...Say Paian's incident happened on Monday. Jack was cleared for duty by Wednesday, and by Thursday it was back in the saddle, yeehaw, with a messy rescue op that spilled into the gateroom—incidentally giving Hammond ample opportunity to see Jack and Daniel working together in best telepathically seamless fashion, no problems; broccoli is on sale, today.
Good to have the intervening reality check, test the knots and all, but on Friday afternoon they were out of the mountain like it was belching fire, to the municipal airport and a tiny chartered Cessna. Not much talk during the flight except for, "Comfy?" and, "This is beautiful, Jack." They opened Jack's cabin efficiently, grilled rib-eyes on Jack's mother's antediluvian hibachi ("Shichirin," Daniel called it. "Isn't that a kind of rodent?").
Then, standing at the deck railing with beers, sleeves brushing:
"So..."
"Yeah, I guess we should probably verbalize some of this at some point, huh?"
Jack huffed laughter. There was no question of where this was going. Innocence and denial had both excused themselves from this party a while ago. He looked down, gathering himself. Looked up and squared his gaze with Daniel's. "I love you. How's that?"
Daniel's breath caught. Not quite what he was expecting after all.
One track of Daniel's mind was thinking how it was funny the way surprise manifested in the hinge of the jaw. It was easy to trace in evolutionary terms—clear the airway, let extra oxygen through to the brain—but the upshot was that Daniel felt like he—every unconscious mechanism of his body—was trying to assimilate Jack's words, breathe them, absorb them, have them for keeps. Before they got away and became lost in the idle breeze blowing off the lake.
He lifted the hand that was propping him on the deck railing and put it on Jack's chest. Jack registered the touch with a slow-motion blink. Daniel knew he saw the hesitation that didn't happen, saw what nobody else in the world would have seen: Daniel's steady movement as a push through a hesitation. Daniel smiled a little at that, and saw the corner of Jack's mouth quirk back in agreement: Jack was a toucher, Daniel a talker; neither of them spoke the other's language easily; both of them just broke habit. Jack's skin, through his shirt, was warm.
"Come on, Mr. Let's Verbalize. Don't leave me hanging."
Daniel laughed helplessly. "You... Gimme a second. You just careened right past—"
"We've been doing the monkey dance for four days or half a decade, take your pick," Jack said, but Daniel was already speaking over him.
"I love you, too."
Jack took a breath as if he'd had more to say, then stopped short. After a moment, a gruff, "Yeah?" was all that emerged. Daniel realized that in spite of Jack's rock-solid, all-systems-go demeanor over the past days, he was looking now at a softer, more stripped man than even the freshly bruised, scarcely clothed version in the alien prison, converting personal revelation into strategy. Seeing him made Daniel's chest feel tight.
"Very deeply."
"Ah."
Jack's hand drifted to Daniel's hip.
They blinked at each other for a minute, half savouring, half stymied. A kiss was brewing. It brewed. They stood there, connected, unable to shake out of the trance and actually touch lips. Then: "Daniel. Daniel," and Jack pulled him into a full-body hug and stuck his nose in his neck. They melted into each other, and then their hands unlocked, too, sliding and rubbing gently, a soft, delicious friction of denim and old flannel. After a properly long hug interval, their kiss happened without a stop-and-start; their faces just realigned, lips finding lips like no big deal, like they'd done it thousands of times before, just thus. It felt like the easiest, most reasonable, inevitable thing Daniel had ever done.
At first it was just a lazy, tender press and cling of lips, a tracing of contours, a tasting. Then their mouths opened, then opened deep when their heads tilted and the angle came right. When Daniel let his tongue caress the underside of Jack's, Jack released a soft, helpless sound and put both hands in Daniel's hair. He stroked with his thumbs, going straight for the sweet spot where Daniel's skull met his neck, and moaned again, inside the kiss.
Daniel's hand crept between their bodies and tugged at Jack's shirt, untucking so he could slide his palm up underneath to rest on Jack's belly. He only rested his palm there, dry and cool, but it felt unbearably intimate. Daniel's thumb brushed Jack's navel, which made Jack shudder.
Jack's weight shifted, pressing against Daniel's hand. His kiss went from loving to greedy, their groins brushed, and Daniel halted the roll of Jack's hips by sliding his hand down, letting his knuckles catch under Jack's belt buckle. He traced his fingers over the wiry trail of hair there and soaked up body heat. "Jesus," Jack exhaled, pressing the bones of his face to Daniel's, and leaned harder, trying not to thrust, not quite yet. "Daniel. Talk to me. Tell me things."
Daniel's cheeks bunched, fighting an unbidden smile. He tamped down his quickening breaths and dropped his voice to a murmur, made it calm and still and quiet as Jack's lake at dawn: "I'm going to penetrate you tonight, Jack. Again. You liked it in the room, in spite of the audience, in spite of the lack of prep. Because it was me. Because your body wants my body. This time I'm going to tease you for a long time, open you up with my fingers and my tongue and it's going to be so different from before that you're not even going to recognize it."
His hand unhooked and dragged south across Jack's button fly: a slow, heavy rub. He curved his hand, cupped. "And then I'm going to flip you over and kiss your mouth while you come."