Cameron Mitchell pushes himself and prods himself, sits up when all he wants is to lie down and props himself up when all he wants is to fall down. Day after endless day, from the bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to the PT bars, from the days when they have to keep him in the secured wing of the Academy hospital because he's babbling his guts out under morphine to the days when his momma's trying to get him to come back home to work out the last few months of his recovery. The months when all his damn determination will result in him walking or not walking, no way to tell, and Momma never says one way or the other, but he knows she's thinking: at least the house is already fitted out for a cripple, if it winds up that my boy lost his legs to the Air Force just like his daddy did.
Cam won't let it. He pushes himself and he drives himself, takes every lick and every lump without complaining, sucks it up with a grim determination until the nurses and the doctors and the physical therapists start whispering behind his back about how if anyone deserves a stroke of luck, it's him. He suffers through every last inch of it with as much grace and as much dignity as circumstances will let him have, and at the end of it, he stands on his own two feet -- three toes lost to frostbite, the shoe insets still new and rubbing the stumps raw -- and looks General O'Neill in the eye and on the level as he tells the General he's planning on opting for the handshake and the medical discharge to go along with his Purple Heart.
O'Neill opens his mouth, looking to talk Cam out of it, maybe. But something in Cam's face must convince him, because all he says is that the program's losing a good man. Maybe, Cam thinks, but he's done his time; he's given his all, and he's done his best, and he'd gotten lucky and luck like that only comes along once. And maybe, in the end, it's easier for him to finally know that no, he can't live up to what his daddy had done when he'd taken his lumps and come up swinging. Like finally scratching an itch he'd only been half-conscious of having.
He moves into a furnished second-floor walk-up in downtown Colorado Springs, over a tiny Thai place run by a family who seem to consider him their personal responsibility to feed after a few weeks. Close enough that he can make it back to the hospital for his twice-weekly appointments. Every time he trudges up the stairs -- slowly at first, then with gaining strength, gritting his teeth against the pins and needles of circulation that will probably always be uncertain -- he gives silent thanks for the simple fact that he can.
He'd thought he'd enjoy having nothing to do for a while. An extended vacation, a chance to get his head screwed on straight and examine his soul to divine what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He hadn't counted on the fact that he's been doing nothing for the better part of a year, had read all the books he'd always promised himself he would and had exhausted the already-limited supply of daytime TV, but everything he thinks of -- every option he can come up with, every classified ad he circles and comes back to and puts down the phone before he can call for -- leaves him feeling cold and numb.
Two days before he burns the last of his terminal leave, two days before his last chance to put the brakes on, he's sitting on the couch, telephone in hand and O'Neill's number on a scrap of paper in front of him -- changed my mind, General, or didn't know what else I could have done, or even just fuck it, you got me, now figure out something to do with me -- and there's a knock on his door.
When he opens it, a teenaged kid is staring back at him. "Mitchell?" the kid asks.
Cam frowns. "Yeah," he says. The kid looks familiar. Sounds familiar.
The kid nods, once. Shoves his hands into the pockets of the leather bomber jacket he's wearing and pushes his way past Cam into the living room. He looks around himself with what Cam recognizes as disdain; the cleaning service comes in once a week, but Cam's out of practice with keeping things neat. He spares a brief flash of who the fuck does this kid think he is, before the kid turns back around and pins him with a look that --
"Seems like you and I could help each other out," the kid says.
-- a look that Cam last saw looking back at him from the eyes of a one-star General.
It's crazy. It's impossible. Then again, a year before, Cam had spent fifteen frozen hours slowly dying in a downed plane made from scavenged alien technology, after having shot down alien ships bound and determined to invade Earth, so who's he to say impossible? The kid's seventeen, eighteen at most, but he walks like O'Neill and sounds like O'Neill. And he can't be O'Neill's son, because the brain living behind those old man's eyes has shaped the face into expressions no teenager should ever know.
"You don't exist," Cam says to the kid. Best to get the cards on the table straight up.
