Sun Stroke
Jul. 26th, 2006 07:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brainofckRecently, in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
green_grrl's Overheard, Daniel was having a little fantasy about Jack, which began thusly:
So I was thinking...
Title: Sun Stroke (totally not a WIP, in case you believed me earlier when I said it was. By mistake. *headdesk*)
Author:muck_a_luck, posting in brainofck
Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: R
Summary: It's good to be General, with whole worlds of pristine beaches at your complete disposal.
Content/warnings: None.
Words: 3,226
Disclaimer: If anybody is planning a script like this for SG-1, I'm certainly not going to claim any rights to it. However, I'd be delighted to work in a co-writing/consulting/first-reader/advisory-type capacity, with my fee to be negotiated at that time. :D
Beta: Thanks togreen_grrl for comments, edits, and permission to steal her idea. Not to mention support through my moments of doubt and crankinessdark despair.
Archive rights: Absolutely none. My journals only.muck_a_luck and brainofck
The Matrix: Orange. The Matrix is located here.
Note: And I would like to note that Minxy's thoughts regarding headers have given me a bit of a complex. Am I the only one? *peers at header*
For my loyal![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rugbytacklers, I have done a Stargate crash course located here.
The beach was all pristine soft sand as far as the eye could see. Soft orange sand. Which was a little odd, but still.
It was good to beking General, as a planet of virgin beaches could be your own private vacation spot. And right now, Club Stargate was all his.
Well, almost.
He lay sprawled on a huge fluffy towel, high tide just tickling his toes, warm, firm, orange sand doing wonders for his back, when the first trickle of coarse grains fell onto his belly. He startled awake from a half-sleep and knocked away the bandana he had draped over his eyes, to find Daniel kneeling next to him with a fist full of weird orange beach, which he was dribbling in a steady, slow stream over Jack's bare chest.
"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," Daniel said.
"I was awake!" Jack protested.
"Of course you were."
Another fistful of sand, streaks of ochre slowly combining over his torso into one big orange... um... pile of sand.
"Hey! Watch where you're putting that," mumbled Jack, trying not to disturb his drowsy state by getting annoyed with his archaeologist.
"I'm bored. Those caves were a bust."
"So? What? You need something old and sandy to entertain you, then?"
"I prefer to think of you as fascinating and dusty."
"You're very kind. Why is it I can't get you people to think of me as deadly and untouchable? Trying to nap here," he said and moved to drape the bandana back over his head.
"Yes. Lying here like a beached whale in only your swim trunks. Even with the P-90 over there, you'll never pull off deadly."
"Maybe not to the casual passerby, but those who know me and love me should be able to see beyond the zinc cream on my nose to the killer beneath."
Daniel sighed softly.
"Just... Look," Daniel paused and took a deep breath, then started again. "If you would be still, I think you'll find that this would be better than a nap," Daniel purred.
Daniel purred.
Jack lifted the corner of his bandana to peer out with one eye.
"Daniel?" he asked suspiciously.
Daniel reached out and caught his bandana-holding hand and gently tugged it back down to lay by Jack's side.
"Be still."
"Why?" Jack asked the inside of his bandana suspiciously.
"Because I said so. Artifacts are usually very still."
Of course they were.
"And what if I have better things to do than lie around for your entertainment all afternoon?"
"You were going to nap anyway."
"I don't think I'm going to sleep very well with," he began to swat blindly at a renewed trickle of sand, now falling on his stomach again and heading down over his hip, "sand" his voice cracked a little, "all over me!"
Daniel caught his wrist and guided it back down again.
"Very, very still," Daniel whispered, breathing right over the shell of Jack's ear.
And then Jack was. Very still. Except his heart was unexpectedly racing and he was suddenly concerned that a swimsuit was not going to be sufficient protection against the most horrible embarrassment.
"Daniel?" he squeaked weakly.
All he got in reply was a drift of orange sand sweeping back and forth over his thigh, coating him in the soil of this alien planet for Daniel Jackson's nefarious purposes.
Jack tried to breathe calmly and deeply, willing his heart rate to slow, and his body, all of his body, to be still. He told himself he just wanted to find out what Daniel was up to, pretending that in reality he wasn't just far too lacking in self control to actually get up and leave. It was sad, pathetic really, but Kerry Johnson was a while ago now, it had been years before her, and frankly, he and Johnson hadn't really gotten that far.
Streams of sand trickled down from his belly along his sides. The sensation of being caressed sent a shiver all through him. Daniel tut tutted.
