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The space was diffusely lit, almost dim around the cone of light in the center. Inside the cone of light, which had ritual significance -- the light of justice illuminating the transgressor -- Jack hung on chains, at the length of his own arms. Resting his knees, Daniel supposed. If he'd been dozing, the sound of the heavy door opening and then closing would have woken him.
"Jack, it's me," he said quietly, to Jack's back. They'd faced him toward the wall away from the door, which was a viewing wall, made of something like dark, synthetic glass. Though not mirrored, it gave back a matte reflection, but because the door was directly behind Jack, Jack's body blocked the reflection of Jack's face, and Daniel hadn't taken the step to the side that would make them visible to each other.
Jack went tense, planting his feet, pushing himself up straight. "No," he said.
"The time limit is one hour. That's about forty-seven of our minutes. Sam's still trying, but we all did everything we could. Teal'c offered to take the punishment in your place, and when they refused he tried to force it, and they took him hostage. He's OK, but if Sam can't stop it, then either you suffer the punishment or they kill Teal'c."
There was a silence of maybe thirty seconds. Then Jack said, "Get out. Do what you can to help Carter. In forty minutes send that other guy back in here and tell him to make it quick."
"This is what I can do, Jack. He was coming in to do it. I talked them into letting me do it instead. I can't leave until it's done. Or until Sam gets us out of here. Whichever comes first."
"Lay off the double entendres, huh?"
"That wasn't a joke. I'm not joking."
"Neither am I. Get out, Daniel."
"I told them it would be worse for you if I did it. I told them that suffering this from a subordinate would be an unspeakable humiliation. It took some persuading. I'd appreciate it if you gave me a little help putting the lie to it."
"No, Daniel. Didn't they teach you that no means no? You must've had some sensitivity training somewhere along the line."
The more Jack talked, the more voice he lost. Daniel swallowed, reflexive sympathy. "I have a bottle of wa -- "
"Stay where you are."
"OK," Daniel said slowly. Jack didn't want to be softened up with a kind hand or an offer to ease what had to be pretty serious dehydration by now. He wanted to stay armored to get through this; he'd been through it before and that's how he survived it then. Nothing Daniel would say as worried friend was going to penetrate those shields. "Let me put it to you this way, then. That guy, who's supposed to carry out the punishment? His dick is literally half again the size of an average human male's, which is to say mine. That may not sound like much but it's not something you can take without working up to it. They want you torn, Jack. For his own sake he gets to use lube, but they wouldn't accept any substitutes from me, which means you get ruptured and you get an alien substance up your ass and probably in your bloodstream, in addition to whatever STDs the guy carries and any sepsis from the damage. He's supposed to damage you. If he fucks you to death, it's tough luck that you couldn't take it. I, on the other hand, am two-thirds his size, squeaky clean, and a nice considerate guy. And I have Vaseline from the good old US of A. I know" you were sodomized in prison in Iraq and I know "that taking it up the spout from me is not high on your life list, but in this case I think we can honestly agree that it's not the last thing in the world that you want to happen to you."
There was another silence, longer this time, maybe forty seconds. Then Jack said, "It won't work, Daniel."
"Why?"
Another silence. A minute ticked by. Then: "I can't tell you."
"You can't tell me why it's better to be brutally violated than to -- "
"I'm saying it won't work. It won't work, Daniel. Get out. Go do what you do. Talk them out of it. That's how I need you to save my ass, OK? Not like this."
"If I leave I don't get to come back in. It was a one-time offer and it wasn't contingent upon your acceptance."
Jack didn't answer.
Daniel said, "I won't force you if you refuse me. I'm not sure I could force you, restraints notwithstanding. But I will spend the next half-hour trying to talk you into it. That's all I can do at this point."
"Noooo," Jack said, with tight patience, "you can leave and keep trying the diplomatic approach. On them. Not me."
"Let me rephrase," Daniel said. "That's all I will do. I'm not leaving. When that guy comes in I'll do my best to incapacitate him to buy us some more time; maybe I can injure him badly enough to put him out of commission and his understudy will have a smaller dick. That's unlikely, though, on both counts. They know you're dangerous. I don't think he'll come in here alone." He sighed. "Will you drink some water now?"
