who can use the ancient technology?" That was very politic. *Good job, Jack.* He gave himself a mental pat on the back.

"Yeah, with concentration and training they can make it work, but John Sheppard? He does it naturally." So the kid had already charmed someone with his flippant little, 'Did I do that?' *Everyone loves the reluctant hero.* Couldn't they see that Sheppard was just being a brat? That he was covering up his confusion and fear with this shoddy casualness. Jack hated being the only one who saw these things.

Well, he didn't want Weir to go away with the bad case of hero-worship she so-obviously already had. "You know, I've checked into his record."

"I know about the whole supposed black mark in Afghanistan. He was trying to save the lives of three servicemen." Too late, apparently. She was a civilian, of course she was impressed by those kinds of heroics, but as Jack was learning more and more, sometimes if you set out to rescue a few good men, you lost more. He tried to push the images of little Doc Fraser, the woman who had saved more lives than he could count - saved him so many times. And, though the new Doc, whose name he chose not to remember, was competent, he couldn't help but think - maybe if Doc Frasier hadn't died in that rescue-mission-gone-wrong, they might have been able to save that Russian colonel a few weeks ago. They might not have had to do that whole lockdown thing.

". . . disobeying a direct order in the process." Maybe people made those orders for a reason. What if Sheppard had failed? He would have died like the poor grunts on the MedEvac Chopper that touched down against orders to try and save Sheppard himself and they wouldn't have this great Ancient-device-wielding savior.

"I have read your own file, General. Please..." Why did everyone keep saying that? It wasn't as though he purposely went out there to disobey orders! He only did it when the orders were wrong... or stupid. Besides, that was then...

"Right. Okay. It's your expedition. You want him, you ask him." And good riddance.

"That's the thing: I have."

"Really?" Oh, the spoiled little brat. Daniel was *so* wrong on this one. What kind of person would refuse an offer like that? Even after Charley, Jack had felt a limited wonder in going through the gate. Sure, a lot of it was run-off from Daniel... even back then he had that infectious enthusiasm.

Jack stepped into the elevator, letting it take him to the surface, fuming. If he wasn't the general and all that, he'd strangle the kid. Didn't he get it? He was important. He was special, as special as the kid obviously always wanted to be his entire life – disobeying orders so that Daddy or the general or whomever would pay attention to him. And now here was his big chance and Sheppard was going to drop the goddamn ball.

By the time Jack got to the chopper that Sheppard was already –very presumptuously- warming up for takeoff, he was mad. He was really mad, but he couldn't just scream at the kid, as would have been his usual reaction, because they needed him. And Jack hated needing people. He hated owing favors. And he hated not being able to yell when he frickin' wanted to.

"This isn't a long trip, so I'll be as succinct as possible." He managed to school his tone into the dry, cutting sarcasm that he used when he was being tortured or something like that – also a time when he wasn't allowed to get as mad as he wanted to, because he needed the other guy to do something for him... no wonder he hated politics.

"Well, that's pretty succinct." *Don't sound surprised, Sheppard. You little slut.*

"Thank you."

"I told Dr. Weir I'd think about it." Which was another way of saying, 'no.'

"And? So... well... *what?*" If this kid didn't stop... well, Jack wasn't going to be held responsible for his actions.

"With all due respect, Sir, we were just attacked by an alien missile. Then I found out I have some mutant gene. Then there's this Stargate thing and these expeditions to other galaxies."

*Big whoop, kid. You think it was easy going through when we didn't even know what it was? When I thought it was a one-way trip? When Daniel got dragged off by some crazed dog-horse-thingy? When we found Ra and I saw a hand device and a staff weapon and a glider and their full deadly force for the first time? So what? I did it. I did it and goddamn came back for more, because that's what you do. You save the world. You save the galaxy without even a bonus for overtime. You stick your head inside an ancient-downloady-headshrinker, get frozen, get shot at, die. You do it because that's your duty. Because this is the fate of the entire human race, I'm talking about. How the hell could you not?*

"Ya know, this isn't about *you,* Sheppard. It's a lot bigger than that." So much bigger it'd probably explode what little brains the kid could fit beneath that ridiculous hair – were there no groomers in Antarctica?

"Right now, at this very second, whether I decide to go on this mission or not seems to be about me." *Cocky little shit... you think that's clever, do you?*

"Let me ask ya something," Jack asked.

The kid put on his helmet, ignoring him, and Jack was forced to follow suit before continuing, "Why'd you become a pilot?"

"I think people who don't want to fly are crazy."

"And I think people who don't want to go through the Stargate are equally as whacked. Now, if you can't give me a 'yes' by the time we reach McMurdo, I don't even want ya."