Oh. Yeah. A pathetically long time. Huge, hideous embarrassment. Time to say "no."
"Uh. Daniel. You gotta understand. You can't do stuff like this and expect..."
Jack started to sit up. A large, strong hand in the center of his sandy chest stopped him.
"I told you it would be better than a nap. But if you so much as twitch again, the whole thing's off."
That had been less of a purr, more of a growl. Daniel was growling at him. Jack collapsed back onto his big fluffy towel and blinked at the inside of his bandana. Maybe Daniel had spent too much time in the sun. Or possibly Jack had.
Daniel resumed drizzling grit all over him.
Jack tried hard not to twitch.
It was, actually, very restful. The sand was warm and the feeling of its movement on his skin was soothing, as long as he didn't think too hard about all the places he was going to be finding it over the next few days.
He had almost fallen asleep again when Daniel got to his feet and walked back up the beach.
"You'd better not be leaving me here like this," Jack muttered.
He heard Daniel kneel next to him again.
"Of course not," Daniel said. "That would be missing the whole point of the exercise."
"There's a point?"
"I was bored, remember?"
Then Jack felt a new sensation across his shin. Not sand falling onto him. He concentrated. It didn't feel like Daniel touching him either. But it definitely was something. A light, delicate touch.
"Daniel?" he asked, puzzled.
His friend gave an exasperated sigh. Then there was the gentlest pressure of something warm and dry against Jack's lips.
"Artifacts don't generally talk, either, Jack," Daniel said softly. The words spoken directly into his mouth left Jack breathless.
"Okay," he whispered.
Then there was that strange contact on his ankle again. It was light and gentle and rhythmic moving progressively upward toward his knee.
He was an artifact, Jack realized. Daniel had gone up the beach to get his tools. That was one of Daniel's precious brushes, gently pushing the dust of ages away from the object he had found buried on the beach.
It was excruciating. Daniel was talking to himself now, mostly in Abydonian. He had taken to using his adopted language on digs over the years, Jack had noticed. He had imagined it had been Daniel's way of keeping Shau're close, reaching out to her, first over the space that separated them, then over the divide between this life and the next. Now, Jack thought it was probably just habit, or maybe Daniel thought his artifacts responded better to Abydonian than any other language.
Jack found that he was responding very well to Abydonian.
The quick, careful brushbrushbrush was not continuous. With a dexterity born of years of practice, Daniel quickly discovered the details that were most interesting about his newest find. Light fingers traced delicately over the scar the brush had uncovered on the side of Jack's calf, in the fleshy part of the lower leg, just above the ankle. Jack felt a light breath as Daniel blew away the final layer of dust, examining the mark closely, fingers caressing the marred skin. It was the same treatment Jack had seen given to countless bits of old pottery and crumbling parchment over the years.
Then Daniel's fingers moved carefully up along the muscles of Jack's leg, finding the first of the scars around his knee. The lowest was from the injury itself, followed by the surgical incision, then more scuffs and cuts from a lifetime of hard usage. Daniel's fingers were busy deciphering this network of markings, dictating notes to himself in a near whisper before moving on.
Now Daniel was brushing again, this time over the rest of the knee, and on up Jack's thigh. The steady murmur became a soft exclamation of surprise when he found the evidence of the old gash along Jack's inner thigh, where that bastard Iraqi had cut him. Jack had been sure he was a dead man after that. He still didn't know how he could have survived that interrogation. The goa'uld didn't understand torture. Sokar could have learned a few things about Hell from the Iraqis.
Though Ba'al had a pretty good idea how to make it work.
Daniel sought the length of the scar with quick agile fingers, his hand plunging between Jack's legs, distracting him from dark thoughts. Nothing like a lover with a fetish for scars to put you in a screwed up headspace. Not that he was presuming Daniel was his lover. Jack couldn't stop the noise he made – a sort of choked groan. Daniel ignored it. Instead, he was wrapping his hands around Jack's calf, carefully lifting Jack's leg, bodily moving it, spreading his legs apart to get a better look at the scar. Jack managed to be still, like a good little artifact, letting Daniel do the heavy lifting all by himself.
With this better access, Daniel brought his face close to the old wound. As he had earlier, he again blew gently over the damaged skin. His fingers moving over the mark in a gentle exploration.
"I've never seen this one," he said in an awed whisper. His words were warm, moist puffs of air against Jack's skin.
