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At 3 a.m., Daniel left his slept-in bed, dressed, slung his already-packed messenger bag over his shoulder, and went quietly down the conference-hotel stairs and out through the loading area, pausing only briefly to flip on a baseball cap and swap his cream blazer for a navy windbreaker. He walked down to the next hotel on the strip, slipped into a drowsing taxi, and had it drop him at a third hotel. He paid for a room in cash, let himself into it, and made a call on this month's spare pay-as-you-go cell phone set up with a fake name and topped up with minutes bought with cash at random stores. Fifteen minutes later, there was a soft knock at the door.
"Tom," said the guy standing there, when he opened it.
Yeah. They were all Tom.
Daniel gestured him inside, triple-locked the door behind him, and handed him a double-folded set of bills. He stripped while Tom counted them, angling his body so that Tom would see him not seeing what pocket or boot they slid into.
"They told you what to bring?" Daniel said, going to stand by the bed.
Tom flashed him a charming smile, reached into the pockets of his stylish long coat, and tossed an array of condoms, lube, and toys onto the bed. "Will that do it?"
Daniel checked to make sure at least a couple of the toys were vibrators and had working batteries. He didn't respond to the smile or the sexy voice any more than he had to the rest of the package. It was the package he'd requested: dark hair, light eyes, moderately good-looking, medium build, under six feet tall. This one outdid the request, as it happened; he was rakishly handsome, with a gruff, wicked charm about him, a calm, experienced gleam in his eye. Daniel wasn't sure yet whether that would be a problem. He liked them good-looking in a neutral way, a forgettable way. He didn't want to remember their faces. He didn't want a face with character.
"It should," he said. "Get undressed."
"Six hours," Tom said, stripping comfortably, not too fast -- not a striptease but not all-business, either. Waiting to see which way the client wanted this to go. "Time for a slow buildup, if you're interested."
"Next round," Daniel said. "This round the only part I want to draw out is the part where my dick's up your ass."
By 9:20 a.m., Tom was dressed and gone. At 11 a.m., after a nap and a shower, Daniel called the conference hotel from his own cell and checked out of his room, keeping the call under sixty seconds. At 11:15 he'd left his key to this room at the front desk and was getting onto a tour bus. He left the tour partway through to spend a couple of hours in a backwater library that looked interesting.
By 3 p.m. he was at the airport; by 3:45 his flight was boarding.
"How long?" Jack said.
Daniel looked impassively at the black-and-white eight-by-ten Jack had dropped onto his coffee table. Grainy, a still pulled from a hotel surveillance recording. He could sue the hotel; it would be an entertaining trial, he thought. "Since the third year," he said. "Only in Nevada since I came back, though."
In his peripheral vision, he could see Jack start to say, Nevada?, and then stop, his head tilting briefly back: Ah.
"So unless there's anything like this floating around from prior to 2002, I don't think there's much to fuel a scandal or a lawful termination. I was on my own time in a town where it's legal, and I'm employed as a civilian consultant." He looked up, finally. "It doesn't reflect on you, Jack."
"You think that's what bothers me?"
"I think something bothers you, but I don't know if it's that I pay for it, or that I pay for it with men, or that I kept it a secret from you, or that you had to find out this way, or that it might condemn you somehow by implication, or what."
"This is what you've been doing instead of dating. All this time."
"Yes, Jack. This is what I've been doing."
Jack sank down in the chair across from him. "I gotta hand it to you. You're good. The NID was sniffing around you for years looking for something like this."
Daniel shrugged. He'd figured he'd have to play a scene like this with Jack someday, and he thought he'd projected every possible reaction, but Jack's wasn't fitting any of the scenarios, and it put him off his balance.
"Will you stop now?" Jack asked.
Daniel looked at him again, genuinely surprised by the genuine question. It wasn't rhetorical, it wasn't irritated; it was a real question. "What if I say no?"
"Then you say no," Jack said.
Daniel sighed. "Yes, I will stop now that my employers' attention has been drawn to it. It's been enough of a hassle keeping it discreet. What I'd have to do now would be more than it's worth. The military makes this a security issue by outlawing the practice. I might relish the fight if they brought it to me, but I have a lot of other things to do."
"Your employers don't know anything about this," Jack said.
Daniel squinted at him. "You'd better explain the situation to me."
"The stills and video footage came to me as a favor from a guy I know. To me, personally. It was an accident that he picked you up. He was investigating something else that was supposed to go down in that room later in the morning."
"How did they recognize me?"
"People know who you are, Daniel. In the business. In the businesses that radiate out from the business."
"So only you and this guy know about this."
"Yup."
"What do you think I should do?"
Jack looked at him for a long time. Finally, he said, "I think you should start dating. Build up a head of steam instead of blowing it off like that. Get horny enough that the hassle of a relationship starts sounding like not such a bad deal." At the look Daniel gave him, he said, "Hey, you asked. I'm not specifying gender here. Legal or not, it's the callboy thing that's a ... thing."
Daniel felt laughter bubbling up. It felt good, and that was strange. It wasn't happy laughter. This wasn't a happy situation. But Jack had always had a unique ability to -- He cut the line of observation off. "I'll take that under advisement," he said, shaking his head, damping the amusement down.
"Or you could start getting it from me instead," Jack said.
Daniel blanked -- his mind, his stare, everything.
"Straight up, Daniel. I'm a good-looking guy and a very good lay and I'm a hell of a lot closer to home. We do everything else together, and neither of us is getting married again anytime soon. What's a relationship, anyway? Love, companionship, and sex, right? So, two outta three ain't bad."
"You're" out of your fucking mind "a general in the United States military, in command of a top-secret first-line-of-defense installation."
"Well, yeah. Look, don't start with the regs, OK? If you're not interested just say so, but don't make it about that."