"No." Jack let out a sound that was close to a groan, though he probably meant to release a harsh sigh. "Why can you never just take my word for things, Daniel? This won't work."
"Tell me why. Let me try to find a way to make it work."
He could hear the gears grind; he could hear Jack's teeth grind. Finally, after the longest silence yet, Jack said, "If I get pleasure from this, it's invalidated, right? That's an observation room on the other side of this wall. Probably the sides, too. They're watching. They'll know."
Daniel was silent for a moment, and then lamely echoed, "If you ... "
"If I get hard. If I god forbid come. Buys some time but in the end I still have to eat King Kong's schlong, right?"
"Well ... um ... no. I don't think so."
"You don't think so."
"There's only one strictly required element of punishment. You have to be penetrated the way they claim you penetrated that kid, and the guy penetrating you has to ejaculate into you. Their intent is for you to be physically damaged, but that's not in the letter of the law; I think the shift from justice to vengeance developed later, as the society lapsed into a more primitive tribal -- " He shut off the anthropology and said, "There's no stipulation about your ... response."
"You said they accepted the switch because it would humiliate me. Cultural taboo on our world. Damage to my honor as a warrior or some crap like that. How humiliated you think I'll look while I'm having a fucking orgasm, Daniel, huh?"
"Actually, I can work with that. I can tell them that you ... It doesn't matter. I'll spin it. It'll still work. And it'll keep you alive."
"Are you processing what I'm saying, at all?" Jack's tone was suddenly very, very weary.
Daniel bit down on anger, took a breath. "I'm interpreting what you're telling me so that it won't queer the deal with the powers that be."
There was a soft click, as though Jack had grinned, or tried to grin, with a mouth so dry that his lips wouldn't pull away from his teeth. "Listen to yourself, Daniel."
"Forty minutes. That's not enough time for whatever game you're playing."
"I'm not playing a fucking game!" Jack twisted in the chains, hard, as if he was trying to fling his body around to look at Daniel. Daniel hesitated, then stepped around to Jack's two o'clock, put his own back to the corner where the viewing walls met. Jack didn't look as bad as he expected. No bruises, no cuts or scrapes. They hadn't beaten him. Daniel's stomach relaxed a little; he hadn't realized it was clenched. He also hadn't realized he hadn't looked at Jack's face until Jack said, "Look at me, goddammit."
I am looking at you, Daniel almost snapped; he'd run his gaze over every inch of Jack's body, checking for signs of abuse, anything he could address with the first-aid kit that was all they'd let him bring in with him besides the water and his clothes. He knew that the gaze he raised to Jack's, now, was angry.
"What can you tell them, Daniel? Spell it out for me. How will you explain it?"
Daniel frowned. That didn't matter; he had a basic formulation and it wasn't relevant, what mattered was getting this done so that no one else would come in and do it and Jack's idiot stubbornness was getting in his way.
Jack wouldn't give it up. "You said it didn't matter what you'll say. So it doesn't matter if you tell me, does it. What will you say?"
"It doesn't matter. Either that means there's no point talking about it, or that's a rhetorical way of telling you to let it go. In this case it's both." Daniel dropped the kit on the floor and started stripping down. Maybe being naked put Jack on the defensive; maybe this would equalize things. It would save time, although he hadn't planned on stripping completely because he thought it would be easier on Jack if he kept his uniform on, kept this on some kind of remotely business-like level.
Jack swore, looking away, and then looked back and said, in a low voice, "Tell me and I'll let you do this."
Negotiation. They were on the same side; they shouldn't be reduced to this. Daniel disconnected his mind from what he was saying, while he unlaced his boots and wrestled out of them. "I'll tell them that in the culture you come from, a warrior being on the receiving end of same-sex intercourse is one of the strongest taboos, and taking pleasure in it is even worse. I'll tell them that secretly you've wanted it all your life and you live in a terror of being found out. I'll tell them that responding sexually to me is even worse than being raped by me, because it reveals your most closely held secret. I'll tell them I didn't know until now because you hid it from me 'til this forced the issue, so I couldn't give them a heads-up." Some part of his mind screaming against the restraints he'd put on it, he said lightly, with a horrible attempt at a smile, "Creative, huh?"