The kid's lips twist. "Yeah. That's what the old man would tell you. I'm Ja -- Jonathan Nielson. You can call me JD. And yes, I'm exactly who -- and what -- you think I am."
Cam grips the back of the recliner -- he'd forgotten to grab his cane when he got up, and he can get around for a little while without needing it, but the combination of shock and confusion is making his knees a little shaky. "How?" he asks.
"The Asgard. And yeah, I've got his memories, and yeah, it sucks about as much as you might imagine, and yeah, I really don't want to talk about it. And you're another one."
The pit of Cam's stomach turns over. He knows what the kid is -- knows, down with the part of his subconscious that reacts to the slimy things that crawl free when you turn over a rock. Clone. And the kid's saying -- no, Cam had been hurt in the crash, hadn't died -- but he'd spent so much of those first few weeks floating in and out of consciousness, would he have even known -- but no, they wouldn't have let him walk away from the program if he'd been --
The kid -- JD -- sees the panic starting to spread and shakes his head, quickly. "No. Not another clone. Another person who got fucked over and tossed out. And now you're looking for something to do with your life, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Cam says quietly. "But if you're looking for revenge, I'm not your guy."
JD shakes his head again, makes a quick slashing motion in midair with both hands. Paces back and forth, just a few steps. He's more vibrant than Cam's ever seen O'Neill be: constant motion, barely-repressed energy thrumming just under his skin. He strips off the jacket with a quick motion and tosses it over the arm of the chair. He's got a wifebeater on under it. Cam catches a quick glimpse of ink stretching blackly up JD's arms, sinuous curves twining up JD's biceps and disappearing into shadow standing out beneath the white of the tank top, before JD is stepping into Cam's kitchen.
"Revenge is stupid," JD calls back, and isn't that a surprise, because Cam would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that O'Neill understands vengeance more thoroughly than anyone else could. It makes him realize just how long ago JD and O'Neill must have -- separated -- for JD to have changed that much. Cam hears his refrigerator door open, and the clink, clink of bottles being shifted, the rustling of paper takeout bags. "I fucked up when I had them make my ID. I never planned to stay put where they put me -- Christ, like they could even think I'd stick around in high school, for cryin' out loud -- but I hadn't counted on the fact that I'm going to look this fucking young for another five, six years easy. Baby face. I need a partner. This pad thai still good?"
Cam feels a little bit like a hurricane's breezed into his apartment. He makes his careful way around the recliner, around the coffee table, and sits back down on the couch. "Leftover from tonight," he says, because he doesn't know what else he could say.
"Good. I'm starving." The sound of a drawer, the sound of cutlery; JD's making himself at home. He comes back out a minute later with the Styrofoam takeout container in his left hand, already open, fork in the right hand being used to stuff his face. The two opened bottles of beer he's holding between the fingers of his left hand clink together. He puts the fork in his mouth along with another mouthful of pad thai, shifts one beer to the hand it freed up, and passes it over to Cam. Cam takes it. "I need a partner," JD says again, around the fork and the pad thai. "My fake paper doesn't have me legal for another year."
Even this close, Cam can't quite tell what JD's ink means. It's stark and almost tribal, but not quite sharp enough; he can see what might be a stylized snake, and the curves of script that might be Farsi, and if he unfocuses his eyes a little, the sentences swim into focus as building hieroglyphs Cam can't read. Below the hollow of JD's throat, right at the center of his collarbone, the lines of script narrow down to a single sentence mirrored on either side, with an upside-down triangle circled by a halo in the direct center as punctuation.
"Partner for what?" Cam asks.
JD smiles. It isn't an unpleasant smile, not at all; it's sweet and angelic and, Cam thinks, almost heartfelt. But it sits on his face wrong either way: too old and knowing for the teenager he seems to be, and too free and unfettered to have ever come from O'Neill.
"You know computers?" JD asks.