John gave him this long stare, coupled with a frown, that reminded Jack of the look he'd caught on the kid's face when he was sitting alone in the hanger, waiting for Jack to arrive. He had been quick to conceal it then, now he didn't bother. It was a look that asked the universe to remove him from it, as though he was put upon to make any kind of decision at all. Jack remembered when he was like that - when he got his orders to go through the Stargate for the very first time, he'd looked at the men who recalled him with the same emotion in his eyes: if you have to take me out of my nice little depressive cocoon, it'd better damn well be worth my while.

But Jack did it. And he'd be damned if the kid wouldn't do it to, because, in this battle there wasn't the luxury of moping and feeling bad about yourself – not with so much at stake.

Jack was mad. It didn't take a genius to figure that one out. Ever since they got on that plane back from Antarctica a week ago, Jack had been... snappy, more snappy than usual, at least, and it was driving Daniel crazy. Today. Daniel had thought he was going to have to physically restrain his lover from killing McKay. After finally working with the guy, Daniel had established that McKay was, indeed, juast as much of an asshole as everyone said he was. But in the interest of all things humanitarian, the man really did not deserve Jack's hands around his throat.

"Jack, would you please stop that?"

"Stop what?" Jack looked up from where he was reading the paper – Doonesbury, actually.

"Stop tapping your spoon on the table like that, for one. And secondly, brooding."

"Who's brooding? I'm not brooding."

"Jack." Daniel used his warning tone.

Which Jack blithely ignored. "What?"

"You're brooding. You've been pissed off ever since we got back from Antarctica. And don't think I haven't noticed that Sam's down in her lab working with *McKay* until all hours of the night and Walter jumps and spills his coffee every time he hears footsteps."

"So what? Walter's just jumpy... PMS or something. And maybe Sam finally fell for McKay's devastating good looks and subtle charm."

"Yeah, and Thor dressed in drag to try out for American Idol and the Goa'uld have returned to reclaim Martha Stewart."

"Stranger things have happened." There was no arguing with that one.

Daniel frowned: time for a change of tactics. He inched his chair closer to Jack's, letting his arm fall against the hand that was still rapidly tapping a spoon on the poor defenseless table, stilling it as fingers entwined and Daniel squeezed.

Jack looked up from his cartoons and raised an eyebrow. "Not going to work, Danny-boy. Don't think I'm not aware of *your* devastating good looks and not-so-subtle charms, Dr. Jackson."

"Hey, I can be subtle!"

"I'm sure you can. Like that time on the monkey planet when you..."

Daniel would have prefered not to think about that. He hadn't been able to look at blue jell-o for months afterwards. "Don't try to change the subject, Jack," Daniel sighed, letting his head fall over onto Jack's shoulder. "Why don't you just tell me what's wrong?"

"This whole... Pegasus... Zed thing. We're sending a hell of a lot of good people, possibly to their deaths. It's a big risk."

Daniel knew Jack was right. He remembered several of his staff crying and hugging and just plain staring into space after a few of the members had announced that they'd been chosen by Dr. Weir. A lot of good people... but it was worth it. "But it's Atlantis. This is the city of the Ancients, the Gate Builders. We don't even have any idea what kinds of discoveries might be waiting for us..."

"Yeah, yeah, I've already heard the speech from Weir," Jack sounded despondent. But Jack wasn't usually one to stress about risk-taking. Beneath all the sarcasm, Jack really did believe that things would somehow work themselves out – they always had.

"That's not all of what's bothering you, is it?"

Jack grumbled. He was a grouch, but he wasn't a liar. He did mumble, though. "John Sheppard."

"What?"

"The kid."

"Oh," Daniel frowned. He thought they were beyond that. "Look, Jack, I slept with him, I admitted it, and I'm sorry. I do enjoy his company, but if it would make you feel better, I won't see him again."

"Be pretty hard if he's in another galaxy." Jack had reclaimed the spoon and was now spinning it around the tabletop.

"I thought you said he refused your offer." Now Daniel's curiosity was piqued. All he'd heard from Jack before had been a string of mumbled curses with an interspersed 'spoiled brat' and an occasional 'coward.'

"He said he'd think about it."

"Oh. You think he'll say yes?"

"I think that if he doesn't, I'll be pretty pissed at the standards of our armed forces today." So that was it.

"John's a good man. He'll come around eventually. Remember when you first found out about the Stargate?"

"*I* went through it."

"You wanted to blow it up."

Jack tried to shrug. "Same difference."

"Why do you care so much, anyhow?"

"Because I can't stand the thought that someone could just walk away." Maybe Jack couldn't stand the thought that he could've just walked away, gone fishing in his lake with no fish, and never been shot at, killed, tortured, snaked, or frozen.

"People do it every day."

"People are stupid," Jack said, petulantly.

Daniel couldn't really argue with that. "He won't walk away, Jack. He's had a lot sprung on him all at once and he's not in the most emotionally stable place."

"Neither was I." Jack sounded offended, but Daniel squeezed his hand, reminding him that he could never forget about Jack's early suicidal heroism, about Charley.

