sid | It's the Jack/Daniel Three Little Words 'Thon!

All right, everybody, let's get started! This 'thon is all about saying, "I love you." Or not being able to say it. Or showing it in a myriad of ways. It's about perfect pictures and lovely vids, quotes from fic (link us, please!) and brand new fic (we hope!)

Post in comments here, or post elsewhere and give us all a link.

Everyone is welcome to the party, so feel free to invite all your Jack/Daniel-loving friends!

The 'thon runs through the end of Monday, assuming

jdjunkie and I don't collapse earlier from the sheer weight of all the squee. :-)/:-)

Current Mood: giddy

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From:

jdjunkie

Oookay. Let's get this thing started.

Have a little piece of Three Words-related fluff.

It’s Only Words

“Say it,” Jack said play-hitting Daniel in the stomach with his knee.

“Ow!” It hadn’t hurt but it was all part of the game they both loved to play. It made the sun rise in Daniel’s heart when he saw Jack like this – relaxed, a little skittish, willing to tease. In love.

“Want me to kiss it better?” Jack snuggled up closer until both their heads were on Daniel’s pillow.

“No.” Daniel tempered the rejection with a gentle stroke of his fingers through Jack’s chest hair. Any appeals from Daniel for a little manscaping always fell on deaf ears. He caught some of the hair and tugged, twining it round the ends of his fingers. It was a deliciously intimate thing to do and Daniel hugged the moment to himself. He got Bed!Jack, who was nothing like Work!Jack or even Off-duty!Jack. Bed!Jack was playful, funny, sometimes intense, always his and his alone.

“You’re no fun,” Jack pouted. “All I want is for you to say the words.”

Daniel sighed. “If I say them too often it makes them less than they are.”

“But I love it when you say them.” It was amazing how very much like a recalcitrant five-year-old Jack Could sound.

“You could say them,” Daniel said, running the pad of his thumb over Jack’s nipple, which gratifyingly peaked in seconds.

“It’s not my turn.”

Daniel shifted back a little and gave Jack the look. “We take turns now?”

“Gah!” Jack dived beneath the covers and grabbed Daniel’s dick and balls, cupped the package in his warm hand, rolled it a little. “I’ve got hostages.”

“Actually,” Daniel’s voice rose about an octave. “They’re developing Stockholm Syndrome as we speak. They’re in no rush to be released at all.”

Jack’s head popped up, covered in the sheet. He looked like a debauched nun.

“Pleeeease.”

Daniel laughed an honest to god laugh. He loved that they had this, could do this. He offered a silent prayer of thanks to whichever deity was listening. “Okay, Sister O’Neill of the Holy Order of Whiny Toddlers. You win.”

“Yesss!”

Daniel pulled Jack as close as he could get, kissed his lips gently and whispered, “You can bottom.”

ends

From:

discodiva76

Sister O’Neill of the Holy Order of Whiny Toddlers

I love it!!!....

But how could Daniel resist this look?..

From:

ravenholdt - Date: Mar. 5th, 2012 09:03 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: It's Only Words by jdjunkie

From:

jdjunkie - Date: Mar. 6th, 2012 11:02 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: It's Only Words by jdjunkie

From:

lilyleia78 - Date: Mar. 7th, 2012 03:06 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: It's Only Words by jdjunkie

From:

jdjunkie - Date: Mar. 7th, 2012 04:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

jdjunkie

I just love the love in this extract. They don't actually say, "I love you," it's, "I'm in love with you." But love is love, right? And I love this exchange. It hits me where I live. And paian fic is always worthy of a zillion re-reads, no?

"So you don't fantasize about you and me."

Jack shook his head, a little ruefully. "Daydream sometimes. Think about you. Remember. That's just flashes."

"Like what?"

"Your ass in BDUs when you're bent over some half-buried whosis offworld. You on the end of my dick lying back with your arms over your head saying 'God Jack, fuck me, fuck me.' The way you used to look up at me when I came by your office, this half-second of pure happiness to see me before you shut it down and went all casual."

"I'm in love with you," Daniel said softly. "It's like that every time I see you. Every time."

He expected Jack to say You hide it well. He expected to have to apologize. But Jack just said, "Here too," and fell silent, and he understood that it had been like that for Jack, all these years, just as much as for him, maybe more. Maybe it wouldn't have to be, so much, now. Or someday. Maybe Jack was thinking about that too.

Link: http://paian.dreamwidth.org/112217.html

Edited Date: Mar. 2nd, 2012 11:42 am (UTC)

From:

From:

From:

heather_mist - Date: Mar. 14th, 2012 09:19 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

princessofgeeks

I have nothing new to offer, but here's the surprised post-sex "I love you's" from "Maybe It Was Memphis."