Cam knows computers. Always a hobby, never to the point of being a marketable skill, but whatever JD's been doing for the two years since his "birth" (Cam worms a few more details out of him over the rest of the night's conversation), he's clearly been boning up. O'Neill's got a reputation for being the village idiot when it comes to technology. Either JD's a fast learner, or O'Neill's reputation is a useful smokescreen.
"Look," JD says, when Cam hasn't kicked him out after twenty minutes. "I've got the bike parked downstairs on the street. Lemme move it into the alley and get my stuff, then I'll explain."
"You can bring it up into the stairwell," Cam says. It's not the worst neighborhood, but it's not the best neighborhood either, and bicycles go missing.
JD gives him a don't-be-stupid look. "Motorcycle, not bicycle," he says. Then grins again, one quick flash. "And if they run the plates, they won't even find that it's stolen. Gimme five. You need anything from downstairs?"
It's the first time JD's said anything to imply that Cam's not completely capable of going up and down the stairs himself, but it's so offhand that Cam barely even registers it. "Naw," he says, and then realizes that the offer actually relaxed him, in some indescribable way. He hates it when people treat him as anything less than completely fully-abled -- hates having doors held and things fetched -- and that's why he stuck here instead of going home to his momma and his dad, but he hates it even more when people pretend that they don't see the cane, the last remnants of limp that he might never lose. JD isn't catering to him, but he isn't ignoring it, either. Just another fact: Mitchell moves slower than I do, so I'll run down the stairs if the stairs need running.
JD's back upstairs inside of ten minutes, carrying a battered old duffel that looks about as old as O'Neill. He lifts out a hard-shelled laptop case and kicks the duffel aside, forgotten, then throws himself on the couch next to Cam. The laptop, when he frees it from its case, is state-of-the-art; JD's fingers stroke the keyboard like a lover's curves. "So," he says. "The plan."
It's a good plan. JD's got software half-built already, flexible and extensible and tailored with a career military eye to the gaps in the military-industrial complex they always turn to contractors to fill. Cam's role will be learning enough to get up to the level of junior programmer (he's pretty sure JD doesn't need a junior programmer; JD just snorts and says take me twice as long if I do it myself) and being the guy who puts on the suit and tie for face to face meetings.
Cam's respectability, Cam's resume. The powers that be will listen more to a guy with a bunch of medals than they would to a teenager. He's strangely okay with that. The one thing JD is adamant about is that they will not go near Stargate Command. Won't even go near the Air Force; he's pitching GPS satcomm software first, intended for Naval carriers. Cam doesn't push.
Sixty-forty split on income for the first five years, in JD's favor; patents and royalties to be shared equally. Travel costs to come out of the operating fund they'll set up with the money from the first contract. After five years, they'll renegotiate. "I don't see us staying in milspec much past that, anyway," JD says. "I've got other plans."
"Which are?" Cam asks.
And there's that smile again. "We'll see. If it pans out. You in, or not?"
"Why me?" Cam asks. "You could pretty much have your pick of partners."
JD laces his fingers together, turns his palms inside-out, stretches them high over his head. The hem of his tank top rides up over the frayed waistband of his jeans, displaying a stomach Cam could probably bounce a quarter off of. "Yeah," he says. "But you got fucked over too."
"Stupid reason," Cam says.
"Maybe." JD shrugs and lets his arms drop. "Still why I picked you."
Cam won't argue; stupid or not, insane or not -- and this is plenty insane -- he's actually starting to get interested. JD's plan is solid; he's got projections, facts and figures, charts that show them with a living wage inside of six months and a comfortable living wage within a year. Cam's no computer genius, but his degree's in electrical engineering, and it shouldn't take him too long to catch up. (He wonders, for just a second, what O'Neill's degree is in, but he's already realizing it's best if he doesn't make reference to JD's former life.) JD's thought this through. Probably has been thinking it for a while.
"I'm in," he says. "You can crash on the couch."