Eyes unwavering, Jack said, "Real creative."
Daniel didn't meet the gaze directly. He occupied himself getting out of his pants and briefs, folding them on top of his jacket and shirt. "I'll tell them that when we go back to our world, your superiors will examine you physically and find out what happened, and you'll be stripped of your rank and ostracized. Your honor for the honor of the girl they claim you deflowered and sodomized. Well, her father's honor. That should just about compensate for the physical damage they don't get to inflict."
"And you don't even have to lie," Jack said, even more quietly.
"We're not having that discussion now," Daniel said. Not thinking about what he meant, letting his mind work it out down where he didn't have to engage with the information. "We'll think of something to put on the report. There's no reason for the infirmary to do a rectal exam if we don't raise any red flags. That's all damage control and we'll deal with it later." He looked up, met Jack's eyes. "Now I've told you. A deal's a deal. We have to do this now, Jack, or they're going to really, really fuck you up."
Jack turned his face away, his jaw going hard. "Wait the half hour. Put some clothes back on if you're cold or uncomfortable. If the cavalry doesn't come, then yeah. We'll do it your way."
Daniel was shaking, but from anger, frustration, tension, not from cold. The chamber was body temperature. It felt stifling. He leaned back against the forward viewing wall and crossed his arms, looking at the door. He conducted a dozen arguments in his head, his side and Jack's, and then said, into the long, tight silence, "You are a fucking idiot. You know that, right?"
"Because I'd rather be broken in half than out myself to you?"
"Yeah."
Jack took a deep, shaky breath. "It will humiliate me, Daniel. To respond to this. But it's because it's you. If it were Reynolds or somebody, no biggie. Get the job done, crack wise about it, get out."
Understanding seeped slowly around the finger Daniel had plugged desperately in the dyke holding comprehension back. "I doubt that Reynolds would be able to get it up for this. I don't suppose you've considered the implications of the fact that I haven't said that would be a problem for me."
"Sure I have. That doesn't surprise me. So you're bi. So am I. No big deal."
"If it were Reynolds or somebody, it would be a problem for me."
"Yeah," Jack said, after a long moment. "OK. I see."
"OK," Daniel said. "So now at least you're reassured that I won't be traumatically disgusted by having to do this. Do I have to assure you that I haven't engineered this as a way to get something I want?"
"No. I know you wouldn't do that."
"Good. OK. So we're OK. As OK as possible under the circumstances. We'll sort the rest out when we get back. Denial's worked for a long time, shouldn't be too much trouble to default back to that."
There was another long silence. Then Jack sighed, a "what the fuck can't be any worse" sigh, and said, "I've never done this, Daniel."
Daniel wouldn't have proceeded much differently, either knowing that or not knowing that. He couldn't decide if he was shocked at the revelation; he wasn't particularly shockable right now. In fact, he suspected that the way he felt right now was the way Jack felt most of the time on missions. He had a critically important objective and no interest in or mental space for tangents, digressions, irrelevancies. He was screening out what he knew would compromise his ability to meet the objective, refusing to respond. Emotions turned off. Or it felt like that; but he was shaking, in a temperate room that felt stifling. And there was a pain in his heart. Sympathy and rage. This was the violation: Jack being cornered into unthinkable admissions. But Jack had volunteered the information. So maybe, Daniel thought, his own pain was evidence that he was moved. He'd never felt so out of touch with his own interior condition.
He cleared his throat. "I have. It was a long time ago, but I remember how it felt to be penetrated. I've had anal sex with women. I know what I'm doing and I won't hurt you."
"I trust you with my body, Daniel. Just thought you should have the data."
What that meant was that it was Jack's way of saying yes, OK, we'll do this. He'd missed that. He had to focus here. Was it also Jack's way of asking him for information? He tried to think about what else Jack might need to know, and couldn't. Then he realized that what Jack needed to know was what was going on in his head. OK, he could reiterate all the thoughts he'd just had ... but they weren't what was really going on in his head. On the surface, yes, but not underneath.
Dammit, he didn't even want to think about what he was thinking about underneath.