Thank you for doing this!!!

~~~

Daniel fumbled, and grabbed Jack’s hip, pressing him even closer against Daniel’s ass.

“Oh, god, Jack,” Daniel said.

“Love you,” Jack said, responding instinctively, no conscious decision at all, to the emotion he heard in Daniel’s voice, the way Daniel said his name.

Then he froze, realizing too late what had come out of his mouth. There had been a line that he’d thought was drawn, once, about things like that. A line blocking as off-limits sweet names like “baby”. Keeping him, keeping guys doing what they were doing, away from big scary important words like “love”. There was a line that marked the rules of this game for lonely men. Jack couldn’t find that line anymore. He didn’t know the rules any more. He had actually blurted out the word. He had thought it, more than once, but he had thought he wouldn’t, shouldn’t say it. He didn’t know what it meant. His body flooded with adrenaline again, and his hand must have twitched on Daniel’s dick.

But Daniel only moaned a little, a precious sound, and held Jack’s hip tighter.

“I love you, too, Jack,” he said, and he sounded so surprised.

Jack squeezed his eyes shut and tried to breathe. He wormed one arm beneath Daniel, under his ribcage, and let go of his dick to get his right arm around his chest. He held Daniel tight against him, squeezing the breath out of him, and Daniel held just as tightly to his hip.

Holy mother of god, Jack thought. What did I just do.

“It just came out,” he said, his lips stiff. “I didn’t... I...”

“I love you, too, Jack,” Daniel repeated, more quietly, but just as certain.

Jack held on to him, as if Daniel were some kind of life raft and the bed was a stormy sea. He felt as if the top of his head were going to blow off. He didn’t know what to think, what to say into the fraught silence. He hovered there for a while, trying to find his place.

Daniel squirmed in his grip, and Jack didn’t want to let go of him. But Daniel, insistent as ever, turned, and Jack, eyes still squeezed shut against the immensity of what was happening, felt Daniel’s lips on his. Daniel kissed him, tenderly, urgently, and Jack kissed him back. It felt good. It felt like a salve.

“Look at me,” Daniel said. Jack opened his eyes. And the brave, crazy bastard said it again. So Jack kissed him again, as if he could swallow the words, take them in, understand them that way. Kissed him until Daniel, too, was breathless.

From:

From:

fanficfan_123 - Date: Mar. 11th, 2012 04:42 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

jdjunkie

Four times Jack or Daniel said "I love you" and one time they didn't.

1 Late Sunday morning. Ella on the boombox, Sunday papers strewn all over the floor, Jack reading the sports section, Daniel the news review, coffee on the go, sun shining.

Jack looked over the top of his paper. Daniel was sitting in the big fireside chair opposite. He was wearing an old T-shirt of Jack's, older jeans and his feet were bare. His hair, fresh from the shower, resembled a dishevelled hedgehog. He was frowning slightly at whatever he was reading and followed it up with a slight pout.

Jack was flooded with a heart-stopping moment of, "My god, he's mine. How the fuck did I get so lucky?"

"I love you," he said, unaware that he was going to say anything.

Daniel looked across at him and smiled and went back to reading.

2 "I love you, Jack."

"I know."

"You're allowed to say it back."

"But then you'll think that I'm only saying it because you said it."

"No, I won't."

"But I could think that you think that."

"Shut the fuck up and kiss me."

"Okay."

3 Dinner had been great. The sex had been better. Spending your tenth anniversary in a swanky hotel room (and a king size bed with high thread count sheets) was definitely the way to go, Daniel decided.

"Have I told you lately that I love you?" Jack said, rubbing noses. He was overwhelmingly affectionate after love-making, especially so tonight.

"Five minutes ago, while you were coming."

"That long ago? For shame. I love you, Daniel."

Daniel kissed him. "Again," he whispered, softly, against his lips.

"I love you."

"Aga-"

4 "Oh. My. God." Jack had gone white.

"What?" Daniel reached across and adjusted Jack's tie, smoothed down the lapels of his wedding suit.

"I have to say it in front of all those people?" He nodded towards the room where the ceremony would take place. "In front of Siler?"

"Baby, you only have to say what you want to say." Jack's last-minute nerves shouldn't have come as a surprise. He'd been like a deer caught in the headlights all morning.

"What if I can't? What if I open my mouth and nothing comes out?"

"Then, let's try it now."

Jack took a deep breath, then licked his lips. "Daniel, I love you," he said, "with all my heart and for as long as you'll put up with me."

Daniel smiled. "There. See? No problem."

Jack coughed. "Piece of cake," he said, brightly, maybe too brightly.

"Wedding cake," Daniel amended.

"I love that, too."

"And I love you."

They both took long, deep breaths.

"Ready?" Daniel asked.

"Ready."

5 "I may have, might have, uh, grown to love you a little. I think."

He said it. He was sure he said it. The L word. It was there in his head and in his heart and he was sure the word had spilled from his lips when he spoke. He didn't care who heard, who guessed, who could lip read from the observation room.

"That's touching."

He'd said it now. He'd told him he loved him. Pushed aside everything that had been holding him back. He'd said it, and now Daniel knew.

He could cope with whatever was to come.

From:

From:

jdjunkie - Date: Mar. 7th, 2012 04:18 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

princessofgeeks

eeeeeeee

From:

jdjunkie

*gleeeeee*

(no subject)

From:

sid - Date: Mar. 2nd, 2012 03:35 pm (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

From:

jdjunkie - Date: Mar. 2nd, 2012 03:40 pm (UTC) - Expand

...

From:

sid - Date: Mar. 2nd, 2012 03:45 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

discodiva76

It's also a LURVE THING!!!...

xxxx

From:

From:

sid

A Wordle created by cutting and pasting declarations of love from a handful of old fics:

From:

From:

sid - Date: Mar. 7th, 2012 03:33 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

babs_bee

A snippet from my fic: Between the Turkey and the Pumpkin Pie

Jack pushed away from the wall and went back to the safety of the kitchen even though there was really nothing left for him to do there.

"Jack?"

He should have known Daniel would show up. Of course he'd show up--that was Daniel. Seemed even Oma couldn't keep Daniel from his need to help--Daniel didn't remember being with Jack in Ba'al's cell, but Jack had never, would never forget.

"Daniel."

"You, uh, need some help? Dishes to be done? Something?"

Jack put his hands flat on the counter and kept his gaze on the tree branches bending in the breeze. "It's okay."

"Huh." Daniel moved to stand close beside him. His arm brushed against Jack's, their shoulders bumped. "What's so interesting?"

Focus, Jack told himself. It wasn't as if he could make a confession to his best friend, his sure to be straight best friend. "Just thinking."

"About?"