"Jack ... " Daniel had been playing it so cool, for so long, that the sudden pain nearly crippled him. He couldn't say the words that welled up; scrabbling for time, he said, "What the hell brought this on?"
"Finding out you prefer the home team these days," Jack said, promptly and reasonably. "I'd've suggested this years ago if I'd known. There's one problem, and I'll be honest with you about it and you can tell me if it's a dealbreaker. But only if you're considering the offer. It's not something I want to talk about if you're not interested anyway." Jack's lips curved. "And don't lie to get me to tell you." His eyes weren't smiling.
Whatever it was, it would cost Jack a lot to tell him. Outting himself -- was that it? Taking one for the team on the down low, no problem, but admitting that he had a taste for it was another story? Maybe he thought Daniel wouldn't like it so much if he knew Jack was getting off on it too. As a sacrifice it would be fine, but ... Did Jack really think he was like that?
Daniel dug hard inside himself for some truth he could afford to tell. Briefly he thought, Fuck it, tell him, just tell him; then old habit kicked in, and an older ache. There was only so much an unlikely friendship could bear. He couldn't add the weight of his private problem to what Jack already carried. Even now, when it seemed that Jack just wanted him to be happy. Even now, when Jack hadn't done the expected, hadn't raised a wall of anger and coldness between them. The problem was Jack; that had always been the problem. It had been a problem in more ways than he could count. This was just a new twist on the same old thing.
But Jack was trying to work with him. Sitting there, as apparently open and receptive as he ever got. Cooperative. Trying.
What a pain in the ass.
"Look, Jack," he said. "It works for me, what I do. It's worked for a lot of years now. It's impersonal sex without the exposure of cruising. There are people closer to home if I'd wanted to do it with someone I know. It's not a ... turn-on to do it with a stranger, it's just ... emotionally safe." He took a breath, and found it, the close-enough truth that he could risk. "You are not emotionally safe."
Jack was quiet for a moment, as if mulling over the additional data, and then he said, "If you were going to fall for me, you'd have done it a long time ago."
Daniel maintained his silence by the barest of threads.
"I ran this conversation in my head a few times before I came over here," Jack said. It was profoundly odd to hear him voice it, but it was part of his job description to run scenarios, project tactical moves; develop a strategy and carry it out, adapting if something unexpected came up along the way. "I thought you'd have accused me of all kinds of ulterior motives by now. I am overprotective of you, always have been, so yeah, that's some of what this is. I'm not in direct command of you in the field now, but that's a plus here, not a suspect intention -- nothing that happens during sex would affect anyone's behavior on a mission. It's not that I'm looking to control you in some other way to make up for not having you under my thumb on the job anymore. And you'd be in control. It'd be about what you want, what works for you. I didn't watch the video, so I don't know for sure what I might be letting myself in for here, but I trust you and I'll do pretty much anything for you. If your thing is bukkake or something like that, I'll deal. If there's pain involved ... " He sighed. "I can handle that too. And frankly I don't see you dealing that out to somebody no matter how much you paid him. That's another checkmark in the Jack column. You'd have more leeway with me than with an escort."
"I ... " Daniel fought through the speechlessness. "I can't believe ... Well, I guess I can. I guess I have to." He cleared his throat. "I guess I'm glad you didn't watch the video."
"I can, if it would be helpful," Jack said. "So I'd have some idea what you want, if you didn't want to have to spell it out. But speaking of privacy ... I can see where maybe you wouldn't want me to know what you're like during sex. That's maybe where a stranger is preferable. Somebody you don't give a crap what he thinks about you. In case that makes a difference, I promise, Daniel, it all stays in the room. It won't change my opinion of you. People need what they need."
"What about what you need?" Daniel asked, very softly.
"Not part of the equation."
"Unacceptable." Daniel's voice was almost inaudible; he knew that, but he couldn't push more voice out of himself, and he knew Jack would hear him. "You're my friend, Jack." He almost winced; the word 'friend' had always struck him as painfully, almost embarrassingly inaccurate, even inappropriate, even absurd.
"I'm about done presenting the advantages of this," Jack said. "I'm not trying to talk you into it, so I'm gonna stop now. The option's there. You should take it. They won't throw you out if they find out what you've been doing, but there'll be hassle you don't need. With me, no hassle."
A laugh came out of Daniel, a huff of air, no amusement in it. I'd call heartbreak a hassle, wouldn't you? Pain made him angry, and made him want to lash out, say You fucking asshole, offering this now. It took me years to stop looking for a substitute for you, it took me years to condition myself to be pragmatic about scratching an itch, and I did it, I finally did it, and now this. He wondered if Jack knew that, with some incredible sixth sense, and was instinctively trying to lock him up again in the shackles of unrequited longing -- if that was the ulterior motive, deeply subtle and complex, calculating away in a part of Jack's psyche utterly inaccessible to him, something he'd never know that he was doing.
It mattered, whether it was intentional or not, conscious or not. But decades of deep psychotherapy probably wouldn't be enough to tell for sure. It came down to trust. The truth was that ultimately he trusted in Jack's goodwill towards him. Jack's love for him.
They'd already had two out of three, and it wasn't love they'd been missing.
"It's a generous offer, Jack. The answer's no."
"OK," Jack said. In a tone that told Daniel that he'd like an explanation but was taking care not to sound like he was prompting for one.
He'd made it clear that he'd accept Daniel's answer either way. Implied that he wouldn't question it. But the offer he'd come here to make was extraordinary. He deserved an answer. The answer. How much worse could it be? Daniel had treated his infatuation like the universe's most classified secret, but ultimately he was just one in a crowd. He doubted this would be the first time Jack had heard something like this. It would irritate him, inconvenience him, but it wouldn't kill him. It was egoistic to think that this information would be a burden.