It's easier than Cam thought it would be. That first night, he shuffle-thumps into the bathroom to take his nightly shower, strips off the t-shirt and sweatpants and socks and shoes he uses to keep himself from having to look at the ruin of what his body used to be, and he forgets until he's already made his painstaking way through his evening routine that he's given up the last place he has where he doesn't have to pretend he's all right, pretend he's normal and capable and doesn't need help at all. He's already halfway to his bedroom, holding up the towel he's wearing with one hand and thumping the cane along with the other -- with the weakness in his legs, without the shoes and their inserts, he needs it; the physical therapists tell him it might take years before he can walk barefoot and unassisted again. And he'd forgotten JD was there.
But JD only looks up from where he's settled on the couch, taking in all of Cam's scars and all of his twisted spots without so much as blinking, and says, "You need me to move my shit?"
Cam's searching his face for any sign of pity, any sign of sympathy, and there's nothing there, any more than there was earlier. It eases something. He's been playing "able-bodied" for his doctors and nurses and physical therapists and especially for his family, for the random people he passes on the street and everyone who sees him and can't look past the limp and the cane to see the man behind them, and he realizes, suddenly, that he doesn't have to play able-bodied for JD. Not at all. It's too easy to look at that angel face and forget he's not dealing with a kid after all. Jack O'Neill, he remembers, looked at him the same way. "No," he says. "You're fine where you are."
JD nods. "I get in your way, you whack me," he says, nodding again to the cane, and then turns half his attention back to the laptop's screen. With the other half, he says, absently, "Looks like that sucked a hell of a lot."
It surprises Cam how easy it is to say "Yeah. Yeah, it kinda did," and he's a little bit lighter when he gets himself settled into bed.
Mrs. Chaisorn, from the restaurant downstairs, starts doubling his takeout portions, and drops hints about how nice it is that Cam's brother came to help him out. Cam doesn't correct her. They look enough alike -- if you squint -- that it's plausible, and it's an easy enough explanation for why he's got a seventeen-year-old kid crashing on his couch. JD would actually fit in pretty well with Clan Mitchell, Cam thinks, and stifles a laugh at the thought of Momma and JD going toe to toe.
Over the next week, JD eats him out of house and home (faintly apologetic about it the whole time, but Cam remembers what it had been like to be seventeen and always feeling that pit in his stomach, and from the few things JD lets slip, Cam thinks he hadn't exactly been getting regular meals for a while) and falls upon Cam's beer like it's water and he's dying of dehydration. The laptop stays glued to his side; Cam even catches JD balancing it on one palm, eyes fixed on the screen, as he heads for the bathroom. Cam drops a grand on technical books at the Barnes & Noble and chews his way through C++ and Assembler, cursing the whole damn way.
And it's almost comfortable. Cam's used to bunking in two or more, and -- despite all the simmering energy -- JD doesn't take up much space in a room, like he can make himself so small and still he doesn't even register on the radar. It takes Cam a few days to put his finger on what's so familiar about it; back in Kosovo, they'd had a few guys drifting in and out, the guys who did the things that even Special Ops wouldn't touch. JD's got the same feel to him: when he's there, he's there, present and vibrant and alive. And when he's concentrating on something, it's like he just -- shuts it down. Ceases to exist as anything other than whatever he's concentrating on.
Cam realizes, after about five days in, that he's doing JD a favor, too. JD doesn't treat him like a cripple, but he's learned not to treat JD like a kid. One too many times of looking at a teenager's body and seeing the six decades of life living inside it. He barely even notices the packaging anymore.
His life, Cam thinks, has gotten steadily weirder since the day he said "yes" when the Groom Lake boys came calling.
JD's up every morning with the sunrise. They both are; old habits run deep. But JD doesn't specifically call attention to the fact that he disappears for an hour before breakfast and comes back sweaty. Ten mile run every morning, Cam figures, from how JD's dropped hints about his route: down Pikes Peak, up the railroad tracks, around Monument Valley Park, all the way up past the hospital and back again down Cascade, and he's back up the stairs and not even breathing too hard while Cam fusses in the kitchen to feed them both. Cam does his own exercises while JD's out. They aren't as sweeping as JD's, but they probably hurt a hell of a lot more.