He should have expected that response too--and knowing Daniel's persistence Jack figured he was doomed. "Stuff." Not the best response to the question, but maybe if he was lucky it would throw Daniel off.

"Oh." Daniel shifted a little and Jack closed his eyes and prayed for strength.

This close he could smell Daniel's aftershave and the underlying clean scent of soap. He thought he might have groaned a little because next thing he knew, Daniel was asking him if he was okay again.

"I'm...fine," At least that was what he wanted to say. But it wasn't what came out. Oh no. Nope. Nada. Nyet. "I love you." Jack wasn't sure how it happened because he swore he'd been thinking, I'm fine. So how the wires got crossed was a mystery. And he could have left it go because Daniel's response was a pat on his arm as if Jack was drunk and a quiet, I love you too.

He should have moved away from Daniel. Should have laughed or done something to make it pass off as a joke. He knew the second Daniel got it and knew the import of the words. Daniel's breath caught and he made a little noise in his throat--it was the same little noise Daniel made off-world when he was on the verge of discovery.

"You can..." But Jack wasn't able to finish because after Daniel made that little noise, he pulled on Jack's collar and put his hands on Jack's face and kissed him like he hadn't been kissed in years.

The whole fic can be found at the Alpha Gate archive (www.thealphagate.com)

From:

From:

From:

paian - Date: Mar. 5th, 2012 01:52 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

jdjunkie

My one and only stranded fic. The extract is from the section where Jack and Daniel make love for the first time.

Daniel enters the shelter and stands by his sleeping pallet, aware of Jack following him inside and closing the door. The atmosphere is suddenly charged and heavy. It’s dark, too dark for Daniel, who has to be able to see Jack now. He flicks on his torch lying beside his bed. It’s a precious resource but he has to see. He turns to find Jack standing by his own bed, waiting. “It has to be your move, Daniel. I’m a shit, I know. Don’t let that color your decision.”

Jack’s vulnerability touches something deep inside Daniel, so deep that he can’t truly comprehend it yet. But the decision is never in any doubt.

He picks up the pallet and moves it across the floor, placing it next to Jack’s.

Jack doesn’t say a word, just pulls him in for a gentle hug.

Daniel sinks into Jack’s body, allows himself the luxury of being held, and then he pulls back enough to kiss him, slowly insinuating his tongue, and soon warmth is turning to heat.

Their hands roam freely, over shoulders, up into hair, clenching and caressing, getting close but not close enough. Daniel’s hands cup Jack’s ass and he presses their groins together. To Daniel’s delight and surprise, Jack is beginning to harden again. They’re both wonderfully, undeniably, hard for each other. Daniel rests his forehead against Jack’s and they rub heads gently, nuzzling, catching breath but barely able to wait for what comes next.

Jack steps back, keeps his eyes fixed on Daniel and slips out of his T-shirt. He stands there, bare to the waist, with the clothes in his hand for a moment, then he throws them in the corner.

Daniel’s eyes are drawn to Jack’s dog tags and he wonders what to say. If he should say anything at all. But no words come, so he reaches out, touches them and waits. Jack doesn’t make a move to take them off, and Daniel wants to ask how Jack is squaring this. What does it mean that Jack will love him this way while keeping them on?

Jack says nothing, just breathes, not at all steadily, in and out, and Daniel watches the rise and fall in fascination. He feels Jack’s heart beating through his fingertips.

The tags are just pieces of metal edged with rubber. Daniel doesn’t know what they signify to Jack. But he does know they’re a part of Jack, a part of who he was and is. Will always be. So Daniel leans down and kisses them, lips touching metal and skin, both warm to the touch, one soft and yielding, the other hard and uncompromising. But it’s still Jack. His Jack, now, he thinks. And Jack lets out a soft, “God,” that’s both anguish and delight.

“Jack,” Daniel whispers, infusing the word with love and understanding. “God, Jack.”

Jack briefly cups Daniel’s cheek then lowers himself to the bed. Daniel follows suit. Jack gets rid of his boots, fumbling with the laces and laughing nervously at his lack of dexterity.

They unbuckle pants, remove briefs, and Daniel removes his T-shirt, then they move together on their sides in a gloriously long slide of naked warmth.

The touch of bodies is electrifying, and Daniel closes his eyes, wanting to experience this moment through touch rather than sight; pure, clean tactile response. Jack’s body is all planes and angles, there’s no softness and the rasp of chest hair on Daniel’s smooth skin is so shocking that he gasps aloud.

Jack pulls back and Daniel opens his eyes, sees uncertainty in Jack’s, but Daniel just smiles. “It’s good. So good,” he whispers.

And then there’s no talking at all, just hands on skin, mapping, learning, reveling in the contact. And there’s kissing, kiss after kiss, delving and exploring until their lips are swollen and soft.

Hungry now for more, Daniel pulls Jack on top of him and Jack stops again, pushed up on stretched arms, his eyes asking, ‘Is this OK?’ And it is. It’s more than OK. It’s perfect.

When Jack lowers his full weight the full length of Daniel’s body, when their erections slide together, Daniel cries out with the joy of it. He’ll come soon, too soon, he knows, and he wants to warn Jack and say, ‘Sorry, sorry, wanted this for so long, I can’t stop this …’

But Jack is covering him, and there’s no room in his thoughts for anything but the feel of their bodies moving together, the sensation of the pre-come slicking their cocks as they rub the length of their shafts, base to tip, again and again.

Jack is kissing his neck, forcefully enough to mark Daniel, and Daniel wants that, wants it so very much.

Yours, I’m yours, I always was.

Daniel is moaning with every full slide of their dicks and he grabs Jack’s ass with both hands, urging him closer, urging him on.

The joy of it is blinding. Stunning. It’s been so long since he’s been touched with love.

When Jack bites down on Daniel neck, when Daniel feels Jack’s cock grow harder and when Jack stills above him, eyes full of unshed tears and love, Daniel comes. Wave after wave of tremors rock him to his core as his semen spills in strong pulse after strong pulse. Jack grunts his completion into Daniel’s shoulder and lets out a long, “Aaaa,” that Daniel recognizes at once. The stifled noise in the night.

“Oh, god, uh, uh, uh,” Daniel moans, and closes his eyes. He clings to Jack, lets his mouth run and doesn’t care what he says. “So beautiful. I love you. I love you.”

Jack holds him close, shields his body from the cold air.

This time, it’s Jack who whispers, “It’s OK,” nose nuzzling the side of Daniel’s face. And it is, Daniel thinks. It is. Because now he knows what it’s like to hold Jack when he comes.

It’s everything.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/108508