Daniel was blowing on his thigh, caressing him, his cheek so close to certain places... Jack still wasn't exactly sure what Daniel intended, but he was getting hard, and harder by the minute. The heap of sand covering his torso was partially concealing that fact, but that wouldn't last for long. Jack wondered in a remote kind of way, if Daniel was going to continue moving upwards, or go back and start on Jack's other leg.
Daniel turned next to the opposite thigh, uncovering the burn from the staff weapon.
"I remember this one," he said softly. "I remember wondering what kind of scar it would make." His fingers traced the edges.
"You should know, you've been hit a couple of times," Jack replied.
"Yes," Daniel replied absently, as if Jack had walked in on him deep in the exploration of a new text in his lab, "But I always have the sense to take my staff blasts right next to a sarcophagus..."
With a lingering stroke down Jack's thigh, Daniel resumed his exploration with the brushes, methodically exposing a second abused knee, a long, smooth shin, and both Jack's feet, paying particular attention to his toes.
Then the brushing stopped. Jack heard Daniel stand up and walk up the beach again. He imagined what he must look like, sprawled on his towel with his legs open, half-covered in a pile of sand. With a bandana over his head. And a raging hard on.
Yes. A lovely, alluring picture. He would be hiding his face in his hands, running his hands through his hair, any number of nervous, embarrassed gestures, were it not completely against Daniel's rules. This was Daniel's little game. Jack hoped something about this worked for him. Maybe it was different when you had a million PhD's and spoke, what was it, thirty languages now? Jack had trouble keeping up.
Daniel settled back onto the sand beside him. This time, though, he raised the edge of Jack's bandana.
"Thought you might be thirsty," he said, gently lifting Jack's head and tipping the water bottle against Jack's lips.
The unexpected vision of Daniel, head haloed by the bright sun, was startlingly beautiful. Then Jack was wondering when Daniel had become beautiful. He blinked slowly, thinking he'd definitely been out in the sun too long.
And then Jack tipped his head the wrong way and Daniel fumbled the bottle and the predictable result was water up Jack's nose.
Suddenly drowning in three tablespoons of liquid, Jack bolted upright, snorting and flailing, sand flying everywhere. He inhaled it as he coughed, and it got in his eyes, and that made everything worse.
When he had finally coughed himself out, his eyes and nose were streaming and his throat was sore. He was afraid to touch his face and he just sat on his towel, glaring blearily at the ocean, wondering why he had invited anyone on this trip with him. All he wanted to do was relax on the beach, catch some rays...
Daniel was standing a few feet away, shifting from foot to foot anxiously, looking worried and contrite.
"Nice, Daniel. Drown me, why don't you? Way to kill the mood," he rasped.
"Sorry?" Daniel ventured cautiously.
"Great. Thanks," Jack replied, dusting fruitlessly at the sand still sticking to his chest. He could feel it seeping into his swim trunks.
"Great," he muttered again.
"Well, the least I can do is get the sand off you," Daniel offered.
"No. No thanks. You can imagine why I..." but Jack was distracted from his reply by the fact that Daniel was removing clothes.
"Daniel?" he said, feeling like he had missed something.
"There was a mood?" Daniel asked. He was growling again. And clothes were coming off in record time.
Suddenly, there was Daniel, a little nervous, clearly embarrassed, naked in the sun, endless blue ocean behind him, weird orange beach under his feet.
"Sweet," Jack said, before he could stop himself.
Daniel smiled then. The big smile, with all the dimples and crinkles.
Oh, yeah. Beautiful. Definitely must be sun stroke.
Jack felt ridiculous, covered in sand, snot all over his face, and old and beaten up and...
Daniel grabbed his hands and hauled him to his feet.
They were waist deep in the water when Jack realized how stupid it was.
"We really shouldn't..." Jack started.
The glowing smile vanished from Daniel's face instantaneously. The expression of crushed hope and humiliation that replaced it was like a punch in Jack's gut.
"Alright," said Daniel flatly. "Don't ask, don't tell. I understand. I mean, I don't. You're the general now and on a practical level there's no one to really call you on it. Not to mention that there's no one on this entire damned planet but us. And you had to know I was trying to seduce you. You couldn't have said something a little earlier? Like before I took off all my clothes and made a complete fool of myself?"
It was all so rapid and distressed and Jack couldn't figure out how to stop him. So he just stepped up and kissed him.
Daniel immediately fought him, shoving him so hard Jack had to wrap his arms around him to keep from falling. He caught Daniel's wrists reflexively. Daniel was near tears now, confused and unhappy.