Finally, reluctantly, he said, "I'm worried about recapitulating the trauma. I can't ... There's nothing I can do about that except hope it feels different for you. Hard to see how it could, but if ... Well, I hope you'll give me some verbal ... directions, indication ... tell me if there's something I can do to ... make it ... " He faltered, gave up. Make it less awful? How could anything make it less awful?
Jack started to say something, then stopped. He was silent a moment. Then he said, "When I said never I meant never."
Daniel blinked at him. Something like hope surged inside him, unsuppressible. "You weren't ... ?"
"All this time you assumed this happened to me before?"
Daniel came away from the wall. "Of course I did! Christ, Jack!" He groaned, and fell back. "Christ."
Jack waited a second, then said, "How 'bout that water now."
Daniel bent to get it, then stepped in to Jack, uncapped the bottle, held it to Jack's lips, tilted it up. Jack drank deeply. The sucking and the swallowing were unavoidably sexual. So was the gasp of relief when he'd gotten about half of the bottle down. Daniel lowered it while Jack breathed. His own cock was filling, slowly; the sucking and swallowing, the smell of Jack's skin and Jack's sweat, the nudity, the proximity. Jack's glance took in the fact with no visible reaction. Daniel lifted the bottle again; Jack drank the water down to two fingers left in the bottom, then blinked and tightened his lips. Daniel put the bottle aside.
"Time?" Jack said.
Daniel checked his watch. "Twenty minutes left."
"Let's get the show on the road."
"We've cut things closer than this."
"When we had to. We don't have to now. This is OK, Daniel. I consent."
Daniel reached down into his jacket again and took out a half-ounce tube of Vaseline he used as lip balm. "I can't prep you, Jack," he said quietly. When Jack quirked a brow at him, he smiled wanly and said, "Use my fingers. Put lube in you, stretch the anus to minimize the discomfort. That would be ... mercy."
"Not enough for that anyway, from the looks of it," Jack said, eyeing the small tube.
"It'll be enough to get me in," Daniel said. He looked down. "There will be discomfort, though. There's nothing I can do about that without being able to use my hands."
"I get it now. Don't apologize anymore."
Daniel moved around behind him. It felt like moving in one of those dreams where your limbs turn to lead when you're trying to run.
"And stop shaking," Jack said. "Makin' me nervous here." There was a warm smile in his voice that Daniel was vaguely ashamed to find soothing.
He looked at Jack's back, the long valley of spine, the soft hair leading down into the crack. Jack had a masculine ass; a straight ass. The strain in the muscles of his shoulders and arms was obvious, but at least they'd let him stand instead of hauling him up off the floor; Daniel supposed they had to, because he was tall by local standards and then he'd be too high to fully penetrate. His knees were slightly bent. His ankles were shackled to the floor, keeping his legs spread to shoulder width. There was a cruel beauty to his body like this. Daniel tried to focus on that, to get himself fully hard, but the cruelty superseded the beauty. He leaned in close and breathed deep, brought his lips to within a breath of Jack's shoulder, thick, smooth skin curved over bone.
"Talk to me, Daniel," Jack said softly. "Spanish or Italian, I can get by in those if they're listening. Farsi or Arabic if you have to."
"They don't speak English," Daniel said. "I don't really speak their language either. We communicated in writing ... " And you're delaying. Stop. "I'm taking the cap off the tube now, I'm just gonna slick up and then we can do this and you'll be out of here."
"You get hard off that snort of me?"
Daniel blinked, and laughed, then blinked again in amazement that he was laughing. "Sorry it was so obvious."
"You smell good," Jack said. Some kind of weird, awkward offering.
Daniel spread lube over his dick, taking extra care with the lip around the head and heavily loading the tip; Vaseline was good for that, a sexual lubricant would have been too light, too thin. "You smell like you," he said, simply. "It's a good smell." A smell of home and safety and rightness. He closed his eyes, swallowed.
"Did it feel good?" Jack said. "First time you did this?"
Daniel tossed the tube onto the pile of his clothes and put his dry hand on Jack's hip. They both twitched as skin met skin. His hand closed, squeezing so he wouldn't stroke. Just maintaining a control point. But the touch of flesh was charged, and warm, and reassuring, and erotic. "Yes and no," he said. "It didn't hurt. I was very aroused and I really wanted it. It felt ... amazing, up inside me. Amazingly good."