Edited Date: Mar. 3rd, 2012 01:49 pm (UTC)

From:

From:

freyasboy - Date: Mar. 7th, 2012 07:40 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

From:

sid - Date: Mar. 5th, 2012 04:43 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Excerpt from 'Shades of Don Ho'

From:

antares_dw - Date: Mar. 6th, 2012 09:35 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Excerpt from 'Shades of Don Ho'

From:

sid - Date: Mar. 6th, 2012 10:00 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

paian

This is the abbreviated form of the three little words, and it's in an unconventional pairing-friendship fic, but it's one of my favorite ILU exchanges between the two of them ever:

"You always forget about the time difference, Daniel," Jack says, dryly. Amused; tolerant. Familiar.

"Still. I shouldn't have called; I just had to laugh at that with you before I forgot. Go back to sleep, okay? I'll call you in the morning."

"Okay," Jack says. If Daniel hadn't already realized he'd woken Jack, that would have cinched it; the only time Jack was that sweetly agreeable was when he was already three-quarters gone. "Sleep well. Love you."

"Love you too," Daniel says, and hangs up. Across the country, he knows, Jack has gone back to sleep with the phone still in his hand, stretched out across the pillow, waiting for the dawn.

--From Not with a Bang by

synecdochic.

From:

paian

I know I posted a snippet of another Brighid fic during

jdjunkie's birthday bash, but I'm not sure whether I posted something from this one too. It is quite perfect for this fest, though, and Brighid's fic is worth a dozen repetitions.

"You know, they have something resembling food in the mess, Daniel." Jack took the plate from his hands, then the glass when they reached the foot of the bed. He set them down on the low dresser that doubled as Daniel's bedside table. "You can even take it back to your office." He pulled Daniel's jacket off, then his glasses.

"Yeah. It resembles food. Doesn't taste like it, though,' Daniel grumbled. "You took my cookies."

"I'm getting you naked, you idiot. It's hard to get you naked when you're making like the Cookie Monster, okay?"

"Naked and cookies sounds pretty good, actually," Daniel said musingly as Jack tugged down his pants. He knew he should be helping, but Jack like this -- slightly pissy and mother-hennish and all bed-warmed and rumpled -- it was sort of cute. In a pissy, mother-hennish way. "Though I think the crumbs would itch."

"For crying out ... Daniel, take off your own damn shoes, get your ass in bed and get some sleep!" Jack pushed him to sit on the bed. "For a smart guy you're a real idiot sometimes."

When Daniel was under the covers Jack reached over, snagged the last cookie and the last swallow of milk. "Why the hell aren't you a diabetic, anyway?" Jack grumbled. "And why isn't your ass fat?"

"Love you too, Jack." Daniel thought maybe he should get up and brush his teeth but he was already mostly asleep.

***

Coffee under his nose made him open his eyes, and it was just *wrong* to wake up when there was no sun but the coffee was hot and strong and, yeah, the beans from the airtight can had been used.

"You drooled, there are cookies crumbs all over the bed and how the hell did you get that dry erase stuff up your nose, anyway?" The words were annoyed, but the fondness underlying them was familiar. Daniel reached blindly for the coffee and ignored Jack's version of "good morning, sweetheart." It meant the same thing, anyway.

...

From:

jdjunkie - Date: Mar. 5th, 2012 05:17 pm (UTC) - Expand

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From:

sid - Date: Mar. 5th, 2012 05:25 pm (UTC) - Expand

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paian - Date: Mar. 10th, 2012 10:44 pm (UTC) - Expand

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paian - Date: Mar. 5th, 2012 08:03 pm (UTC) - Expand

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jdjunkie - Date: Mar. 6th, 2012 11:04 am (UTC) - Expand

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From:

sid - Date: Mar. 6th, 2012 02:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

paian

I hesitated in posting this even after I grabbed the text, because this is the gut-rippingest moment of a gut-ripping fic, but it's an extraordinary fic and the excerpt on its own is (of course; it's Salieri) beautiful and beautifully in-character.

Jack kept his back to the 'gate and watched Daniel dial home instead. Daniel was back-lit by the setting sun so that his outline enclosed a blankness and his shadow folded, sharply-etched, over the DHD and onto the polished stone of the 'gate platform. Then there was that familiar plunging rumble behind Jack as the 'gate billowed open, and Daniel's shadow split into three, four, wavering and shimmering in all directions around his feet as he came to climb up the stairs.

Just in front of the event horizon, Daniel stopped him, squeezed his arm tightly, then raised his hand to rest on the side of Jack's face. His eyes were still too blue, too steady.

Leaning in, Daniel kissed him slowly, opened him and breathed into him. "I love you," he said against Jack's lips, and Jack's gut twisted.

"Daniel," Jack said, his voice low, suspicious, his fingers fisted in the sleeve of Daniel's jacket. "What did you do?" He jerked away from Daniel's attempt to kiss him again, but didn't let him go. "I swear, Daniel, if I walk out the other side and you're not with me I will find my way back here and fucking kill you myself."

Surprisingly, Daniel laughed. "You know, you could just say 'I love you, too.'"

Jack stared at him for a long time, watching the 'gate's glow reshape his features, shadows and liquid light playing across the suddenly unfamiliar planes of cheek and forehead. While Daniel waited patiently, the smile faded from his lips but stayed in his eyes. "Okay," Jack conceded, grudgingly. "And I love you, too."

Turning, they stepped through the 'gate, Jack's fist still clenched in Daniel's sleeve.

--From Context by troyswann

From:

From:

paian

This is from another work-in-progress. The whole wip starts here. They've already said 'I love you' a couple of times in wordless exchanges at this point, but not out loud.

---------------

"Daniel," he said again, almost moaning it, trapped in a thicket of lines he wasn't supposed to cross -- and then, "Fuck this. Fuck this," as he swept Daniel's hands out of the way and stepped forward and pulled him in so hard the impact ran down his chest into his legs.

Daniel said, "Oh god," a raw gasp of pure relief punched out from the diaphragm, and gripped him instantly, the panicked clutch of someone drowning, arms locked around his rib cage, a crushing squeeze of muscle. The clinch said I can't stand what I did to you and god Jack I'm so sorry and promise me this will be OK and half a dozen other things Daniel wouldn't say, or couldn't say right now, or knew better than to ask for because soothing promises were always a lie. But it said tell me I didn't do something catastrophically wrong, too. And that Jack could do without lying at all.