"Give him time."

Daniel leaned his head up for a lazy kiss, moving even closer when Jack put his arm around him. This felt good. This felt so right. Why was he waiting? What was he afraid of? He'd seen how much John had enjoyed it. Why was he scared to let Jack know him so intimately? He's already bared his soul for Jack. Why was his body so reluctant? He just needed a push. He just needed...

"So there's nothing between you and Sheppard anymore?" Of course, Jack could get... fixated.

"Nothing."

"Good. Now what do you say we..."

The doorbell rang, and Daniel rose to answer, placing a chaste kiss on Jack's lips, tasting the hot cocoa he'd been drinking after diner and smiling. "I'll get it. You clean up. And then we can go to bed." Daniel winked. He wanted Jack. He wanted him tonight.

"If the world doesn't need saving again," Jack grumbled. He was very distrustful of both the telephone and the doorbell. Daniel didn't blame him – they rarely brought good news.

Maybe it'd be a door-to-door salesman - not likely at 9:30 at night, but Daniel could hope.

He opened the door to find John Sheppard standing on Jack's porch, looking shy and hopeful and just a little too sexy in a tight black top and jeans, hair mussed and a tentative smile on his face. He was going to have fun explaining this one to Jack. Daniel groaned inwardly, even as he couldn't help but return the smile.

"Daniel. Look, the big guy with the snake tattoo said I could find you here." Daniel looked at the small round bruise developing near Sheppard's left ear and the on the top of his hand.

"Been playing ping-pong with Teal'c?" And Jack thought John Sheppard wasn't brave.

"More like getting my ass kicked with a bite-sized plastic ball, but yeah," John chuckled, looking distracted. "Can I come in?"

"Sure." Well, he was going to be in trouble for this. But, despite the 'just stepped out of a Gap catalogue, please fuck me' look, John didn't seem to be here to seduce him. Daniel had told him about Jack, and even John wasn't self-destructive enough to go after something that was clearly earmarked for the general.

"I'm sorry, if I'm bothering you."

"Of course not, John." How could John think he was an imposition after all he'd done for Daniel? How could he possibly think that Daniel wouldn't do anything in his power to help him?

"It's just... I've been doing a lot of thinking... about Pegasus. And after I found myself sitting on a hill flipping coins, I figured it'd be better if I talked it out with someone. And, seeing as how I'd probably get sent to the loonybin if I found a friendly barkeep to lend an ear... not that you're not better than a barkeep."

John looked nervous for the first time that Daniel'd really seen. His seduction had been so smooth and confident that Daniel found the nervousness in the man walking lazily in front of him surprising, but strangely comforting - more human than the man who'd held him so tenderly but refused to cry.

Then they stepped into the living room, where Jack was fiddling with the stereo. John stopped and stiffened. Jack whirled around and raised his eyebrows, growling. "Daniel..."

"John just stopped by to talk about the Stargate..."

"Like how he's being a..."

"Jack." Daniel said loudly and firmly, but not shouting. "Go clean your study."

"It's clean!"

"All the papers you haven't looked at stacked in a single pile does not mean clean. Please. John and I need to talk."

John started backpedaling. "If I'm intruding, I can just..." he stepped back into the single stair that led down to the living room and fell over.

Jack rolled his eyes, but seemed to Daniel to take this is an indication that John was no longer a threat, because he cleared out. "You kids be good now."

Daniel settled down on the couch, John beside him, looking over Daniel's shoulder to make sure Jack had gone.

"So?" Daniel said, trying not to think about how John's thigh felt warm and soft pressed up against his, or the relaxed way he leaned back against the couch propping his head in his hand. Once you'd had someone... shared something with them... you could never go back.

"So, I actually only have one question."

"One."

"Just one."

Daniel smiled. John smiled back.

"Oh, right, you can ask it now."

"O-kay... is it worth it?"

Daniel didn't even have to think before answering. "Absolutely."

John smiled again, opening his mouth to ask something else when they heard a loud crash from behind them. John flinched and Daniel looked over his shoulder as Jack opened the door, carrying what appeared to be a box full of barbecuing equipment – as though Jack needed a whole box just to burn things.

"Jack... whatcha doin'?"

"The study was too... paper... filled. I decided to clean out the garage instead. Need anything? Flapjacks, a straightjacket, lemonade?"

"No, thanks," Daniel said with false sweetness. He really wanted to get back to telling John all the amazing things he could find through the Stargate... how it had healed him... how it had healed Jack... how it was a hope that John too could see that there was something beyond the pain he carried so heavily.

"Skippy here decide to suck it up and go through the big bad stone circle yet?" Jack asked, completely not helping.

"Actually, I think I got all the information I needed." Out of one word, yeah right. Daniel refused to let Jack play the big angry bear and chase John off. "Thank you, Daniel, I think I'll go now."