"But ... ?"
"Jack."
"But it turned out that wasn't your thing?" Jack persisted.
"But the intimacy ... disturbed me. I wanted sex and it was a lot more than that to the other guy. Can we talk about this later?"
"Will you? Talk about this later?"
"I promise I'll still respect you in the morning."
"I'm not joking, Daniel."
"OK. OK. Yes. If you want."
"OK."
"OK." Daniel took a breath, winced, bit his lip, and then blanked his features and stepped up close. "I'm gonna ... put it ... "
"OK," Jack said.
Daniel felt Jack's whole body fill with breath, then release halfway. He reached around with his dry thumb and pulled one cheek out, then positioned his penis with his hand. The head slotted into place. Jack was completely still, but his asshole contracted, then bloomed.
"I can't control that," Jack said, low and hoarse.
"OK, that's OK," Daniel said, pressing to stay in place. "Can you cock you hips back, just a little?"
Jack had enough play in his knees to do that, and the opening stretched just a little, and the angle came right.
"Try to push," Daniel said. "As if you're taking a dump. That'll open it. Then breathe out with it. When I get in. It'll be startling even though you know it's coming. Try not to clamp down. Breathe or push."
"OK," Jack said.
"Now," Daniel said. "Push."
He pushed, and Jack pushed, and he was in. He heard breath hiss out through clenched teeth, but Jack didn't clamp down. It was intensely tight and felt burning hot and not remotely sexual. He let go of himself and wiped his palm down his flank, his ribs, tried to wipe the Vaseline off on his hipbone so that he could grip Jack's hips with both hands. He almost said Hang on, just hang on a sec, and suddenly this seemed like nothing so much as --
"You know -- what this -- reminds me of?" Jack said, his voice so tight it sounded like ventriloquism, like no breath was moving through his throat.
-- that time they'd moved the old sofa down the stairs to Jack's cellar and got stuck on the turn --
"The thing with the -- couch. Remember?"
"Don't," Daniel begged, barely maintaining control of his face. "God, Jack, don't make me laugh, there's no way -- " He breathed deep and slow, three times. "How much does it hurt?"
"Not much," Jack said, in that voiceless voice, lying. Then his internal muscles fluttered, flirting with contraction, and his teeth clicked together and he gritted, "Don't pull out."
Daniel waited until he felt some give, inside Jack, and said, "I'm going to push again. Really slow. Try to ... work the muscles, work me into you. You'll feel it when it's right, I'll start easing in. If you need me to stop tell me to stop."
"Driving backwards," Jack said, as Daniel pushed, steadily, then push-eased, push-eased as he felt Jack's voluntary muscles get the idea.
"What?" Daniel said, intensely distracted.
"Driving a car backwards," Jack said, as if that made any more sense. "Hard -- to -- " He cut off suddenly, went silent. The muscles in his back seized.
"OK, on me? that's a bad spot," Daniel said, talking fast. "Right where it is now. Do what you were doing before, just keep doing that and we'll get past there OK?"
Jack's silences were his groans. He worked his ass on Daniel's dick -- with control that should have been surprising, except that he'd been trained in so many forms of physical control that it wasn't -- and Daniel pressed and eased, eyes half closed, feeling his way. The sense of cooperation made the word 'teamwork' go through his mind and a wild hysteria flutter through his belly; the sense of cooperation made him feel so poignantly bonded to Jack that his shutdown reflexes kicked in and he stopped feeling anything. Then his body started responding to the tight muscular rub. He became aware of himself penetrating, the slow-motion thrust, the primal sexuality of it. He became aware of Jack taking him into his body.
Arousal squeezed and swelled through his balls and he had to lock his throat on the sound that tried to come out of him as he gained another half-inch of headway into tight, slick heat. At the same moment, the inside of Jack's body changed completely. What had been strained and too tight softened and thickened. Jack's legs dissolved and he sagged. He didn't make the slightest noise, but his body said oh fuck that's good.