"Listen to me," he said, mouth hard up against Daniel's ear. "Listen to me, Daniel. Your solution saved lives. Your solution worked. We'll do it step by step, I promise -- we'll lay out the what-ifs, one by one, start to finish, we'll do that, I promise you. But don't stop trusting yourself because you think you made a mistake. You didn't."

"I had no conception of what I was asking you to do."

"It's not analogous."

"It might be. I might be just as blind about this."

"There always might be something we don't know. You do your best with the information you have." He tried to pull back to see Daniel's face. "Come on, Daniel, you know this -- "

"Don't let go."

"I'm not." I wanted to look at you. You want to hide, that's OK too. All these years standing side by side looking out; face-to-face was hard to face up to, in this close. Maybe it was easier for Daniel to listen, this way. He was starting to listen -- with his ears and maybe his body, too. "You had no way of knowing what Egru would do. Finding out, that's what fucked with my head. Not what we did."

"Of course it was what we did."

"It's what I did because I didn't know what happened." Daniel's body, tight against his, was warm and strong, slimmer in the hips and broader in the shoulders but a perfect fit in every way that mattered. "Do you feel this? Do you feel how right this feels? I'm not hard here, I'm not on the make here, I just -- " In for a penny, in for a pound, in for the whole stake, jackpot or bust. "I love you. I choose this. Us, you and me, together, come what may. I am not gonna change my mind."

There was a long silence. The emphasis in his words hung in the air after the sound was gone.

"I love you too," Daniel said, after a while. The delivery was stating-the-obvious dry, a chiding we've established that, but it was the conversational tone that eased the knot in Jack's belly. "Ergo, I'm as reluctant to expose you to this pressure and this risk as I am to suffer the consequences if it's too much for you."

There was the Daniel he was used to. Wry, overerudite-and-well-aware-of-it Daniel. He wanted to offer regular old Jack in return, but he couldn't think of anything dumb or pithy enough to pass, so he just said what he was thinking: "I'll take reluctant over no-way-in-hell."

From:

From:

paian - Date: Mar. 10th, 2012 10:50 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

discodiva76

Still keeping up with this, just....now got my own recovery and a poorly hubby to take care of, so energy levels not conducive to fic reading at the computer - because OF COURSE my effin' EReader's gone bye bye!!...harumphs!!....if I hadn't got this fandom to keep me going, I'd have gone bye bye too......keep it up guys...this woman's going mad here!!!

Mad I tell ye, mad!!!!!

From:

sid

I was thinking of keeping this open for an extra day since I've been mainlining Downton Abbey all weekend instead of writing J/D.

Maybe we'll come up with a few more fics for you to read when you're up to it. :-)

From:

paian

Daniel cast glances sideways, at Jack-not-in-Jack's-body, and thought of Jack as he'd first known him: the long, loose-limbed length of him, the rangy stride, the mussed hair, the dark, watchful eyes. He spent a minute fetishizing the girl version of that Jack: BDU pants with a gun belt slung low on her hips, black tee. Thigh holster, yeah. Daniel realized he'd been still for several minutes, caught googly-eyed and day-dreaming.

He refocused on the person in front of him. Jack banged his hip on the edge of the table as he turned, and plunked harder than usual as he sat down. Daniel realized abruptly that he'd been suppressing this all day. It took a genius, he thought, to hold two contradictory thoughts in the mind at once: Jack saw the humour in the situation, was milking it for all it was worth, enjoyed giving his colleagues a fright, but he was discombobulated, too, and, now that Daniel was looking, he could see that his muscles ached, that he was in fact locked in a body that did not move the way he had needed and expected it to move for more than fifty years. He looked tired and dismayed and awkward.

He suppressed an urge to scoot around the table and fold Jack up in an embrace, because he couldn't imagine how to do it without feeling foolish and affected.

Jack O'Neill, in certain settings, was all performance, but he wasn't all gender performance. He didn't perform that masculinity, or if he did, it was self-conscious and ironic, a parody of himself. Daniel's mind flashed on the gag reel from Emmett Bregman's documentary: "My favourite colour is peridot." After a decade's worth of silly conversations in cargo holds and on long hikes, Daniel knew damn well Jack didn't have a favourite color, but if he had to choose, it sure as hell wasn't BDU green. The snark packed into that solitary little word, on the military, on masculinity, the entire circumvented essay on Jack's commitment to the former and performance of the later, was dazzling. Daniel had a reputation as the Mountain's go-to word guy. Taciturn Jack O'Neill put him to shame.

Daniel thought about his own self-presentation, his own body-history, and how it had wobbled and shifted over the years, tilting him increasingly toward a military stereotype. Back in the early days of SGC, it had been part practical self-preservation, and partly about gaining acceptance, and fitting into a tight-knit, insular little community nearly as bizarre, to Daniel, as the cultures he studied on the far side of the Gate. By the time he'd noticed the profundity of the change, he'd participant-observered himself into a corner. It was stupid, the mass of norms he'd normalized—the postures, the convoluted assumptions about speech and silence; when he caught himself at it, he stopped. But even now, even in private, the impulse was there.

"It must be love," Daniel informed Jack out loud.

Jack blinked in surprise, because that was one of the words they didn't throw around a lot.

"I was just thinking about how hot you were when I first met you, and what you would have looked like, like this...and how much I don't want to go back."

Never in a million years would Jack say, "Really?" out loud. He'd never let himself ask for that kind of confirmation, but Daniel read suppression of disbelief all over his face anyway, and responded to the need, not the verbalization. "Really. I...like knowing your body's history. I like having been there. Knowing things about you—about where you came from, and what you react to—turns me on."

Jack looked down at the table, absorbing that. "That's mutual."

From Good Morning, Penthesilea by stultiloquentia

From:

From:

lilyleia78

Here's a tiny snippet I cut from some other story. It seemed to fit and I wanted to play too. The scene is Jack telling Daniel about his reassignment to DC. Apparently while in bed.

“The move," Jack said,"it’s not forever. Give me some time – a month or two – to get things in order and pick a successor and I’ll retire”

Daniel said, “I’ll wait," pushed Jack back down onto the mattress and crawled on top of him.

Four months later, Jack was still in Washington and Daniel requested a transfer to Atlantis. Jack granted it with a note that said, “It’s not forever. I’ll wait.”

From:

From:

sid

Finally managed to dash something off! Silly muse.
~~~~