He took a deep breath. "The reason is that I love you, am in love with you, have always been in love with you, and whatever your sexual orientation is you don't love me that way back, and I couldn't stand to have sex with you under those conditions. I came to terms with the one-sidedness of my feelings a long time ago, but that would be too much in my face. I would say no anyway, to the scenario you described, because you are my ... friend ... and something where only I get what I want sexually is unacceptable. Otherwise I'd be happy to work out a mutually satisfying arrangement, if you were in the market for something like that. I hope you're not, to be honest. I hope you're getting whatever you need, however you get it." He laced his fingers, looking at them. "Do me the favor of not apologizing for how you don't feel."
Jack was silent for a long time -- so long that if Daniel couldn't see his legs still stretched out in front of him, he'd wonder if he'd silently slipped out of the house.
Finally Daniel said, "It's OK if you don't know what to say. There's nothing to say." He sat up, looked over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. He kept the fridge stocked with beer for Jack, and Jack hadn't been making much of a dent in the supply lately, and suddenly that seemed like the same kind of bargain, and Jack wasn't holding up his end. "You want a drink or you just want to go?"
"Would you do it for me?" Jack said. It seemed sudden, because Daniel had been talking, but it wasn't; it was what Jack had been working around to say and it was just the way it timed out. "To protect me, my career, my health -- would you? Even feeling the way you do?"
It was hard for Daniel to turn it around, but he did -- wrenching it around in his mind so that he was the one who'd gotten the surveillance materials, who'd been worried, who'd thought there was such an obvious better way. But once he did, the answer was easy. "Of course, Jack."
"Seriously? Really? Not hypothetically, Daniel. For real. Could you stand it then? Would you? For me?"
Frowning, confused and irritated by the notion of a Jack who would even hypothetically ask for something like that, Daniel looked up and said, "Yes, I would. It would suck, it would hurt, it would be very hard to do without exposing my feelings, but yes. I'd try. Why ... "
Jack looked back at him in silence, waiting.
"Oh my fucking god," Daniel breathed.
"Yeah," Jack said quietly. "Pisser, huh."
Daniel's mind cast, fast and desperate, back over everything Jack had just said, adjusting it to the revised context. "That was what you thought would be the dealbreaker?"
Jack nodded.
"Because ... why? Because those feelings would ... disgust me?"
"Because you're too compassionate to put me through that," Jack said.
"You thought it would be hard to persuade me to let you martyr yourself to my ... safety."
"Yeah. Figured I'd manage it somehow, though. Figured it might take a test run to prove I could keep a lid on it." Jack cocked his head. "Is it gonna be a dealbreaker in a whole new way now?"
"I don't ... What do you mean?"
"I mean what you might consider doing for practical reasons you might reject if it's ... "
"Romance," Daniel said, feeling dizzy. "Love."
"All the heroic tragedy kicks in now, right? Can't take a risk like that for personal reasons, hill of beans, bigger picture, yadda."
"I don't ... " He stopped, because Jack was right and he didn't want to admit it. He was already digging his heels in. It was perverse. To consider taking a risk like that for some physical satisfaction but not for ... "I can't get my head around this. God, Jack ... do you realize how stupid ... ?"
"Careful's not stupid."
Blind, then, he thought, but being unable to see what someone else had completely hidden wasn't blindness. Except that there must have been signs; he'd been hyperaware of his own lapses, and if Jack had had lapses too then he'd kept himself from seeing them, put blinders on, deliberately. It made sense. This was terrifying. He supposed he'd have done almost anything over the years to keep from seeing this. To make it about himself, keep it about himself. His own pain was familiar and safe. A firmly heterosexual Jack was safe, a Jack who never noticed his lapses because he'd never imagine that Daniel swung that way. Jack's platonic love was safe.
What am I really afraid of?
Not of ruining Jack. Not of jeopardizing the program. Not of getting in trouble. Not of losing his job. Not of destroying a friendship.
Of getting what he wanted.
Because it might hurt him more? Because it might not work out?
Because he might be happy.
He didn't know how to be happy. He didn't know if he wanted to be happy. Misery was familiar. Misery was safe. Happiness was the ultimate unknown, more alien than any alien world.
Misery was the wall he leaned on; it kept him standing. Dismantle the wall and there was just one more direction in which to fall.
"There is no amount of careful that would make this OK," Daniel said.
"That's an excuse," Jack said, still watching him quietly, patiently.
"Yes." Suddenly he found Jack's calmness intensely irritating. "Why are you taking this so fucking well?"
"I don't wig out over surprises. I was surprised. I'm over it."
"I don't ... " Daniel started again, then stopped, again. I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do with this information.
"OK," Jack said. He sat up, pulled his legs in, bent them so that his feet were flat on the floor. "You need some time to process this, you take it."
"Don't go," Daniel said, seeing Jack's weight start to shift onto his feet.
Jack eased back onto his butt. He said, "Then talk to me. If you want to do it all in your head, that's fine, but I can't sit and watch it. Tell me what's going on in there, or let me go."
Daniel looked up sharply. It was the first indication Jack had given that this was difficult for him. "I'm not sitting here deciding whether I really want you or not," Daniel said.
"Yeah you are, Daniel."
"You're all I've wanted for as long as makes any difference."
"Now you can have me. That makes all the difference."
"You can't, Jack. You can't."
"Nuh-uh. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. For you, I will break the regs without compunction. I'll resign my commission if necessary. I am not being grandiose and I am not kidding. I know what's at stake. That's all Out There. In here we're not doing that, not tonight. Right now, in here, it's just about you and me."
"We should just go have sex."
Jack just watched him.
Daniel's voice fell to a whisper. "I can't even imagine that right now. I've spent so long training myself not to ... "
Jack waited for a while, and when Daniel didn't go on, he said, "But you used to?"
"Used to?"
"Fantasize. About me."
"Yeah." Daniel felt his cheeks color. He looked down. Farther down, since he'd already been looking at the coffee table. He didn't elaborate.