"No, John, please stay..." Daniel found himself standing, clasping John's hands in his, looking into those pained green eyes, mesmerized once again by the sadness that he couldn't seem to banish.

John seemed to process things for a second. Then the sadness disappeared, only to be replaced by a hint of mischievousness and that easy confidence that Daniel recognized from before. "Unless there's something I can do for you..."

Daniel frowned. He'd been in trouble lots of times – enough times to know that that look spelled it. "What do you mean?" he asked slowly.

John's grin widened to a full-on smirk. "Well, before you told me that you and the general had planned..."

"No, no, that's fine..." Daniel began. The last thing they needed right now was to remind Jack of...

"I think that's an excellent idea. Don't you Daniel?" Jack raised his eyebrows, voice forceful in a way that Daniel knew was equally as dangerous as John's grin. He had a feeling that John and Jack were an explosive combination and that he was going to be caught squarely in the middle. Daniel winced, waiting for the other shoe to drop – Jack hated 'the kid,' so this wasn't a simple case of 'pretty, me want.'

"As long as he behaves." That was it. That was the tone of voice Jack got whenever the pentagon sent a bureaucrat in to sniff around or challenge his authority. It was that tone of unreasonable and uncalled for cooperation, like Jack was going to do everything you asked for and make you regret every second of it. It usually preceded a drawn out discussion Mary Steenburgen's finer qualities. It was not a good thing.

"Jack..." Daniel gulped in warning, hoping that John would catch on and decide that this was the really bad idea that Daniel knew it was.

Instead, John said, "Oh, I can behave, Sir" with his most wicked smirk and a gleam in his eyes. The two officers stared each other down and Daniel could've sworn he was back in the old wild west, watching two gunslingers face off across a dusty square. John grinned challengingly and Jack grinned right back.

Daniel tried to object, but the sound came out more a squeak than anything resembling a word in any of the forty-odd languages in his lexicon.

Jack came in from his left, dropping the box of barbecue parts with a clang, John from his right with those soft lips and the feeling, once again, of endless freefall. Daniel could feel the blood rushing in his veins, like the wind as John reached for his belt and there were rougher, more familiar hands on his back, lips on his neck, a break in the kiss so that John could kneel and Jack could lift off his shirt.

Daniel's pants fell to the floor and he stumbled trying to step out of them, Jack's warm arms and his suddenly naked chest, soft behind him, holding him up as Jack grabbed his chin, twisting his head around for a soft kiss. He spun around to continue the kiss, almost knocking John in the face. "Sorry," he mumbled through kisses. John was sitting on the floor somewhere behind him, but he felt warm hands and long fingers on his buttocks, a tongue, licking up the inside of his thighs, tickling him, sending a shudder through him and into Jack's ready mouth as they continued to kiss, hot and passionate as Daniel dispensed with Jack's pants, feeling his slick hardness in his hand. It was familiar now, but still new and amazing in so many ways: that this was Jack. This was all of Jack here and now, offered up to him and he wanted to fall. He wanted to fall the way he had with John, but he wanted to be caught, not left falling forever. He wanted Jack's warm arms and his protective embrace and his soul that was so beautiful despite all the familiar scars.

He felt memory flickering. He remembered Jack in pain. He remembered a cell, long and light and Jack lying on the floor hurt and begging for him to end it. But more than that he remembered what he once was and how he had seen Jack then. He remembered looking beyond that bloody and battered body to glimpse the soul within. He remembered it all light and color and beautiful sounds and textures like water and sunshine and stars twinkling and worlds breathing. He remembered thinking that after having seen all the universe spread out before him, it was still the most beautiful thing of all.

Then he felt something wet and warm and deliciously good, lapping at his consciousness, entering him from the center of pleasure and decadent intimacy. He remembered the sarcophagus. He remembered his body thrilling and desire running deep and heavy through his veins. He remembered Jack on his knees. Jack begging. And he knew now why he was so afraid. The body was the prison of the soul. It was the sink into which it was so easy to fall into need and self-pity and meaningless desire like he'd seen in John's eyes sometimes. And he and Jack... they were more than that. He did not want them to fall.

His knees grew weak as John slowly fucked his entrance with his tongue and Daniel pushed back against him. His hand weakened around Jack's cock, but the kiss went on, strong. He whimpered and Jack swallowed it up, consuming it like he did all Daniel's pain.

"Okay, Danny-boy," Jack said, hauling him back to his feet. "I gotcha. Now let's get to the bedroom before I strain my back holding you up like this."

Daniel nodded, dazedly.

Jack looked down at the floor and the air force major spread wantonly out, erection straining against his designer jeans. "Get with the program, Sheppard. Too many clothes." His voice was gruff and sarcastic with that air of command that Daniel often admired.

"The shirt stays on," John said with startling conviction, eye and voice hard in a way Daniel had never seen in the easy-going officer. Both Jack and Daniel turned, surprised.

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, sure, whatever. Pants off, though."