Daniel gave him more. He had no choice -- the watchers had to see full penetration, had to see his groin come up flush with Jack's ass -- but he knew how this felt and suddenly he wanted Jack to feel it, too, the intense sweetness of that deepest place. He'd allowed himself some hope that prostate stimulation would provide enough pleasure to offset the discomfort and revulsion of this act that he'd believed would be a violation no matter how careful he was and no matter the alternative ... but Jack's body was responding the way his own did, responding to being filled in a place so deep that you didn't even know it had nerve endings, you didn't know it could feel anything at all. He could give Jack a pleasure that Jack hadn't known existed, or had only imagined, in some hindbrain place that knew enough to long for this but could only guess at what the reality would be like.
Daniel pressed in until he was flush up against Jack, until he was touching that deepest, most intimate place. Jack had gone still, soundless, breathless. Daniel moved in him -- tenderly, deeply, a soft subtle undulation, barely movement at all. Jack's body quivered. A soft, short, nasal whine came from him, like the squeak of a shoe taking the weight of someone whose life depended on keeping silent, and his ass spasmed.
Daniel bit down on his own molars, crushed his eyes closed, gripped Jack's hard hipbones. Jack's orgasm squeezed him in fast throbs, and after all the slow intensity that was all it took -- Jack's hard, masculine ass uncontrollably squeezing his dick. In the dead silence of the chamber, he heard Jack's come spatter -- floor, maybe wall. He went weak with awareness of filling Jack with his own, ejaculating deep in Jack's body. He opened his mouth and tried to release his breath without sound. It bathed the skin at Jack's nape. Jack shuddered from shoulders to thighs.
Gradually the last of the orgasm subsided. Daniel's vision cleared. His hands had gone lax on Jack's hips; they tightened again now, reflexive impulse to keep Jack still, keep Jack on him 'til he'd softened. He wanted to lift; his own arms ached in sympathy for the pain in Jack's and he wanted to ease Jack's pain and he couldn't. His knees were locked; he bent them a little, with care and an effort of will, dimly remembering something Jack had told him once, that you'd pass out if you locked your knees when a superior officer kept you at prolonged attention. He was astonished to hear Jack's soft "Good. Yeah." As if Jack had felt what he was doing and wanted to warn him but couldn't get the words out but then Daniel fixed it and that was good.
He heard noise back beyond the door, and felt something like panic, adrenaline crashing through the endorphins in his bloodstream.
Jack's weight came back onto his legs and he said, "Out, Daniel."
"It's too, I'm still -- " Daniel was helpless against the sounds of the door being unbolted. God damn it --
"Now. Before they yank you out."
It was an order. Daniel couldn't bring himself to obey it. He was still too hard, and Jack's ass was soft and tender after the orgasm. It would hurt. "Wait," he said, over the groaning scrape of the heavy door being hauled open, "wait, let me get -- "
Jack dismounted from him with a growl and a rough, spastic jerk of his hips, body arching. Daniel cried out in surprise and groped at him, trying to catch his body on the backswing, trying to balance without dragging at Jack's arms -- trying to stop what had already happened, make it not have hurt.
The next thing there were guards surrounding them and he was immobilized and someone was checking his dick and diplomacy deserted him and he snapped off a groin kick that sent a sharp pain through his bare shin but left the guard on the floor curled around his hard leather codpiece. Two other guards had Jack's legs -- crouched down to wrap around his thighs and knees because they knew the anklets wouldn't hold him open or still -- and someone in the robes of an official was bending forward with some kind of instrument --
Daniel snapped an elbow up into the jaw of the guard with too loose a hold on his right arm, wrenched himself around to deliver a palm strike to the other's face, then took two steps forward and spun the official around and down into a headlock. He heard guards and Jack grunt as the official stumble-slammed into them. The whole assemblage of bodies swayed.
"I'll break his neck," Daniel warned as other guards shifted forward, and the tone in his voice froze them, even though he'd spoken in English and he had no idea how to make good on his threat. He looked down at the official, red-faced and flailing. "You, no," he said, in their language. He had basic pronouns and maybe five verb infinitives. And the word 'no' -- good they had one of those. "To do. I."
The man choked out a few words. "You are" and then something scornful that probably parsed close enough to "untrustworthy." Then "The punishment" and a negative construction, something like "hand of purity never not replaced in strange," and then something so idiomatic that it was hopeless.