It's nice, in some ways, to have someone else around. For one thing, Cam can start cooking again; never saw the point when it was just him to feed, and JD will eat just about anything Cam puts in front of him, but it's a matter of pride to be able to feed his guest. For another, JD's damn handy to have around. He never makes it obvious, never calls Cam's attention to it, but suddenly the leaky faucets aren't leaking anymore and the kitchen cabinets have had their contents redistributed so the stuff Cam uses most is within easy reach and the living room's been rearranged so Cam doesn't catch his cane on the table every time he walks by.
All things Cam would have done himself, if he'd been able to. But JD doesn't mention shower bars, and he doesn't suggest moving to a place with an elevator, and when they go up and down the stairs to grab dinner, or when JD tags along when Cam's running errands, JD always manages to stay one step behind on Cam's off side, running crowd interference and letting Cam set the pace, without ever making it feel like Cam's holding him up.
And then, two weeks into their little arrangement, Cam hits one of the bad days. Pressure front rolling in from the mountains, and it makes every lump of scar tissue, from the small of his back all down his legs to the ruins of his feet, ache like they've been freshly savaged; it's a physical therapy day, and he only manages to float through it on two oxycodone and his own damn stubborn pride, and when he makes it back to the apartment stairs he's tempted for just a minute to sit down on the bottom step and wait right there until it all goes away. But he took this place to prove something to himself, and so he goes up one step at a time -- leaning on the handrail, leaning on his cane, every tread a mountain to climb and a cross to bear -- and all he wants to do when he unlocks the door is fall onto the couch for a week and not get up again.
JD's on the couch, though. On the couch with his legs twisted thoughtlessly up underneath him, feet tucked under each opposite thigh and his laptop balanced on his knees, and for just a minute, Cam hates him.
He leans back against the door as he gets it closed, the thought of the twenty feet to his bed suddenly more than he can bear. Something about the sound of it penetrates JD's concentration, and JD looks up. Then winces.
It's the first time Cam's seen sympathy on that face. Still no pity, but it doesn't matter. Sympathy's bad enough. He doesn't know what his expression must look like in return, but JD's up off the couch in a minute, setting his laptop down on the table, and disappears into the bathroom like a shot. Cam hears the clink, clank, wheeze of the pipes as the water starts running. A minute goes by, then another, and then JD's back in front of him.
JD reaches out and takes the cane, props it up by the door, and Cam almost protests. But JD's holding out both his hands, his intentions clear, and Cam snarls. "You're not my fucking physical therapist."
"Nope," JD says, his voice somehow a mixture of understanding and command. It makes Cam want to straighten up his spine. General's voice. "But I know that if you don't get your ass into a hot tub damn soon, you're going to be out of commission all week. I'll steer. You lean."
Cam grits his teeth, wraps his hands around JD's elbows, and leans. He expects JD to fold under his weight, but he's stronger than Cam expected. Perfectly capable of walking backwards without looking, too. Cam gets the sense that JD carries a mental map of where everything around him is in relation to him.
Cam gets the sense that he, himself, is part of JD's mental map. Mental, physical, emotional. JD's been watching him, and now JD is walking him into the bathroom and dropping easily to his knees to unlace Cam's shoes and pulling down Cam's sweats and sitting Cam down on the side of the tub (one hand there to brace him, to keep him from falling over, like he wants to, like his body wants him to), and JD is stripping him down to skin and scars, and JD is completely matter-of-fact about the whole fucking thing but it's still too damn much.
"Lay off," Cam says, pushing JD away -- his arms still work at least. He shoves harder than he'd intended. JD goes over backwards, toppling out of his crouch to land sprawled on the floor, and Cam grits his teeth and -- because JD's right, god damn him -- grips the sides of the tub and levers his nigh-useless damn legs into the water.