"Slow down. That's not what I meant."
Jack kissed him again to emphasize the point.
"Okay," replied Daniel shakily, as they stood together in the water. "What exactly did you mean, then?"
"Alien ocean. Alien wildlife. Alien god-knows-what."
"Oh," Daniel huffed with a weak laugh.
"Yeah. But since we're here..."
Jack stooped and slid under the water, feeling the sand washing away. He slipped his trunks off and kicked around a bit, just to really rinse off.
When he stood up again he felt cleaner and calmer. Even Daniel, eyeing him like a particularly exciting, rare, valuable, previously undiscovered text wasn't spooking him. At the moment all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss that mouth again.
He walked back over to Daniel and reached out a hand.
"Let's get out of here before the alien jelly fish show up. I know where there's a very lovely air mattress..."
Daniel snorted, eyeing Jack's hand, then giving in and allowing himself to be pulled back up the beach. Jack snagged his weapon on the way, but left the rest of it. It could all blow out to sea for all he cared.
"Right," Daniel agreed. "Where the giant alien sand crabs can come and devour us in the night."
Jack stopped so abruptly that Daniel crashed into him. Jack glowered at him darkly, then glared around the beach. Could there be giant sand crabs? Nobody had mentioned anything like that...
"Isn't there some sort of limit on the size of animals with exoskeletons?" he asked, eyeing the dunes.
Daniel snapped his fingers in front of Jack's face.
"Focus, Jack!" Daniel looked pointedly downward, to where their two erections were happily trying to reach out to each other.
"Well, you're the one who mentioned crab attacks," Jack groused, but he still had Daniel's hand firmly in his, and Daniel was right, of course. Focus. Tents. Air mattress. Other stuff. Possibly some snuggling, if he got lucky. Focus.
They lay on top of their sleeping bags inside the tent. The general was on vacation, after all, not a mission, so it was a big one, and they had the flaps up, so that only mosquito nets stood between them and the alien sea air.
Jack would have preferred to lie out under the stars, but under the circumstances the view would have been lost on Daniel, who apparently didn't rush to find his glasses after sex.
Hot crazy space monkey sex.
He had no idea that Daniel would have such a creatively filthy mind. The brushes couldn't be that sacrosanct if he was willing to do that with them.
Anyway, Daniel panting underneath him, happily supporting Jack's full weight as they both melted in the afterglow, was fair compensation for the loss of a starry view.
"What brought this on?" Jack asked suddenly.
"You're asking this now?" Daniel replied. Jack could hear the amusement in his voice.
"What do you mean by 'now'?" Jack asked. "'Now' as in 'after all these years'?"
"Well, no," Daniel replied, sounding slightly fuzzy and very relaxed, "More like 'now' as in after you boinked me, rather than before."
"Didn't want you to get the wrong idea again, like in the water, and reconsider half-way through. But this conversation isn't about me, it's about you. Seriously, why?"
And Jack did want to know. Because he was more than willing to do a one-time vacation fling just for the fun of it, but still. This was Daniel. He got the impression Daniel didn't usually do flings.
Daniel sighed.
"Years, Jack," Daniel said quietly. "We've been not doing this for years. And there you were, lying there in the sun in this safe place and it was just time."
Daniel stopped talking.
Jack found he didn't have the nerve to ask what might happen outside this safe place and beyond this moment in time.
Jack thought about the afternoon on the beach, the orange sand being brushed away.
"You were counting them, weren't you," he said instead.
"Hmmm?" Daniel must have been drifting off to sleep.
"The scars. Counting them."
"Oh. Yeah."
Daniel was quiet again, and Jack really didn't have anything else to say. The night was peaceful, some sort of night singing insects making oddly soothing and tuneful clicking noises in the dark beyond their dying campfire.
He wrapped his arms around Daniel, something Jack had never let himself do in years of sharing a tent with him on mission after mission. He pressed his nose into Daniel's hair and just breathed him in.
He fell asleep and dreamed of orange sand and the perfect blue ocean.
TOTALLY NOT A WIP! Even though earlier I said it was! *facepalm* Anyway... If you're interested, all my stories, in order, from one page. Also, my fiction recommendations.
green_grrl's Overheard, Daniel was having a little fantasy about Jack, which began thusly:- Daniel pictured his soft camel-hair brush chasing away the light layer of sand and dust. Fine grains were catching in the... hairs. He swept more sand away and was baring skin.
So I was thinking...