"What's the problem, Daniel?" Jack said, tight and quiet.
"I don't know, it's -- like a dipstick or something, probably to prove I came into you, I don't see how it could possibly -- "
Jack said, "Let 'em check the oil."
Daniel understood then. It had to be the official's hand doing the checking; the stranger's hand was suspect. "To see," Daniel said to the official in their language. "I, to see." The man waved the tool around a little, then finally lifted it high enough and held it still. Something like a clear applicator with a plunger; shielded the swab until it was up deep enough, then checked for -- what, pH, glucose? The swab retracted then for clean withdrawal. It looked like a Q-Tip. To do any damage with it, the guy would have to jab it very hard and at an angle, and blood would skew the results.
"It's like a cotton swab with an applicator," he told Jack. "I think it's OK but if he -- "
"Do it," Jack said.
Daniel turned the official, keeping him in the lock. He watched him push the applicator in; it looked careful and straight and Jack didn't twitch. When it was two-thirds inserted, Daniel jerked his grip tight; he had no words for "enough" or "far" or "deep" and he didn't have even a root form for "stop," but the choke conveyed the imperative. The official gingerly pressed the plunger, then pulled it back, and drew the applicator out as slowly as it went in.
Daniel let go of him. Guards swept in, got him in a good hold this time, determined and joint-straining. He heard but didn't see Jack released from the shackles. The official disappeared out the door. Three minutes later he reappeared and said a whole lot of stuff that Daniel didn't understand -- then, with a look of scorn, produced a sheet of paper with a statement already written on it: "The law has been followed to the letter, though not to justice. You may go. Your [a word he couldn't get without the dictionaries they'd provided before, but that he took to mean 'friends' or 'associates'] await you at the portal. Never return to this place." Daniel nodded. Attendants brought Jack's gear and the rest of Daniel's, dumped it on the floor. The guards let Daniel go. The room cleared, leaving them alone. The door was left open. Daniel balled up the sheet of paper and dropped it on the floor.
Jack was leaning on the viewing wall, arms hanging, forehead against the glassy synthetic.
Daniel fished through their stuff for handkerchiefs, grabbed a canteen and Jack's underwear, and went over to him. "Let me clean you up?"
"Yeah," Jack said. "Arms are kinda ... Yeah."
Daniel wiped and rinsed and dried the insides of his thighs, the crack of his ass. "Does it hurt to push?" he said, holding a cloth against the hole.
"Don't wanna know what'll come out."
"Nothing all that different from what usually comes out. Go ahead."
There wasn't much; they hadn't fed Jack in the two days of the trial. It cleaned up easily. Daniel tossed the soiled cloths aside for the locals to pick up. "Lift your leg," he said. "Boxers."
Jack lifted his feet one by one. Daniel slid the waistband up, then asked if everything was hanging OK, and Jack laughed -- it was a weary, breathy laugh, but a relief to hear -- and said, "Fine. It's fine. I'll do the rest. Just gimme a second."
"More water first," Daniel said. "Flip around." Jack rolled himself to lean back against the wall, and drank from the other canteen Daniel fetched. Then he closed his eyes and let his head fall back.
"Put cream on that leg," he said, without appearing to have looked at Daniel at all. "Before the pants go on. Neosporin in the kit."
Daniel slathered his scraped shin, then got dressed and geared up, and separated Jack's jumble of clothes, laid everything out for him. Jack sank slowly down the wall 'til he was sitting with his legs bent and his arms loose. His eyes were still closed. Daniel tried one of the radios, but they hadn't worked inside the structures here, some kind of shielding in the building materials, and he got nothing. He went and sat beside Jack, and closed his eyes too. He hadn't slept since Jack was arrested.
He startled when Jack's hand flopped onto his thigh.
"Pins and needles," Jack said.
"Progress," Daniel acknowledged.
Jack gave his leg something between a squeeze and a sloppy rub. He didn't say anything else. Neither did Daniel. After a while, Jack started dressing himself. Daniel lent a hand when asked. Slowly they got him geared up. He seemed to have his feet under him.
"I'm gonna say it was one of them," Jack said, quietly, when they were ready to leave the room. "If Fraiser notices something. If she checks. Asks."