John smirked as he followed them to the bedroom. "Yes, Sir."

Jack laid Daniel back onto the cool grey sheets with a kiss, rubbing his body over every inch of him, letting Daniel feel taut buttocks and lean legs and wiry chest hair - everything so incredibly Jack. Then Jack stiffened and rolled off. "Did I say you could touch?" His voice was harsh in a way Daniel had never heard before, sending a spike of burning desire through him like lightning. He whimpered, missing Jack's hands.

But Jack refocused on the other man in the room, who was kneeling at the foot of the bed, trying to look innocent and failing miserably. "No, Sir."

"Bad boy."

"Yes, Sir," John purred, stretching out, pants gone now, leaving his small rounded buttocks and the puckered opening between spread open wide as he leaned over and presented himself. "I need to be punished."

Jack grinned, dark and lusty, in a way Daniel had never seen before. He found he liked it, reaching out to kiss Jack's neck and tweak a dark erect nipple as he tasted every inch of Jack, wild and strong and masculine. But Jack continued to stare, finally bringing his hand down hard on John's ass, ignoring the bruising already covering his hips and thighs.

"Fuck, yeah," John moaned, leaning back to receive another slap.

Daniel's trailed a hand through Jack's chest hair, across his taut belly and down to stroke his cock, straining long and proud, leaking from administering the punishment that Daniel knew he'd been longing to deliver to John Sheppard for weeks. Daniel coated his hand with the precum, stroking Jack slow, taking in the velvety feel, the smell, the way Jack moaned even as he gave John another strong slap. Daniel found his own cock twitching at the sound.

One of Jack's hands reached over, finding Daniel's hardness and stroking right back. "You like the look of him, Danny?"

Daniel couldn't do anything but nod, speechless. John Sheppard was dead sexy and they both knew it, especially bent over screaming for punishment like that. It was a kink Daniel never knew he had. And he used to think he was a vanilla kind of guy.

"You liked fucking him, didn't you, Danny?" Jack asked eagerly.

"Yes, Jack."

"You wanna fuck him again?"

"Oh god yes." Daniel remembered what it was like being inside John, how warm and tight and perfect it was, how it felt like flying and explosions and things so new and marvelous.

Another slap. "Hear that, Sheppard?"

"Yes, Sir," John had to pant it out. Nobody had touched him yet, but he didn't seem to care, cock straining and leaking a perfect round pearl of cum.

Jack took Daniel's hand in his, bringing two of his fingers up to Jack's lips, kissing them, licking them, using them to fuck his own mouth. Daniel whimpered at the heat. His whole body had become a giant erogenous zone, with his fingers the current focal point. And when he thought there was nothing better than the warm heat of Jack's mouth, he found his fingers buried in something warmer and tighter, squeezing him with slight tremors as he pushed in against the sweet spot that made John cry out, but not in pain.

"Please, more," John begged, earning himself another slap from Jack, which only forced Daniel's fingers deeper.

"I didn't say you could talk, Sheppard."

"Yes, Sir." John's voice was strained, half moan, half whimper as he plunged back onto Daniel's fingers, which Jack held in his hand, steadying them and pushing them in with long hard strokes, much faster and rougher than Daniel would have done on his own.

Then Jack's fingers were gone and Daniel's pace slowed automatically. "Keep it up, Danny-boy." Jack grinned before leaning down and taking Daniel's cock deep into his mouth, teasing it with long swirling sucks, tongue playing over the sensitive head in just the right way.

"Mmmmm, Jack..." Daniel moaned, fingers stopping their motion altogether at Jack's ministrations, though John continued to fuck himself on the fingers, making muffled noises as though biting his lip. This was so good. Oh God, so good. "Love you," he panted.

And then Jack's wonderful lips were gone, back to kiss Daniel warm and wet and tasting of Daniel's own precum. "I love you too." They kissed again for a moment before Jack turned and barked. "Sheppard, turn around."

"Yes, Sir," John panted, hand reaching down to touch himself.

"Un-uh, no touchy," Jack leaned back on the bed, snapping his fingers for John to follow. "Now Sheppard, you're going to suck me while Daniel fucks you. Is that clear?"

John licked his lips in anticipation. "Yes, Sir." He didn't even hesitate before leaning down and taking Jack's straining cock in his mouth.

Daniel positioned himself behind John, taking in all the bruises on his beautiful skin, running hands along his broad shoulders and back as his head bobbed up and down.

"Whatcha waitin' for, Danny?" John had already been hurt so much. He didn't want to... "Is he... ? The lube?" It was in the drawer right by Jack's right hand, after all.

But Jack shook his head, grinning. "Don't need it. He's ready for you. Aren't you, Major?"

John must have been practiced at this, because they could hear his, "Yes, Sir," even around the thick cock pressed into his mouth.