Title: Sun Stroke (totally not a WIP, in case you believed me earlier when I said it was. By mistake. *headdesk*)
Author:
muck_a_luck, posting in brainofckPairing: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Rating: R
Summary: It's good to be General, with whole worlds of pristine beaches at your complete disposal.
Content/warnings: None.
Words: 3,226
Disclaimer: If anybody is planning a script like this for SG-1, I'm certainly not going to claim any rights to it. However, I'd be delighted to work in a co-writing/consulting/first-reader/advisory-type capacity, with my fee to be negotiated at that time. :D
Beta: Thanks to
green_grrl for comments, edits, and permission to steal her idea. Not to mention support through my moments of doubt and Archive rights: Absolutely none. My journals only.
muck_a_luck and brainofckThe Matrix: Orange. The Matrix is located here.
Note: And I would like to note that Minxy's thoughts regarding headers have given me a bit of a complex. Am I the only one? *peers at header*
For my loyal
rugbytacklers, I have done a Stargate crash course located here.The beach was all pristine soft sand as far as the eye could see. Soft orange sand. Which was a little odd, but still.
It was good to be
Well, almost.
He lay sprawled on a huge fluffy towel, high tide just tickling his toes, warm, firm, orange sand doing wonders for his back, when the first trickle of coarse grains fell onto his belly. He startled awake from a half-sleep and knocked away the bandana he had draped over his eyes, to find Daniel kneeling next to him with a fist full of weird orange beach, which he was dribbling in a steady, slow stream over Jack's bare chest.
"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," Daniel said.
"I was awake!" Jack protested.
"Of course you were."
Another fistful of sand, streaks of ochre slowly combining over his torso into one big orange... um... pile of sand.
"Hey! Watch where you're putting that," mumbled Jack, trying not to disturb his drowsy state by getting annoyed with his archaeologist.
"I'm bored. Those caves were a bust."
"So? What? You need something old and sandy to entertain you, then?"
"I prefer to think of you as fascinating and dusty."
"You're very kind. Why is it I can't get you people to think of me as deadly and untouchable? Trying to nap here," he said and moved to drape the bandana back over his head.
"Yes. Lying here like a beached whale in only your swim trunks. Even with the P-90 over there, you'll never pull off deadly."
"Maybe not to the casual passerby, but those who know me and love me should be able to see beyond the zinc cream on my nose to the killer beneath."
Daniel sighed softly.
"Just... Look," Daniel paused and took a deep breath, then started again. "If you would be still, I think you'll find that this would be better than a nap," Daniel purred.
Daniel purred.
Jack lifted the corner of his bandana to peer out with one eye.
"Daniel?" he asked suspiciously.
Daniel reached out and caught his bandana-holding hand and gently tugged it back down to lay by Jack's side.
"Be still."
"Why?" Jack asked the inside of his bandana suspiciously.
"Because I said so. Artifacts are usually very still."
Of course they were.
"And what if I have better things to do than lie around for your entertainment all afternoon?"
"You were going to nap anyway."
"I don't think I'm going to sleep very well with," he began to swat blindly at a renewed trickle of sand, now falling on his stomach again and heading down over his hip, "sand" his voice cracked a little, "all over me!"
Daniel caught his wrist and guided it back down again.
"Very, very still," Daniel whispered, breathing right over the shell of Jack's ear.
And then Jack was. Very still. Except his heart was unexpectedly racing and he was suddenly concerned that a swimsuit was not going to be sufficient protection against the most horrible embarrassment.
"Daniel?" he squeaked weakly.
All he got in reply was a drift of orange sand sweeping back and forth over his thigh, coating him in the soil of this alien planet for Daniel Jackson's nefarious purposes.
Jack tried to breathe calmly and deeply, willing his heart rate to slow, and his body, all of his body, to be still. He told himself he just wanted to find out what Daniel was up to, pretending that in reality he wasn't just far too lacking in self control to actually get up and leave. It was sad, pathetic really, but Kerry Johnson was a while ago now, it had been years before her, and frankly, he and Johnson hadn't really gotten that far.
Streams of sand trickled down from his belly along his sides. The sensation of being caressed sent a shiver all through him. Daniel tut tutted.
Oh. Yeah. A pathetically long time. Huge, hideous embarrassment. Time to say "no."
"Uh. Daniel. You gotta understand. You can't do stuff like this and expect..."
Jack started to sit up. A large, strong hand in the center of his sandy chest stopped him.