Jack pushed a little harder. "You ever say my name?"
Daniel didn't have to ask for clarification this time. He nodded.
"With someone else? I mean, not into your pillow alone in your bed. While having sex with someone else."
Daniel nodded again. "I stopped, though. Security breach, and -- " He forced it out: "I stopped pretending they were you. It took a while."
"Sure wish I'd known," Jack said, in a soft, light voice.
Daniel laughed, harshly, twisting his head to look toward the window. "Now I feel like I've been unfaithful to you somehow."
"So did I," Jack said. "With Laira. Few other women I saw over the years. Laira was when I realized it was serious. What I felt about you. If I was gonna fall in love, that was gonna be the time. Didn't, though. Couldn't. Already loved somebody else. No choice in the matter."
Connections sparked through Daniel's brain. "This is going to kill Sam," he said, before he could stop it.
"Carter knows. She's known for ... I don't know. More than a year." Daniel's head snapped around, and Jack smirked at him and shook his own head. "Now you look at me, huh?" The smile gentled. "We had a chat after the Prometheus thing. Hashed some stuff out. It was my fuckup and it's not fixable, but putting a patch on it required the truth. She didn't tell you?"
"She's not over you."
Jack cocked his head, unimpressed and wryly tolerant, as if Daniel had tried to shock him, forgetting that he was unshockable, and he was waiting for Daniel to remember.
"She's not," Daniel said.
"She tell you that?"
"Of course not. You think we talk about this stuff?"
"Crossed my mind."
"We don't. Maybe she talks to Teal'c, I don't know. I hope so, because there ought to be someone she can confide in and I don't think it's Pete and it should have been Janet but Janet was Air Force and Janet's gone."
"So you're making assumptions. Ask her, Daniel."
"You know I slept with her. After Sha'uri died."
"She told me. I kinda figured anyway. Ask her. Seriously. Of all the people I know, you guys are the ones who should be able to talk about stuff like this. She knows how I feel about you. You don't have to keep that a secret."
"And she didn't tell you I felt the same way?" Daniel found himself fighting something like a miserable hysteria, a twist in his head and his gut, too much that didn't make sense anymore, too many pieces of history revised at once.
"She didn't think you did -- and yes, she said as much. I told you, Daniel, you're good. Nobody guessed that you were bi, or bent, or whatever you consider yourself, and nobody guessed you felt anything for me but friendship and loyalty and boundless aggravation."
God, why are we talking about this, why are we talking about Sam, why did I bring it up, why is he letting ... Comprehension seeped slowly in, and Daniel stared at Jack. "You'll talk all night, won't you. You'll talk about this all night. You'll listen to whatever I need to say. You'll ... talk about things you'd rather chew your arm off than ever talk about."
"Like I said," Jack said. "Pisser, huh."
Daniel took a long moment, and then flung himself back in his chair, rested his head on the backrest, looked squarely across at Jack. "Good lay, huh."
"Mm-hm."
"Which means you've ... "
"Mm-hm. Long time ago. Those skills don't get rusty."
I know. "You stopped because you got married, or because you took a vow of service?"
"I stopped when I got into the Academy."
"So, high school."
"Then again after I quit. After Abydos. Until they reactivated me. It was a kind of sex I liked. I like a lot of things I can live without. I could live without it, so I did." Jack sighed, deep and harsh. "Can't live without you, though."
"What if I say no? To protect you?"
"Then you say no," Jack said, slower and gentler than the last time.
"And you accept it?"
Jack nodded. "No questions asked."
Jack came here to offer himself. Daniel's bombshell hadn't changed that. He'd go away if Daniel told him to. He'd give Daniel time if that's what Daniel needed.
He'd do anything for me.
Daniel supposed that he'd always known that. He supposed he'd always tried not to know it, not consciously. He hadn't wanted to bear the responsibility of that kind of dedication. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Shoot."
"What do you want to happen now? Right now?"
"Whatever makes you happy, Daniel."
"Aside from that. Or assume that whatever you want will make me ... happy."
Jack considered the question. It seemed to take him a minute to shift gears; he'd been that focused on Daniel, not on himself. Finally he said, "Tough to choose. I'd like to get these clothes off and get into bed with you, take it slow, lot of touching, maybe a hand job, see if you like it if I kiss you on the mouth. Sleep with you. I'd also like to go over there and suck you. Break the ice. Situation's less loaded out here than in the bedroom. Easier for you to say it wasn't what you expected, out here."
"That's covered by 'assume that whatever you want will make me happy.'"
"I can't look at it that way. I can't say I want something until I know whether or not it'll be OK with you. If it's isn't OK with you, I don't want it."
"I ... " He should be hard. Just the idea of Jack going to his knees, bending down to him, should have gotten him hard, but he was as far from turned on as he thought he might have ever been, and he didn't want Jack servicing him. The prospect of going to bed with Jack left him slightly paralyzed. "I think maybe I don't handle bombshells like this as well as you do."
"I'm getting that," Jack said.
The eight-by-ten was still on the table. Some dark-haired, medium-build, faceless guy draped over a pillow on the back of a heavy hotel-room chair, Daniel's arms tipping the chair towards him, feet planted wide in the carpet, hiking boots on for traction, a balance of weight and pounding force. Ass clenched, muscles corded; arched, on the verge of shooting. Head turned to the side, face clearly visible. No expression on it. Eyes open. Soulless.
If he didn't know he'd been there, he wouldn't have recognized himself.
He hadn't made love to anyone in eight years. He hadn't thought he'd ever make love to anyone again. He didn't know if he could. He didn't know if he could stand it.
"I'm sorry you had to see those," he said. He didn't know where that came from. He'd been thinking about himself, about what a gentle touch might do to him after all this time, not about what the photos in that anonymous Kraft-paper envelope must have done to Jack.