"This is never how I expected I'd react," Daniel confessed with a shaky laugh. "I'm still tingling in places I'd completely forgotten I had."

Jack opened his mouth to say something cocky about being just that good, but then his post-orgasmic haze lifted long enough for his brain to process what Daniel had just said. "Excuse me?"

Daniel looked taken aback. "What?"

"Not what you expected?"

"I… wow, did that come out wrong? I'm… Jack… this was fantastic. I mean, you know that, right? Or did you think I meant it was better than… that you were better than I expected? Or something? Um, I didn't have any preconceived…"

"'Never expected'?"

"Jack, all I'm saying is that I, you know, didn't expect to, to have my spine melted, ah, to quite this extent. And that's not about you, it's about me. What, uh… oh, come on! Why are you staring at me like that? Have I suddenly started speaking a foreign language? What are you not getting?"

"Oh, I'm getting it, all right."

"I don't think you are."

"You had expectations. You've thought about this, many a time, and there was a way that you expected it to go."

"Um, sort of."

"You've been expecting this to happen?"

"Wh… wh… ah. Yes?"

"Since when?"

"Since always? Since… I'm shocked that it took us this long?"

"And I'm… shocked to hear that. See, this, this thing, this is new."

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is."

"Is not."

"It is."

"Not. What are you saying?"

"Daniel, I am saying that if you imagine that we have been heading towards this particular moment… that happened a few minutes ago… for years and years…"

"Why are you denying it?"

"I'm denying it because it's not the case."

"Yes, it is."

"Daniel, don't start that again."

"Jack."

"Daniel."

"If you are going to try to convince me that this, this thing has suddenly sprung into being in the last week and a half, you are never going to do it, so don't even try!"

"No need to raise your voice."

"Argh!"

"We obviously have a differing perception of how long this… thing has been going on. I apologize if I got snippy with you. I was surprised."

"Well, I'm surprised, too, Jack. Because that would change everything that I've believed for the last five years or so."

"I can see where that might be a problem."

"Ha. Yes."