"I told you it would be better than a nap. But if you so much as twitch again, the whole thing's off."
That had been less of a purr, more of a growl. Daniel was growling at him. Jack collapsed back onto his big fluffy towel and blinked at the inside of his bandana. Maybe Daniel had spent too much time in the sun. Or possibly Jack had.
Daniel resumed drizzling grit all over him.
Jack tried hard not to twitch.
It was, actually, very restful. The sand was warm and the feeling of its movement on his skin was soothing, as long as he didn't think too hard about all the places he was going to be finding it over the next few days.
He had almost fallen asleep again when Daniel got to his feet and walked back up the beach.
"You'd better not be leaving me here like this," Jack muttered.
He heard Daniel kneel next to him again.
"Of course not," Daniel said. "That would be missing the whole point of the exercise."
"There's a point?"
"I was bored, remember?"
Then Jack felt a new sensation across his shin. Not sand falling onto him. He concentrated. It didn't feel like Daniel touching him either. But it definitely was something. A light, delicate touch.
"Daniel?" he asked, puzzled.
His friend gave an exasperated sigh. Then there was the gentlest pressure of something warm and dry against Jack's lips.
"Artifacts don't generally talk, either, Jack," Daniel said softly. The words spoken directly into his mouth left Jack breathless.
"Okay," he whispered.
Then there was that strange contact on his ankle again. It was light and gentle and rhythmic moving progressively upward toward his knee.
He was an artifact, Jack realized. Daniel had gone up the beach to get his tools. That was one of Daniel's precious brushes, gently pushing the dust of ages away from the object he had found buried on the beach.
It was excruciating. Daniel was talking to himself now, mostly in Abydonian. He had taken to using his adopted language on digs over the years, Jack had noticed. He had imagined it had been Daniel's way of keeping Shau're close, reaching out to her, first over the space that separated them, then over the divide between this life and the next. Now, Jack thought it was probably just habit, or maybe Daniel thought his artifacts responded better to Abydonian than any other language.
Jack found that he was responding very well to Abydonian.
The quick, careful brushbrushbrush was not continuous. With a dexterity born of years of practice, Daniel quickly discovered the details that were most interesting about his newest find. Light fingers traced delicately over the scar the brush had uncovered on the side of Jack's calf, in the fleshy part of the lower leg, just above the ankle. Jack felt a light breath as Daniel blew away the final layer of dust, examining the mark closely, fingers caressing the marred skin. It was the same treatment Jack had seen given to countless bits of old pottery and crumbling parchment over the years.
Then Daniel's fingers moved carefully up along the muscles of Jack's leg, finding the first of the scars around his knee. The lowest was from the injury itself, followed by the surgical incision, then more scuffs and cuts from a lifetime of hard usage. Daniel's fingers were busy deciphering this network of markings, dictating notes to himself in a near whisper before moving on.
Now Daniel was brushing again, this time over the rest of the knee, and on up Jack's thigh. The steady murmur became a soft exclamation of surprise when he found the evidence of the old gash along Jack's inner thigh, where that bastard Iraqi had cut him. Jack had been sure he was a dead man after that. He still didn't know how he could have survived that interrogation. The goa'uld didn't understand torture. Sokar could have learned a few things about Hell from the Iraqis.
Though Ba'al had a pretty good idea how to make it work.
Daniel sought the length of the scar with quick agile fingers, his hand plunging between Jack's legs, distracting him from dark thoughts. Nothing like a lover with a fetish for scars to put you in a screwed up headspace. Not that he was presuming Daniel was his lover. Jack couldn't stop the noise he made – a sort of choked groan. Daniel ignored it. Instead, he was wrapping his hands around Jack's calf, carefully lifting Jack's leg, bodily moving it, spreading his legs apart to get a better look at the scar. Jack managed to be still, like a good little artifact, letting Daniel do the heavy lifting all by himself.
With this better access, Daniel brought his face close to the old wound. As he had earlier, he again blew gently over the damaged skin. His fingers moving over the mark in a gentle exploration.
"I've never seen this one," he said in an awed whisper. His words were warm, moist puffs of air against Jack's skin.
Daniel was blowing on his thigh, caressing him, his cheek so close to certain places... Jack still wasn't exactly sure what Daniel intended, but he was getting hard, and harder by the minute. The heap of sand covering his torso was partially concealing that fact, but that wouldn't last for long. Jack wondered in a remote kind of way, if Daniel was going to continue moving upwards, or go back and start on Jack's other leg.