"That's the only one I looked at," Jack said. "It was on the top." He leaned forward and slipped the print back into the envelope, pushed the CD-R in with it, closed the flap and spread the clasp. "I'll take care of these back at my place."
"There's a cross-cut shredder in the den. It can handle discs."
"I was thinkin' fireplace."
Daniel gave a "whichever" shrug. Both would be safest, but there was no safety; copies could exist anywhere. He wouldn't have done it if safety had been a matter of life and death. The only safety lay in not doing it.
Jack waited for a long time for Daniel to say something else, or move. Then he said, "Can I ask you a question?"
Daniel's gut tightened. "Sure. Of course."
"What are you afraid of, Daniel? Really?"
Of you being my heart's desire, and me getting it. "I ... " How could he possibly explain something like this? His own interior had always been the one thing he was incapable of translating into terms he thought someone else could understand. He gave up before he even tried, and flailed out weakly: "Do I look like I'm afraid of something?"
Jack's head didn't give an oh, please roll; he watched Daniel steadily. "I think you're afraid of me," he said. "I think you're afraid I'll come over there and touch you."
He was. It wasn't fear per se, but he was tense, twitchy. Paradoxically he was also flushing hot, his groin tightening, his skin prickling -- an arousal response he couldn't control. He wanted Jack to come over and touch him. But the touch would be gentle, even loving, and he didn't think he could stand that.
"Can you tell me why?" Jack said.
"I'll fall apart." The words were out before he could stop them. He was looking at the clasp envelope on the coffee table. The harsh, hard, raw desires hidden inside it. The metaphor was inside-out. The harsh, hard, raw things he'd been doing had been what held him together. A few hours of bitter, angry, pragmatic fucking every few weeks -- the sexual release had relaxed him, but the dispassion had hardened him just enough that he could keep on going. The exact opposite of that was sitting across the table from him now. Someone offering to make love to him.
He'd crumble if Jack touched him like that.
Jack was nodding, as if he got it. Not scoffing at self-pity or rejecting melodrama. Taking him seriously, understanding what he meant. Maybe he'd felt that way himself; maybe there'd been times he dreaded going home to his wife after some gruelling covert mission because it was too hard to switch gears between hardened commando and loving husband.
"Well, I can't promise to hold you together," Jack said. "Wish I could, but this is reality here. If rough is better than nothing, that's still a viable option. It's not what I want for myself but I meant it when I said I'd do anything for you. Or I can leave. Or you can get me that beer ..."
He trailed off, watching Daniel, reading his cues. Daniel flushed deeply and looked away. When Jack's voice said the word "rough" he'd gone uncomfortably stiff in his jeans.
"OK," Jack said slowly. "Door number one it is."
Surprise pulled Daniel's head up, but he didn't want Jack to be able to read his expression. He averted his face, staring hard at a small djembe squeezed between books on a bowed shelf.
Jack said, "Eye contact here, Daniel. This is not the time for a misunderstanding. A good rough fuck. That's what you want?"
That's what I can stand. It's better than walking away. It's better than letting you blow me. Break the ice, test the waters.
No. That was an excuse too. It was what he wanted. He didn't want to be seduced, melted. He wanted to be taken. It was humiliating. It was completely contrary to his MO. It was something he'd dreamed about, back when he let himself dream about things like that. It lived down deep in his libido, and it pertained only to Jack, and the prospect of getting it for real ...
He was tired of being afraid. This was safer than lovemaking, and he'd already decided not to opt for abstinence, there was no point in kidding himself about that. He wasn't going to say no to this.
He brought his head around and met Jack's gaze. "That's what I want."
"OK," Jack said again. He took a breath, scooped up the envelope to bring with him wherever they went, keep it in view until the contents were destroyed. "Am I pitching or catching?"
"Pitching," Daniel said. It came out almost too low to hear. His throat was tight, his body humming like a wire jerked taut. Garrote -- the word was appropriated from the Spanish for the rod that was used to twist the wire, a pars pro toto --
Jack got up. "Bedroom, then," he said. "Now. You go first."
Feeling like a puppet pulling its own strings by force of will, Daniel got up and went into the bedroom. He left the lights off, and Jack, a few steps behind him, didn't turn them on. "Condoms and lube are in the -- "
Jack had moved right to the bureau where he kept all that stuff. He set the envelope on the top of the dresser and opened the drawer, reached in to set the pile of folded shirts aside, replaced them with care when he had what he needed. "I cleaned out your place twice, remember?" he said.
"I thought airmen did that," Daniel said, unbuttoning his shirt while he toed out of his sneakers.
Jack turned to toss a bottle and a string of packets on the bed. "I did the personal stuff," he said, and sat down on the chair to take off his shoes.
"And the lube wasn't a clue?"
Jack got up to unbuckle his belt and gestured at the KY on the bed. "That's not exactly Acme I'm-So-Gay Butt Grease."
Daniel had deliberately kept the place stocked with products an isolated man would keep for self-maintenance or in hope of female companionship or both. Without having to peer at the boxes, Jack had picked the condoms that didn't have spermicide, but there was a box of the kind that did in there too. It was all for appearance' sake, same as the het porn he ordered on pay-per-view every couple of weeks and didn't watch, turning the set off with the front-panel button instead of the remote so if the cable system tracked activity like that in some way that could be subpoenaed, it wouldn't show that he hadn't watched it. Same as the flirtations he occasionally engaged in, with waitresses, cashiers, flight attendants. The copies of Playboy he picked up now and then. They looked well thumbed because he read the articles. Except for that, it was all show.
So many false trails laid down, only to do this, in his own unstealthed bedroom, not just with a male coworker but with the very male coworker he'd been trying to protect by presenting as so straight that nobody -- including that male coworker -- would put any stock in the speculation that had bubbled around them for years ...
That was Out There, and this was in here.
It all stays in the room, Jack had said.