"Look."

"What?"

"We're… here now. On the same page. We just rattled each other's teeth."

"Yeah, that was good. I'm really missing how good that felt."

"And, hopefully, will feel. Going forward."

"Apparently we don't have a past, so that would be the only way to go."

Jack stroked Daniel's arm. "Does it matter that much?"

Daniel puckered his brow. "If I could misread you that badly…"

"I'll make it easy for you. I'll spell it out." Jack cleared his throat. "I love you."

Daniel's eyes widened, his jaw dropped.

"That work for you?" Jack asked gruffly.

Daniel nodded, his lips curving into a smile.

"Good." Jack moved in for a kiss.

"But I still say…"

"Shhh."

From:

From:

sid - Date: Mar. 8th, 2012 11:17 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

paian

The MALP had sent back no indication of seismic instability, but they hadn't been in the little one-room temple for five minutes when tremors rippled up the ornate walls, and the marble floor did a shimmy that left Carter and Teal'c plastered against two faces of a support column, and Jack and Daniel clutching at opposite sides of the console in the middle of the room.

I love you rang in Jack's head, clear as a bell, in Daniel's voice. They were staring straight at each other. Daniel's lips hadn't moved.

It wasn't a we're-going-to-die moment. It wasn't a bad quake. Jack had barely drawn breath for the order to evacuate the potentially crumbly structure to the expanse of flat ground outside when the shaking stopped. He was still staring at Daniel. Daniel mouthed the start of a question, You'd wha--?, then shut his mouth with a harsh exhale.

Daniel looked down at the console. Jack looked down too. They simultaneously snatched their hands away. Jack looked up at Daniel.

"It said ... something," Jack said. "In your voice. In my head."

"Yeah," Daniel said. He didn't look up. "Here too."

"In my voice."

"No, in my voice, Jack, that's why I'm startled, because I never verbalize thoughts in my own voice in my head."

Jack almost never verbalized thoughts in his own head, but Daniel was delivering sarcasm on automatic, intent on decrypting some symbols on his side of the console, so instead of verbalizing that, Jack said, "What."

"'One Truth,'" Daniel translated, reaching around for his video recorder. "I think. Just let me -- "

"Not 'One Big Honkin' Shield Generator'?" Jack said. The waist-high device might just barely be portable, and had a fair likelihood of being rubble if they tried coming back for it later, but he wasn't violating protocol to bring it home without at least a PRESS HERE TO ARM GOA'ULD-ZAPPER sign.

"Well, I don't know, I mean these look a lot like one of the Gadmeer's syllabaries but without more referents I can't be -- "

"Carter?"

"I couldn't even hazard a guess in under an hour, sir."

"That's it, then," Jack said. "Daniel, dial us outta here before the aftershocks kick in."

Daniel protested that it would only take him ten minutes to record the inscriptions on all the columns, Jack retasked the dialing to Carter, and they went through with Teal'c working the MALP remote and Jack hauling Daniel backwards by a backpack carrystrap while Daniel panned around the place with his camera.

"So this thing you thought at me," Jack said later, over sandwiches and fries at the mall food court where it was safe to talk during off hours because the staff cranked the music too high when there were no customers to complain. "You wanna maybe elaborate on that?"

"Do you know what you thought at me?"

"No, but I don't think so much in words, and you do, so I figured you did."

"Well, I don't."

"OK, then, so: I'd what?"

"What?"

"You started to say 'You'd what.'"

"What you heard in your head was 'You'd what'?"

"You answered 'You'd what' to whatever I said. Thought. Whatever."

"I didn't answer. I didn't say anything."

"I read your lips."

"You don't speech-read well enough to make out a dental stop."

"You don't know that, and I know what I saw. I'd what?"

"I'm not going to tell you what I heard."

"Why not?"

"I'm going to forget I heard it."

"Tell me and then forget." At the sour face Daniel made, Jack tried, "Was it something offensive?"

Daniel blinked at him. "You're actually a little worried that it was."

Daniel probably heard 'offensive' and thought 'insulting,' and what worried Jack was that it was some unfiltered feed from the id, but as long as they were in the ballpark he didn't have to get more specific. "Kinda."

"That's really heartwarming, Jack."

"I don't mean it like that. I can't be concerned that some alien gizmo misrepresented my remark? Hell, you didn't piss me off until I told you to dial."

"It wasn't a big quake and we had at least a few minutes before any aftershocks."

"Right, because all planets behave the same way and you're a plate-tectonics expert."

"I minored in geology."

"That was seventeen doctorates ago, and next time I give you an order, you bitch at me while you carry it out."

Daniel saluted him with a French fry.

"Shouldn't I get a rebuttal if the thing took something out of context?" Jack said, and ate the clump of fries he'd stolen while Daniel's hand was up too high to intercept.

"You should forget about it, because we don't know for sure what that was. Maybe it wasn't actually thought projection; maybe the device just makes stuff up."

"In the other person's voice?"

"It could have sampled our voices from things we said before the quake hit."

"What the hell's the point of that?"

"Maybe it's a game. It delivers random messages and people supply the meaning. Like fortune cookies and horoscopes."

"Magic Eight-Ball says you don't want to believe whatever the Freaky Foosball table broadcast in your brain."

"You said yourself that it might have misinterpreted. Even if it could read our minds to some degree, its makers might not have been anything like us. Who knows what kind of garble it made out of human neural activity."

"Now, now, no need to be bitter. You're still the galaxy's best non-mechanical translator."