Daniel gulped, gripping John's narrow hips and lining himself up before plunging in with a single long stroke. John moaned, but it was short lived as Jack guided his head back down, reminding him of his duty.

John was warm... no, he was hot, and so tight that Daniel felt like his entire being was being squeezed and pushed, soul tingling as he reached new heights of pleasure.

"Harder!" someone commanded and it must have been Jack because John's mouth was busy.

And Daniel wanted to obey, oh yes he wanted to obey, thrusting deep and wildly, feeling everything slide over him and around him until he was pumping his seed deep into John's gorgeous chute. But he wasn't done. He body was spent, but he wanted more. He wanted more than sensation. He wanted to get closer, become more. He wanted to feel what John had felt as he moaned and writhed. He wanted to cause pleasure like he was feeling right now. He had so much to give.

He pulled out and Jack slapped John on the shoulder, motioning for him to roll off. Jack's cock was red, almost bruised in its hardness, gleaming with John's spit. Daniel looked over to find that John himself still had not come, and his hands were tangling in the sheets to keep from touching himself.

But Daniel kept his eye on the prize. He looked up, into Jack's eyes, darkened with lust but light with love, looked at his familiar features and his lithe body. "I want you," he said, as though they were the only two people in the room.

Jack just nodded, reaching over to the night table to grab the lube, finally. If John cared, or even noticed, Daniel couldn't tell. He was panting, trying to win some internal battle not to touch himself. If he could do that, he could certainly manage to find a ZPM, Daniel thought.

"Hang on there, Sheppard," Jack said, before leaning over to kiss Daniel. It was so tender in comparison to the harsh bark of Jack's voice. But the kiss soon turned passionate, with hands roaming and Jack groaning into Daniel's mouth. They didn't need anything more than that. Daniel suddenly wondered why he bothered to learn so many languages when they could communicate so much more without a single word.

Then Jack broke away with a grin. "Go play with the kid."

John's bright green eyes flew open at that, and he leaned up to meet Daniel in a kiss. It was just as heated as kissing Jack, with even more nips and more hands roaming over sensitive skin. Objectively, John was probably a better kisser, but it wasn't the same. There was something missing.

It wasn't missing for long, because he felt Jack's hands trail along his thighs, even as he moved to straddle John, careful as his still-sensitive cock brushed against John's thigh. John moaned and grabbed one of Daniel's hands, bringing it down between them until it lighted on John's swollen and neglected member. Daniel's strokes were as slow as Jack's tender caresses and he felt John squirm beneath him, trying to thrust, whimpering, almost keening with need.

Then a slick finger found Daniel's entrance. He tensed up for a second, but then John was kissing all thoughts away, allowing the finger entrance. Jack was kissing the nape of his neck, murmuring sweet words of comfort and love as the finger continued it's exploration.

And then... there, he felt what had made John scream and whimper, crying out and biting down hard on John's shoulder, causing him to buck up against him. Jack had added another finger and Daniel's cock was back in action as he pushed himself back into Jack's fingers and forwards against John's frantically thrusting hips. They kept kissing until John let out a strangled cry and came, shooting his cum between them.

John reached up to pull Daniel against him as his hand reached down to Daniel's reawakened arousal, deepening the kiss. The fingers stopped their probing and he heard the cap of the lube snap back on.

"You ready, Daniel?" Jack whispered in his ear, so soft and seductive and tender that Daniel wanted to cry.

He nodded into John's shoulder.

"Breathe," Jack commanded. And then he was breached. He felt a warmth sliding into him. It stretched, burned a little and his first reaction was to clamp down, biting his lip.

"It's okay, Daniel," John whispered, leaning in for another kiss and Daniel remembered that this was the man that had held him gently while he cried. "Just relax."

Daniel nodded, taking a deep breath. John held him as Jack slid in more, each inch filling him and stretching him until he felt as though his body were opened up, exposed to everything in this vast universe, bursting with pain and sadness and love... so much love.

"There, you got it." Jack didn't bother to tell John he wasn't allowed to speak as he murmured it, stroking Daniel's waning erection and kissing him tenderly.

And Daniel felt Jack's balls settle against his cleft and breathed in another relaxing, feeling Jack and marveling. Jack inside him, cocooned safe between two people that seemed to care, he felt transcendent and beautiful.

Jack started a tentative thrust, angling to find that sweet spot that made Daniel see stars, brushing it in short little bursts. It was so much, too much, so intimate, so vulnerable, so perfect.

"Stop," John said, the first order he'd issued all night.

But Jack listened, pulling out. Daniel whimpered at the loss, but then John pushed at his chest, back and away, turning him around and moving him through his haze of need and desire and amazement so he was lying on his back. John kissed him once again and then all he saw was Jack.

Jack's warm brown eyes... his elegant silver hair... the smile lines around his soft welcoming lips as he kissed Daniel over and over and over until eternity, renewing his thrusts. Daniel twined his legs around him, wanting more, needing more, wanting to connect and share... share he remembered that word from a different language long ago, another life where he could look at someone and see beyond their body and into their soul.