Daniel turned next to the opposite thigh, uncovering the burn from the staff weapon.
"I remember this one," he said softly. "I remember wondering what kind of scar it would make." His fingers traced the edges.
"You should know, you've been hit a couple of times," Jack replied.
"Yes," Daniel replied absently, as if Jack had walked in on him deep in the exploration of a new text in his lab, "But I always have the sense to take my staff blasts right next to a sarcophagus..."
With a lingering stroke down Jack's thigh, Daniel resumed his exploration with the brushes, methodically exposing a second abused knee, a long, smooth shin, and both Jack's feet, paying particular attention to his toes.
Then the brushing stopped. Jack heard Daniel stand up and walk up the beach again. He imagined what he must look like, sprawled on his towel with his legs open, half-covered in a pile of sand. With a bandana over his head. And a raging hard on.
Yes. A lovely, alluring picture. He would be hiding his face in his hands, running his hands through his hair, any number of nervous, embarrassed gestures, were it not completely against Daniel's rules. This was Daniel's little game. Jack hoped something about this worked for him. Maybe it was different when you had a million PhD's and spoke, what was it, thirty languages now? Jack had trouble keeping up.
Daniel settled back onto the sand beside him. This time, though, he raised the edge of Jack's bandana.
"Thought you might be thirsty," he said, gently lifting Jack's head and tipping the water bottle against Jack's lips.
The unexpected vision of Daniel, head haloed by the bright sun, was startlingly beautiful. Then Jack was wondering when Daniel had become beautiful. He blinked slowly, thinking he'd definitely been out in the sun too long.
And then Jack tipped his head the wrong way and Daniel fumbled the bottle and the predictable result was water up Jack's nose.
Suddenly drowning in three tablespoons of liquid, Jack bolted upright, snorting and flailing, sand flying everywhere. He inhaled it as he coughed, and it got in his eyes, and that made everything worse.
When he had finally coughed himself out, his eyes and nose were streaming and his throat was sore. He was afraid to touch his face and he just sat on his towel, glaring blearily at the ocean, wondering why he had invited anyone on this trip with him. All he wanted to do was relax on the beach, catch some rays...
Daniel was standing a few feet away, shifting from foot to foot anxiously, looking worried and contrite.
"Nice, Daniel. Drown me, why don't you? Way to kill the mood," he rasped.
"Sorry?" Daniel ventured cautiously.
"Great. Thanks," Jack replied, dusting fruitlessly at the sand still sticking to his chest. He could feel it seeping into his swim trunks.
"Great," he muttered again.
"Well, the least I can do is get the sand off you," Daniel offered.
"No. No thanks. You can imagine why I..." but Jack was distracted from his reply by the fact that Daniel was removing clothes.
"Daniel?" he said, feeling like he had missed something.
"There was a mood?" Daniel asked. He was growling again. And clothes were coming off in record time.
Suddenly, there was Daniel, a little nervous, clearly embarrassed, naked in the sun, endless blue ocean behind him, weird orange beach under his feet.
"Sweet," Jack said, before he could stop himself.
Daniel smiled then. The big smile, with all the dimples and crinkles.
Oh, yeah. Beautiful. Definitely must be sun stroke.
Jack felt ridiculous, covered in sand, snot all over his face, and old and beaten up and...
Daniel grabbed his hands and hauled him to his feet.
They were waist deep in the water when Jack realized how stupid it was.
"We really shouldn't..." Jack started.
The glowing smile vanished from Daniel's face instantaneously. The expression of crushed hope and humiliation that replaced it was like a punch in Jack's gut.
"Alright," said Daniel flatly. "Don't ask, don't tell. I understand. I mean, I don't. You're the general now and on a practical level there's no one to really call you on it. Not to mention that there's no one on this entire damned planet but us. And you had to know I was trying to seduce you. You couldn't have said something a little earlier? Like before I took off all my clothes and made a complete fool of myself?"
It was all so rapid and distressed and Jack couldn't figure out how to stop him. So he just stepped up and kissed him.
Daniel immediately fought him, shoving him so hard Jack had to wrap his arms around him to keep from falling. He caught Daniel's wrists reflexively. Daniel was near tears now, confused and unhappy.
"Slow down. That's not what I meant."
Jack kissed him again to emphasize the point.
"Okay," replied Daniel shakily, as they stood together in the water. "What exactly did you mean, then?"
"Alien ocean. Alien wildlife. Alien god-knows-what."