"No," Daniel said. No fucking way. "I'll think of something."
"If you haven't yet, you won't," Jack said.
"I've had other things on my mind. Let me handle it, Jack."
Jack considered that. They were both looking at the door, not at each other. Daniel wanted to be away from this place so badly he could feel it in his skin.
"OK," Jack said, finally.
There was a but in it.
"But ... ?" Daniel prompted, so they could get out of here.
"I'm that other guy, Daniel."
Daniel's head snapped to the left. He frowned. "What?"
"The other guy. 'It was a lot more than that to the other guy.' That guy."
Daniel blinked at Jack's profile for what felt like a long time, maybe five or six seconds. One second for every year of history shifting position inside his head, shifting in its chains. Through Jack's stony profile he saw the shadows of what Jack was looking at, as if an opaque wall had gone translucent: recusing himself from command of his team, voluntary reassignment to the Alpha Site, because it was a lot more than that to him -- a lot more to him, he believed, than it was to Daniel.
"You're not that guy," Daniel said quietly. Fully aware of what his honesty could cost them both, and fully aware that there would be no more defaulting back to denial now. "You're who I wanted that guy to be. Ten years before I met you."
Jack turned -- his whole body, not just his head -- and gave Daniel a long, hard, searching look. He was drained, tired, pale, but his eyes were sharp, and he wasn't wasting time being surprised or looking for confirmation. He was reevaluating. He was revising the course of action that the metaphor of the other guy was meant to explain to Daniel, apologize for in advance. Daniel couldn't quite follow Jack's reasoning -- why unrequited love for Daniel would compromise his command to a degree where he'd remove himself from it, but mutual sexual attraction wouldn't, and hadn't with Sam; how mutual feelings, which seemed to Daniel to be a worse transgression and a more unbearable pain, would make Jack reconsider -- but Jack didn't follow Daniel's reasoning a good deal of the time either, and Daniel was starting to understand that the why, the deeper relational structure of personal logic, didn't matter to Jack the way it mattered to him. Not in these situations. Not in the field.
Daniel could see what was going on in Jack's head. He didn't understand it, but he could see it. He wanted to understand it, but that desire was irrelevant right now. What mattered, right now, was that Jack believed that this thing they'd now admitted was between them would be worth fighting for, if Daniel agreed. He needed to know where Daniel stood -- now, before they left this place -- and they had to get out of here and he wouldn't leave until he knew. Until he had his feet under him, Daniel realized. This room had tilted, as on a gimbal ring, out of the plane of their ecliptic. Jack wouldn't walk out until, one way or another, they'd found a balance, come to an agreement, gotten in step. For the first time, what Daniel was watching wasn't Jack making a tactical decision, but a critical, personal, emotional one.
It was extraordinary. It was beautiful, and it terrified him, and mesmerized him, fascinated him. But that didn't change the fact that they had to go, right now. And it was all irrelevant, all of it, because he had the answer Jack was looking for, and all he had to do was give it.
Yes. The risk is unconscionable, the potential damage is incalculable, but yes, I will give it a fighting chance.
He saw Jack read the answer in his expression, in his eyes. He gave Jack a smile, a small one that any remaining observers beyond the viewing walls wouldn't catch, a sadder and tireder one than he intended because he had a feeling there was an awful lot of pain ahead of them now, but a real one, a warm one. It said, We'll figure it out, Jack. It said, If there's a way to make it work, we'll find it.
"OK," Jack said. He gave a curt nod, on a kind of delay, and then said "OK" again, and "So."
"So," Daniel said. "Gate? Home?"
"Yeah," Jack said, straightening as he said it, releasing all the tension with the exhalation of the word, and turned for the door.
Daniel hefted their gear and came up next to him.
"That went well," Jack said, in a lighter voice, looking at the dark doorway, the long municipal hall beyond it, the gauntlet of hostiles beyond that, the team, the gate, the SGC, their lives. The lightness was a little forced, but the humor and relief were genuine and easy. "Torture doesn't usually end that well for me."
"Makes a change," Daniel said agreeably.
Jack took a breath, let it out. "You ready?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah. Now I am. Yeah."
They stepped through the doorway side by side.