And Jack's was the most beautiful of all. It was all he could see as his orgasm blurred the world a rainbow of white.

Daniel didn't even notice until he woke to Jack snoring loudly wrapped up in his arms, that John had disappeared. He smiled at the consideration, which he knew would be completely lost on Jack's slumbering form. John had let the moment be just for them, and it was magnificent.

Daniel untangled himself, leaving Jack grunting just slightly but not waking. He meandered down the hall to the kitchen, hoping that John hadn't left. They still had so much to share, after all.

John was sitting at Jack's breakfast table, flipping through the sports section of the newspaper. He looked so childish and fragile, open when he thought no one was looking. There was a large red bite mark on his neck, but it didn't look much different than the ping-pong bruise. Other than that and the slightly stiff posture he was sitting in, there was absolutely no sign that he had been getting smacked around and fucked hard not that long ago.

Daniel took a step forward and John looked up, something mesmerizing but unreadable in his eyes. He smiled a wry half-grin. "I don't know why I'm even bothering. Won't be able to keep up with the Trojans when I'm in another galaxy."

Daniel wasn't sure whether or not to smile or frown. He was glad that John's going – this was the adventure of a lifetime- but he was going to miss him. He settled on a smile in the end, because John looked like he needed encouragement.

"You're doing the right thing." He sat down across from John, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

"I know."

"What made you decide that?"

"There's nobody for me here. Not like you and..." he gulped. "I thought if I stayed in Antarctica, I'd never lose anyone. I'd never have to feel anything. I could just fly. But when you have nothing to lose, you've still got nothing."

Daniel smiled as warmly as he could, giving John's hand another squeeze. "You won't regret it." Just as Daniel never regretted, not even for a moment, his decision to step through the gate. He'd found love then lost it. Found a new love, now consummated. He'd died and been reborn. He'd come so close to knowing the answers only to have them slip through his finger, but they were out there. Everything was there through that shimmering liquid pool, waiting. "I have to admit; I'm kind of jealous."

John smirked, but it was soft and playful and just a little bit sad. John would find what he was looking for, Daniel was sure of it.

Okay, he should have known better. It was bad enough having to look at Daniel all the time, wiggling his ass seductively or looking all cute, messing with his glasses or some old boring archaeological tome or something. But Daniel was Daniel. He'd almost always been in love with Daniel on some level, so he'd grown to deal. The new physical part of their relationship only made it marginally harder –literally- to work with him.

What he should have remembered about people in the military or people under your command and the like was that you weren't supposed to let them say silly things like 'Yes, Sir' in the bedroom, because they had to say it all the time on duty. And you definitely did not do so with a certain Major John 'Slutboy' Sheppard, who took every opportunity to say 'Yes, Sir' in the most inappropriate way.

"Yes, Sir?" Sheppard said again, making Jack wince, as he walked in the door of Jack's office, looking around casually, but standing close enough to attention for Jack not to call him on it.

"Whatcha want, Sheppard?"

The kid had the nerve to smirk. "You requested my presence, Sir."

Oh, yeah, *that.* "So I did." Jack let his hands fall heavily on his desk, quirking his eyebrows and pretending to look at some papers – look all official and intimidating. Jack would let the kid sweat for a while, not that Sheppard would, before looking up. "Close the door."

"Yes, Sir."

Jack gritted his teeth, trying not to let that arouse him. "So, you decided to go, I take it." He took in the uniform that the kid had been meandering around in, pounding out his deadly 'Yes, Sir's all day.

"Yes I did."

"Why?"

"Why not?" The flippant little shit. He didn't care how spectacular a blowjob Sheppard could give; he still hated the kid.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "O-kay. First order of business, you're the second ranking officer on this expedition. Don't screw up."

"I'll try not to, Sir."

"This is important, Sheppard. No trying. You will *not* screw up. Now, I know you can follow orders." It was Jack's turn to smirk. The kid was real good at following certain orders. "And I know you can show restraint." Sheppard himself barely hid a smirk at that. "And you're going to do just that. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir." *Damnit!* He'd walked right into that one.

Jack sat and stared. Sheppard stared right back, a hardness in his eyes that Jack hadn't really seen before. Sheppard's smirk widened.

Okay, that was it. "Hey kid, you have to promise me something."

"I'm not a kid." It was snapped. Jack was *so* right. The kid had Daddy issues.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. Look, you have to promise me you won't do this on Atlantis."

"Do what, Sir?" That look of mock-innocence was so not cute.

"Can the virginal Boy Scout look, Sheppard, we all know you're not fooling anyone. You know what I mean."

"Why don't you spell it out for me, Sir?"

This was getting real old, real fast. He didn't want to deal with Sheppard's crap. The faster they got this over with, the faster he could drop kick the kid through the gate.