"Oh," Daniel huffed with a weak laugh.
"Yeah. But since we're here..."
Jack stooped and slid under the water, feeling the sand washing away. He slipped his trunks off and kicked around a bit, just to really rinse off.
When he stood up again he felt cleaner and calmer. Even Daniel, eyeing him like a particularly exciting, rare, valuable, previously undiscovered text wasn't spooking him. At the moment all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss that mouth again.
He walked back over to Daniel and reached out a hand.
"Let's get out of here before the alien jelly fish show up. I know where there's a very lovely air mattress..."
Daniel snorted, eyeing Jack's hand, then giving in and allowing himself to be pulled back up the beach. Jack snagged his weapon on the way, but left the rest of it. It could all blow out to sea for all he cared.
"Right," Daniel agreed. "Where the giant alien sand crabs can come and devour us in the night."
Jack stopped so abruptly that Daniel crashed into him. Jack glowered at him darkly, then glared around the beach. Could there be giant sand crabs? Nobody had mentioned anything like that...
"Isn't there some sort of limit on the size of animals with exoskeletons?" he asked, eyeing the dunes.
Daniel snapped his fingers in front of Jack's face.
"Focus, Jack!" Daniel looked pointedly downward, to where their two erections were happily trying to reach out to each other.
"Well, you're the one who mentioned crab attacks," Jack groused, but he still had Daniel's hand firmly in his, and Daniel was right, of course. Focus. Tents. Air mattress. Other stuff. Possibly some snuggling, if he got lucky. Focus.
They lay on top of their sleeping bags inside the tent. The general was on vacation, after all, not a mission, so it was a big one, and they had the flaps up, so that only mosquito nets stood between them and the alien sea air.
Jack would have preferred to lie out under the stars, but under the circumstances the view would have been lost on Daniel, who apparently didn't rush to find his glasses after sex.
Hot crazy space monkey sex.
He had no idea that Daniel would have such a creatively filthy mind. The brushes couldn't be that sacrosanct if he was willing to do that with them.
Anyway, Daniel panting underneath him, happily supporting Jack's full weight as they both melted in the afterglow, was fair compensation for the loss of a starry view.
"What brought this on?" Jack asked suddenly.
"You're asking this now?" Daniel replied. Jack could hear the amusement in his voice.
"What do you mean by 'now'?" Jack asked. "'Now' as in 'after all these years'?"
"Well, no," Daniel replied, sounding slightly fuzzy and very relaxed, "More like 'now' as in after you boinked me, rather than before."
"Didn't want you to get the wrong idea again, like in the water, and reconsider half-way through. But this conversation isn't about me, it's about you. Seriously, why?"
And Jack did want to know. Because he was more than willing to do a one-time vacation fling just for the fun of it, but still. This was Daniel. He got the impression Daniel didn't usually do flings.
Daniel sighed.
"Years, Jack," Daniel said quietly. "We've been not doing this for years. And there you were, lying there in the sun in this safe place and it was just time."
Daniel stopped talking.
Jack found he didn't have the nerve to ask what might happen outside this safe place and beyond this moment in time.
Jack thought about the afternoon on the beach, the orange sand being brushed away.
"You were counting them, weren't you," he said instead.
"Hmmm?" Daniel must have been drifting off to sleep.
"The scars. Counting them."
"Oh. Yeah."
Daniel was quiet again, and Jack really didn't have anything else to say. The night was peaceful, some sort of night singing insects making oddly soothing and tuneful clicking noises in the dark beyond their dying campfire.
He wrapped his arms around Daniel, something Jack had never let himself do in years of sharing a tent with him on mission after mission. He pressed his nose into Daniel's hair and just breathed him in.
He fell asleep and dreamed of orange sand and the perfect blue ocean.
TOTALLY NOT A WIP! Even though earlier I said it was! *facepalm* Anyway... If you're interested, all my stories, in order, from one page. Also, my fiction recommendations.
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Date: 2006-07-26 04:53 pm (UTC)So we're sexy and serious and a bit stylized and then suddenly I'm cracking up 'cause Jack's hacking and sneezing and "drowning in three tablespoons of liquid" and it's just so them that it doesn't even feel jarring. :D
You captured both characters very well, I thought. Good job.
Angie
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Date: 2006-07-26 11:50 pm (UTC)I have my reservations about it. It feels schizo to me, for exactly the reasons you describe, hence my doubts and crankiness, but
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Date: 2006-07-27 09:10 pm (UTC)Angie