"Who knows what kind of garble I made out of that inscription, since somebody didn't give me half a chance to look at the others."

"I heard a complete, grammatical sentence. Not a garble."

With a winsome smile, Daniel said, "Of course you did, if it came from my brain." He scooped up some fallen tuna salad with his last hunk of bread, popped it in his mouth, and said in a chewy blur, "I'm requisitioning some kind of LevelCam, by the way. That footage I shot was a mess."

"C'mon, don't you want to know what you thought at me?"

"I didn't think anything at you. Assuming the device can read and transmit thoughts, it grabbed some kind of concept and verbalized it to you."

"And you don't care what."

"If it was anything like what was going through my conscious mind, it was along the lines of 'Holy crap earthquake are we safer in or out can we dial out while this is happening would it take too long to try' and something -- hold on to your hat -- about watching and listening for instructions from my team leader."

"Good," Jack said firmly. "But that wasn't what I heard. And judging from your response, what you heard wasn't evacuation orders or a word-for-word rendition of an attempt to calculate safe clearance by the height of the structure."

Daniel shrugged.

"I can't believe you don't care."

"I'm curious, but whatever it was, I don't want you to give me shit about it, so I don't want you to care, so no. I preemptively don't care." He picked up Jack's cup. "You want a refill?"

In the truck, chauffering Daniel because his car was in the shop and Carter's place was on the other side of Peterson, Jack said, "That footage you shot wasn't useless, was it."

"Nope," Daniel confirmed.

"You know I'm only gonna find out when I read your report tomorrow."

"I redacted the content of what I heard in my head."

"I mean the device's function. The temple's purpose. Whichever."

"The temple's a security checkpoint and the device is like a polygraph. Ascertains and relays the gist of travelers' intentions towards the local parties also touching it, reassures the travelers that they're safe and welcome. I still don't know if it works accurately on humans, and I can think of various ways to game the system, but it was late and I didn't dig too far into the details. It'll be Nyan's assignment tomorrow; I have to start prepping for that thing on Thursday."

"So it's a mental detector."

Daniel laughed, and it was good that they weren't hooked up to the thing right now, because Daniel probably shouldn't know how much Jack loved the sound of his laughter, or the satisfaction he took from coming up with a line Daniel really enjoyed, or how happy Daniel's briefest flares of happiness made him.

Or maybe the message in the tea leaves was that it was time to stop thinking that way.

They'd arrived at Daniel's building. Jack pulled up to the curb. When Daniel didn't release his seatbelt, Jack put the truck in park and took his foot off the brake.

Daniel switched the radio from jazz to pop vocals and turned the volume up. "We've been operating for years under a tacit agreement not to rock the boat," he said. "I don't need to know exactly what you heard to know that addressing it openly will rock the boat. I think you know it, too, and while it's been a fun evening, the game has to stop now. We both know the score. How the device rendered the numbers doesn't matter."

"You burp, you say 'Excuse me' to no on in particular and move on, huh?"

"For values of burp that equal private thoughts involuntarily relayed."

"You're willing to admit that we've been flirting for years, that there's a mutual thing going here that we've heroically backburnered for the sake of crown and country, but you'll do anything to avoid telling me how an alien machine phrased my abiding desire to get into your pants."

Daniel twisted towards him in his seat with Crazy-Eyed Frown Number Three, the one where his eye whites looked the whitest even at night under a broken streetlamp. "That's not what I heard. I thought it told you I wanted to -- " He rolled his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. "Oh my god."

"I love you," Jack said, and watched Daniel's eyes pop open, and roll to look at him sidelong, and narrow into a squint. "That's what I heard. In your voice. In my head." One truth, in three words the machine reckoned summed up a thing there weren't words for in all the languages in all the stars. "Mistranslation?"

"Nooooo," Daniel said slowly, suspiciously. He sat up when Jack put the truck in drive. "What are you doing?"

"Pulling into the no-headroom garage to see if this time it manages to sardine-can my truck." He waited for Daniel to threaten his life with his first name, then added, "And going up to your bedroom to get the end of that sentence out of you."

After a few seconds, Daniel said, "There are a lot of endings for that sentence."

Jack pulled into Daniel's parking spot. "I like the sound of that."

In the rucked sheets, laid bare by orgasm, Daniel stretched luxuriously under the swirl of Jack's fingertips through the warm slippery coating on his belly, and Jack said, "This rocking boat is pretty soothing."

"I thought the earth moved, personally."

"Oh, yeah. The earth moved all right." Jack leaned down and touched his lips to Daniel's and said, "I love you. That's my real voice. Whatever the other one said, that's what it meant."

Daniel opened his eyes and took Jack by the back of the neck to pull him down into a deep, sucking, tongue-driven kiss that left Jack sprawled on him full-weight, breathless and hungry. "You said you'd give up everything for me," he said, mouth hard against Jack's. "In my head, that's what the device had your voice say. Don't do that, Jack. Don't ever do that."

Jack pushed up to look at him, to face protectiveness so intense it verged on anger, Daniel's response to the fear of what Jack might sacrifice for this. "I won't have to," Jack said. "We'll find a way to have both. We'll make a way. You know that."

"Promise me anyway."

"All right. I promise. On one condition: that you accept what it means that I would."

Gradually, a little grudgingly, the stubborn anger faded from Daniel's eyes, and finally he smiled. "It means exactly what you said it meant."

"Yep," Jack said, and rolled onto his side to settle into the curve of Daniel's arm. "Best translator in the galaxy, bar none."