Daniel couldn't think about how easily a third party could put the lie to that.
He sat on the corner of the bed to get his legs out of his jeans and peel his socks off, and then he was down to his briefs. Tidy whiteys -- that's how he'd parsed it the first time he'd heard it, before context had adjusted the alveolar from voiced to unvoiced in his ear. Jack wore muted plaid boxers when he was off duty, and they were neatly folded now with the rest of his clothes on the chair by the dresser. Daniel kicked jeans and socks over by where his shirt lay on the floor with his sneakers. Tighty, he thought. I'm not a very tidy guy. But they weren't tight. The erection had faded as he stripped down, and he wasn't anywhere near hard now. He couldn't bring himself to stand up and take them off.
"I'd say second thoughts," Jack said, watching him with arms folded, "but with you it's probably eighty-seventh by now."
"I can't fuck you, Jack," Daniel said. Phrasing it harshly to cover the hollow desolation he felt. "I'm too conditioned against it. It doesn't matter what I want, what you want -- what you're trying to -- "
"You're not going to fuck me," Jack said. "I'm going to fuck you. Get up. Find somewhere to brace. Your mattress is too hard on my knees and I don't want you on the bed while I'm standing."
It wasn't his real command voice, and it wasn't an obey-your-master sex voice, and probably because of that the no-nonsense directions reignited the slow burn of arousal in Daniel's groin. No one told him what to do in bed, he was always in control -- but he wanted Jack to tell him what to do. More than that, far more deeply and desperately than that, he wanted to opt for Jack's first suggestion, do this gently, do it right -- get these clothes off and get into bed with you, take it slow, lot of touching, maybe a hand job, see if you like it if I kiss you on the mouth -- but it would kill him, he couldn't, not after all these years, the longing was too acute, the risk, the --
"You're not even hard," he said, the familiar package between Jack's legs in his peripheral vision the same way it had been for years.
"You go ahead and keep pushing, Daniel," Jack said. "Until I hear a 'no,' I'll keep pushing back. It's just like sex." He dropped his arms and took a step toward the bed, leaning over to scoop up the bottle and the packets. The proximity made Daniel go tense with the effort of not appearing to react. Jack's smell washed over him, the warm and wonderful body smells usually trapped inside his clothes, an insistence of skin and sweat and groin and armpit against the fading cover of antiperspirant and base-issue soap. "Get up," Jack said. "Pick a spot."
Daniel got up because it let him turn away. There was no stretch of wall that wasn't covered with art, masks, weapons, framed things. He moved, around Jack, to the dresser, the only furniture in the cramped room besides the nightstand and the chair. It was a new, cheap, assemble-it-yourself piece from some chain store, edges knife-sharp. He put his hands on the top edge. His fingertips came just shy of the envelope Jack had left there.
Jack reached around him for the envelope and winged it onto the bed. "Gonna need sutures, you pass out and clock yourself on this thing," he said, meaning the dresser, but he didn't tell Daniel to pick a different spot. He tore one condom packet from the strip, tossed the rest after the envelope. "Lose the briefs," he said. He ripped the packet open and put it back on the dresser.
Daniel pushed his briefs down until they dropped, then stepped out of them. He spread his feet. He put his hands back on the dresser. His dick still felt vaguely hard, dangling free. Exposure to the air made it a little harder. The cool air on his balls felt good. Other than that, and the pounding of his heartbeat, and the knife edge of the dresser against his palms, he felt paralyzed to the point of numbness.
He'd heard the cap of the bottle flick open. He heard a soft glug as Jack turned it and squeezed; it was about half full, because he did use it on himself.
"Jack," he said, wincing in expectation of a gentle, steadying hand on his hip, unable to frame the words.
He could feel Jack waiting. After a few seconds, Jack said, "Is that a no?"
A tight, nervous laugh huffed out of Daniel. "There's no unambiguous way to answer that question."
"No stroking, no petting," Jack said. "I get that. No worries. OK?"
"Yeah," Daniel said. It was hard to find the breath. "OK." His glasses were slipping down his nose; he shoved them up, with the back of his wrist, and then replaced his hand on the dresser. He heard Jack slicking his hands. When Jack leaned around to put the bottle next to the condom, he knew that every time Jack leaned that way he was getting a visual on Daniel's state of arousal. His dick filled more, as he felt himself assessed; it came up to about forty-five degrees. He felt Jack angle his body to get his hand between Daniel's legs. He bent his elbow so that Jack could still see his groin. The skin all over his body tightened, as if he'd become too small for himself. "OK, Jack," he whispered. "Yes."
Jack's slick fingers slipped down into the crack, gave his asshole a firm rub, and pushed in.
"Oh -- oh fuck," Daniel gasped, arching at the swell of pleasure-pressure -- arching into Jack's left hand slicking down over his cock, cock going rigidly hard inside the slick sheath of palm and fingers. He froze with his head back and his body bowed, speared on intense pleasure, but the movement didn't stop; Jack's long fingers pushed all the way in, and rubbed, not hard but nowhere near tender, and then turned -- corkscrewed inside him, completely around, so that the rubbing pushes crossed his prostate.
He cried out; he couldn't help it, a harsh grunt when he shot was all the sound he'd made in years but the stimulation was so abrupt and sharp and good, and the slick tight strokes on his dick in counterpoint -- he went weak through his belly and his knees and started to sag, moaning --
"Stand up," Jack said, a quiet order. There was no pause in the firm movements of his hands. Daniel held a mind's-eye visual of the one behind him and he knew the wrist was bent back too far but he couldn't make his legs push up.
"Stand up," Jack repeated. It was command voice this time. "Can't hold you up while I'm doing this. Brace on the dresser. Brace, Daniel."