"You need to stop sleeping around." Not that it hadn't been good sex... really good sex. Jack smiled, remembering the sound of his hand coming down hard on Sheppard's ass, the feel of Daniel beneath him.

"Why not? It's just fun among friends."

"Who happen to be fellow officers."

"You seemed to approve last night." Sheppard quirked an eyebrow.

"Cut the crap, kid. I'm not going to give you the same Don't Ask Don't Tell shit as your father. Though being a complete whore isn't particularly conduct-becoming, that's not even the point. It's self-destructive and you know it. It might have been business as usual down here. What's another pilot? And we all know isolated duty can do a number on you'll so we cut ya some slack. But you're going to a whole other galaxy and you're going to see crap that will probably scare the shit out of you as well as your men, and you're going to be the second highest ranking officer there, so people need to respect you when you say that all that scary shit is not that bad. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir." *Damn.*

"You're there because you have the gene and Dr. Weir thinks she needs you. You know you certainly wouldn't be my choice for the posting."

"Wouldn't be mine either." Sheppard's eyes said, 'you're the one that wanted me,' and that was damning.

"So you get my point. You're a responsible military officer now, not the spoiled brat son of that asshole in the army."

"You're talking about my..."

"You know he's an asshole, Sheppard, probably better than all of us." Jack had butted heads with Colonel David Sheppard, grade-A asshole, upon occasion, and it did make him feel kinda bad for the kid... until Sheppard smirked. "Me, Dr. Weir, and the rest of the goddamn galaxy are going to be depending on you and your potential fuck-buddies, so you'd better not screw it up. Got it?" This went beyond their own personal little battle. This went beyond he and Daniel and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'

"Yes, Sir."

"Promise?" He let the serious shine through in his voice and the smirk on Sheppard's face finally faded.

"I promise."

"You promise what?"

"I promise not to let my self-destructive libido get in the way of this all-important mission, Sir." But apparently the sarcasm hadn't gone entirely. Thank god he was getting the kid out of here; he didn't think this base was big enough for the both of them.

"Good." Jack went back to his paperwork, letting the silence stretch and hearing the kid shuffle his boot nervously. Jack was still the General, and it did come with its perks. "Oh, you can go now."

Sheppard slapped off a slipshod salute and turned to leave. As he exited Jack heard someone... someone pretty damned annoying... ah, McKay, ask "How'd it go?"

"At least he didn't make me cut my hair."

Jack gritted his teeth as McKay stepped in, grinning. "I'm going to need some additional connections for the ZedPM converter I built, seeing as how this base's power system is put together so inefficiently – I mean what are they trying to do? Electrocute well-meaning, and might I add brilliant, scientists here?"

"What. Do. You. Want. McKay? And why are you wasting my time?" Hah! That was a suitable punishment for Sheppard: trapped in another galaxy with McKay. They deserved each other.

Daniel looked into the shining blue of the wormhole, remembering how amazed he was the first time he saw it, dipping his fingers in and out, leaning inwards and seeing, floating, diving through colors and past stars and coming hurtling out the other side, only to puke his guts out when he got there. Where was all the wonder now? He had come to take it for granted.

Somewhere, there was a city in the sea. John saw it and Daniel believed. The city was surrounded by clear blue water as mesmerizing and tranquil as the gate, even as the city's shining metallic spires rise up, rise up, keep rising.

Standing by Jack's side, basking in his presence, Daniel looked out at the wormhole, at John Sheppard, the man who had shown him wonder for just a brief second, when he placed Daniel in Jack's arms, when he shared in Daniel's sadness. John was leaving. He and Daniel had their brief time together, like a candle burning bright from both ends. John was like an oracle, like a rock star, like a fairy godmother, there for a magical moment only to leave you with nothing but a glass slipper and a whisper of a memory.

But Daniel would like to think that in that brief time when they knew each other so intimately, they'd connected. He'd like to think that he had as much impact on John's life as John did on his, even as he knew that was not the case.

Daniel looked at John with some young lieutenant -Ford, Daniel thought- his smile bright and eyes wide. Maybe Ford would be the next one John would touch with his sadness. Maybe Ford would be the next one he'd absolve. Maybe it would be Weir with her uptight intellectualism, or the handsome Doctor Beckett who almost killed John the first day they met (he would go out for that kind of irony), or that asshole McKay, just because he could, or maybe because McKay was the one who needed saving most of all.

Jack told Daniel that he'd taken care of the problem, but Daniel didn't believe him. The blind didn't regain their sight, Odysseus -or Tiresias, for that matter- couldn't make it back from Hades without a fight, and you didn't get rid of a sadness like that with a salute and a single step, even if it was a galaxy wide.

John turned back, silhouetted by the wondrous rippling blue of the event horizon, and smiled, finding Daniel standing still and contemplative at the back of the crowd. Daniel smiled back.

FIN