"I'm gonna ... Jack, I'm ... "
"I know," Jack said. Low and close; despite the orders to stand he'd pushed in against Daniel's flank to prop him up, firm wordless support, and Daniel realized he was feeling a very hard cock pointed down along the back of his thigh. "That's the idea."
Daniel got his legs straightened but his elbows gave way and he sagged on his forearms against the bureau. Jack's hips were holding him up. Jack's hand and fingers were working hard and slick and rhythmic, on him and in him; breath and slippery sucking were the only sounds, and his own arrhythmic whines. The fingers inside him worked in threes, two pistoning thrusts and then deep circular pressure. Every third or fourth upward pass of the hand on Daniel's cock was a hard, slick squeeze of the head. The movements were steady and merciless but not matched, and any second it would stop as Jack reached for the condom and shifted position to penetrate him, but it wasn't stopping and it wasn't stopping and he'd warned him and he couldn't --
"Jack," he growled, pushing it out of himself, a last desperate demand for Jack to do it already, fuck him already, god, christ, please --
"I'll fuck you when you come for me," Jack said, voice low and controlled, body braced strong and solid against Daniel's. The speed and motion of his hands ratcheted up another notch and made Daniel groan again. Made him groan -- he could hear the sound of it, deep and helpless, and he understood, this was what he'd wanted, for Jack to make him. "Come, Daniel. Then I'll give you what you want."
You're already giving me what I want.
Daniel came in a wrenching spasm, his harsh grunt more of a sharp bark, an explosion of blinding white behind his eyes. He was so intensely worked up that the orgasm only blunted the forward edge of it; he came, and came, and the fluid dripped down over Jack's stilled hand and into the hair at his groin. The hand was holding his dick straight up so he wouldn't spatter the dresser. He was still coming when he'd emptied himself and the flow tailed off. Jack's fingers stayed on him and in him, an ecstasy of touch even in stillness, even though they made no move to stroke or soothe or comfort or even to prolong the orgasm.
He moaned when Jack's fingers withdrew, half protest and half pleasure at the dragging pull of knuckles, another surge down his legs and up through his trunk, tingling into the fingertips. His nails gouged the bureau top.
"Still want it?" Jack said.
Daniel managed a nod.
Jack reached over them both to take the condom from the dresser, free it with fingers and teeth; the foil packet fluttered away. Jack moved his pelvis to clear his dick to roll the rubber on one-handed, then reached over again to grab the bottle. His left hipbone drove into Daniel's cheek to keep holding him up, balanced against the pressure of his flat hand holding Daniel's dick against his abs.
There was a click of cap snapping closed when he finished pouring lube over the condom. Daniel would have tossed the bottle off to the side somewhere. Jack placed it back on the dresser.
Daniel was a live wire torn out of the wall, left dangling, intermittently sparking. Every breath, every shift of weight sent another jolt through him. He felt Jack inhale, probably to make really sure, to get one more positive verbal from him. He said "Yes" before Jack could speak.
Jack pivoted to line up behind him. His left hand was still splayed over Daniel's dick and lower abs. His right wrist brushed Daniel's ass as he lifted himself. He pushed his hips into the push of his left hand, and fed himself into Daniel's body.
Daniel was helpless to stop a series of hitching sobs. He jerked uncontrollably as the length of hard cock slid into him; every inch of penetration sent a fresh cascade of shocks through him. His nails scraped furrows in the finish of the dresser.
"Jesus," Jack murmured, almost to himself. "Daniel."
So he knew. He could feel it. This virginity wasn't a secret Daniel could keep from him.
It didn't matter. It was gone now.
"Do, not, stop," Daniel gasped.
Jack didn't stop, exactly, but he didn't pull back to thrust. It was hesitation.
Daniel had lost the shape of words. He pushed out a sound, craven and pleading.
"Dammit," Jack whispered. Then: "All right. OK." His right arm came around under Daniel's armpit, crossed his chest. The heel of his hand pressed Daniel's collarbone, lifting him away from the dresser. "OK," Jack said. "Let go. I've got you."
Weightless with ecstasy, Daniel came away from the dresser easily. In a rush of vertigo he came back up to true and then tipped past it, curving backward into the lock of Jack's arms, shoulderblades sinking into Jack's chest. Jack's hips pushed forward to compensate. The swell of cockhead pushed past Daniel's prostate. Electric overload frizzed down all four of Daniel's limbs.
He moaned insensibly, head rolling toward Jack. Jack made a sound of -- god, of heartbroken reluctance. Daniel groaned back a mix of anger and demand, and he felt Jack's body give in.
Jack held him up and fucked him where they stood. Daniel was coming again from the second stroke, impaled on Jack, locked tight into the sinuous, muscular strength of him. A low grunt pushed out of Jack on every thrust, from effort or pleasure or something else. It was slow and shallow at first, but as it got deeper, longer, faster, the grunts turned back to words: "You wanted it rough. Any rougher and I'll hurt you." His breath dampened Daniel's ear, his sideburn. "Do you need me to hurt you, Daniel?"
Daniel almost said yes. He craved punishment for the pleasure of being held this way. He was still climaxing in waves, driven just to the edge of what his brain could process as pleasure; pain would snap him out of it, clear his head, separate him from Jack, piss him off, make him himself again. If Jack hurt him, maybe he'd remember that instead of the love in every action, every word. Jack had promised not to stroke or pet, but every touch and every breath had said I love you. I love you, Daniel. There was no avoiding it. There was no stopping it.
"Just, come," he said, forming every consonant and vowel with intense, painstaking focus. "Come, in, me. Whatever, you, need, to do."
Jack's head dropped. Jack's whole body changed, going slow and supple, the hard lock of arms shifting into a fierce, cherishing softness. The jabbing thrusts eased into one long, exquisitely slow out-and-in; when he was in, he held there, very still, and then let out a hoarse sound and pulsed inside Daniel's body, shaking. His eyes were winced shut tight, his mouth open against Daniel's jaw.
Stunned, Daniel forgot himself and groped for Jack, instinctively -- covered the forearms across his belly and chest and squeezed hard, trying to help him hold on.
"OK," Jack gasped, after a minute. "It's OK now." He disengaged his arms from Daniel's grip, gave his chest a shaky pat. "It's OK. Can you stand by yourself?"
"Yeah," Daniel said, taking more of his weight into his knees.
Jack's voice was shaky; Jack's body was shaky. He didn't pull out. Daniel thought they were waiting for Jack's dick to soften so he could pull out more easily, but Jack put his hands on Daniel's hips to steady both of them and said, "I'm still hard. You got anything left? You want my hand?"
Daniel's body was still singing with pleasure; he was well aware that Jack was still hard, well aware of the pressure inside him. If he tightened on it, he'd get another mini-orgasmic jolt. He could come on empty for as long as Jack wanted to keep stimulating him. A hand or a mouth on him now and he'd just melt back into moaning mindlessness. He thought Jack could probably keep him coming forever if he chose to.
What he wanted was Jack's arms around him again and he was in no position to ask for that after what he'd said and done and it was killing him to want it because he still couldn't stand the thought of it. He took Jack's hand off his hip and pulled it around and put it on his penis. It was still a little firm, and Jack wrapped his hand around and gave a few warm, easy pulls, but it was more affection than sexual stimulation; he knew he wasn't supposed to be affectionate, so he stopped and just cupped it instead, and reached under a little to cup Daniel's balls, too. He made no move to caress or stroke. He was resting against Daniel as his heartbeat slowed and his own dick softened. Still carefully trying to follow the rules.
When he started to slip out, he let go of Daniel and reached between them to hold the condom on while he pulled away. "Gonna toss this thing," he said. He paused, leaving room for any objection Daniel might have, or maybe a request to just dress and get out, and then moved off to the bathroom.
Daniel moved drunkenly to the bed, flung the covers down, half-fell onto his side. He'd been sweating more than he realized; the air was cooling it on him now, and he knew he should shower, but he didn't want to move. He was still turned on; he flexed his ass, experimentally, and let out a low moan as pleasure rippled up through his insides. That was new -- unique to intercourse or unique to Jack, he couldn't tell which. It felt like he'd come hard enough to last him a month, and it felt like he'd be up for another round as soon as Jack came back in. The persistent arousal was bewildering, sweet, dangerous.
If they'd done anything else, he thought, he'd be responding predictably. He knew his refractory period almost down to the minute; without looking at any of the stills in the envelope that had just thumped onto the floor, he could have arranged them by timestamp and sexual act. Fuck the guy, wait twenty minutes, have the guy suck him hard, nap for half an hour, fuck him harder, after a while get sucked again with the addition of whatever sex aids the guy had brought; it would escalate from there, taking more to get him off each time with longer waits in between, but as long as he stuck to the routine he could reliably get five or six orgasms out of his six-hour investment, bang on schedule.
His stomach turned sour at the thought. Already the feel of Jack was that imprinted on him. He shouldn't be surprised. He'd always been Jack's for the taking. He should have known that the first touch of Jack's bare skin would ruin him for anything else. He'd never extrapolated that far because he'd been sure he would never find out.
The water stopped running in the bathroom sink, and Jack came back in. He paused at the sight of Daniel in the bed, then picked the envelope up, put it on the nightstand, and moved to the chair where his clothes were piled. Daniel thought he was dressing to leave, but he just stepped into his boxers and came around to sit on the side of the bed that Daniel was facing.
"A heads-up would have been nice," he said.
Sorry. Didn't think you'd notice. Didn't think it was relevant. It was none of your business. All ludicrous under the circumstances. He just shrugged.
"So," Jack said.
"So," Daniel said, shoving an arm up under his pillow and turning a little.
"So, that worked? Or not so much?"
"You know it worked." Daniel rolled onto his back and drew one leg up and said to the ceiling, "But it isn't going to break your heart. It already has."
There was a pause in which he was certain that Jack was going to say I can take it, Daniel, which Daniel answered in his head with I'm not letting you prostitute yourself to me, you're an intensely affectionate man and if I can't handle that it will kill both of us and had progressed through an involved and fairly complicated debate about the nature and manifestations of love when Jack said, "You've been breaking my heart for nine years. All this changes is that we're both getting some. Can you live with that?" And when Daniel drew breath: "Serious answer, Daniel. Don't be a smartass."
"I'd like to try," Daniel said, and as the words came out had no idea what he'd been intending to say, because these words were the truth. Simple, mundane, even pat, but the genuine truth.
"Good," Jack said, and then, without glancing at his watch, "Look, it's almost midnight. You mind if I ... ?"
His gesture was out toward the living room, past the closet with the spare bedding, toward the couch.
"Stay here," Daniel said, and looked at him. "I'd like to try that too."
"Good," Jack said, with a flicker of surprised delight, shy and quickly hidden. Daniel heard Me too in his mind, but Jack just repeated, "Good." He swung his legs up and pushed them down under the covers, then settled in with his arm bent up under the pillow, on his side facing Daniel, and closed his eyes. "Go turn the hall light off, willya? Some of us have to work in the morning."
At 3 a.m., Daniel left his slept-in bed, took the envelope from the nightstand, and went into the den to feed its contents to the shredder. It took a while, a shriek of noise in the stillness. When he was done, and had bagged the confetti in a paper lunch sack to burn in Jack's fireplace the next night, the silence of the house should have felt oppressive. But there was presence in it, sentience -- familiar, even beloved -- and there was comfort in that. A comfort he could bear.
When he got back into the bed, he rolled into Jack's arms, and Jack held him for the rest of the night. No stroking, no petting, no words; just a warm, easy slide of arms and legs, and then quiet breathing falling into sync, and a deep sense of peace.
It was a start.