He wants JD out. Naked with another man standing fully clothed over him is too much like the days when he was dependent on nurses and tubes and bags and sponges to even fucking exist. But JD cocks his head and narrows his eyes, like he's taking Cam's measure, and then he strips off his t-shirt and tosses it on top of the discarded pile of Cam's clothing.
For a second, Cam thinks JD might be intending to climb in with him. But JD stays kneeling on the tile, next to the tub, and stares Cam down. JD's seen Cam naked, but Cam can't remember ever seeing JD naked in return. When JD's wearing a t-shirt, his ink disappears under it, and he looks like any one of the teenagers that go zooming by on the streets below. When JD's bare-chested, Cam can see it all: elbows to shoulders, along the clavicle, dark contrast twining against pale skin.
JD keeps his eyes trained on Cam's face. His eyes are steady, matter-of-fact. He holds out both of his arms, like he's presenting them for inspection, and then turns around so Cam can see his back. The ink spreads down to his waist like a phoenix, like a story, like a map nobody can read.
JD lets Cam look his fill, then turns back around and settles himself cross-legged. Looks Cam up and down: surgical scars scrawled across his chest, scars from broken metal scraped against the small of his back, his tailbone, his thighs. The place where three toes used to be. All the places where bone broke skin, where pins put bone back together. JD's eyes don't linger, but they don't shy away, either. He simply catalogues. Assesses.
"You're not the only one who's got scars," JD finally says. Hint of challenge, hint of impatience, hint of something Cam can't identify. "Just so happens you didn't have yours magically taken away."
And suddenly, just like that, Cam feels ashamed of himself. JD's right; he doesn't have any sort of monopoly on pain. The counselors warned him about this, about lashing out, about letting his identity as a person get subsumed in his identity as a set of limitations.
JD doesn't let him apologize, though. Cam opens his mouth to say something, and JD's eyes flash a warning and he says, "I'm having a bitch of a time with the extensions to the runtime libraries refusing to cross-compile. You wanna take a look at it now, or later?"
Cam recognizes it for what it is: the acceptance of the apology he was thinking about making. The hot water is helping. Not completely, but enough. "Later's probably better," he says. "Tough to think right now."
JD nods and rocks up to his feet. He doesn't pick up his t-shirt, doesn't seem to even register that he's still half-naked. "You need another Tylox?" he asks.
Cam can hear it, now. The echo of a thousand other injuries, a hundred rehabilitations, all lurking under the edges of JD's voice. The ones he went through, and the ones he helped with, and the ones he gritted his teeth and bore on his own. And he thinks, suddenly: it's not sympathy. It's empathy.
"Yeah," he says. "Could probably stand to take the edge off."
JD nods and slides out of the bathroom on cat feet. He never makes noise when he's moving around. Cam can hear the soft rattling of pill bottles on the kitchen counter -- there isn't enough room in his bathroom cabinet for all the stuff he's taking -- and JD comes back a minute later with a pill, a glass of water. Cam takes them both.
"Don't try to get out of here on your own," JD says. "Give me a holler when you're ready." There's no or else lingering beneath; it's simply an order, from a man used to giving orders, from a man used to having those orders obeyed.
Cam closes his eyes and waits for the familiar light-headed rush of the drugs to creep over him. The water's cooling off, but not completely; when it does, he'll let a bit out, run some more hot water in. He always forgets how much a hot soak helps. He can hear JD leaving the bathroom, feels the soft draft of the door being shut behind. Then silence outside. JD's back on the couch, he thinks, head down and concentrating.
He keeps his eyes shut, and he lets himself drift, and the pain recedes just enough that he doesn't quite register when he slips over the edge into sleep. And he's always been jumpy with people moving around when he's sleeping, even when he's drugged to the eyeballs -- it's one of the endless things that made those months in the hospital such a torment -- but JD's noticed it and has the gift of moving without tripping those alarms. It isn't until JD's hand touches his shoulder, lightly, that Cam struggles back awake and finds that JD's drained the water and is kneeling next to the tub with a towel.
"C'mon," JD says, and Cam flexes the muscles in his thighs experimentally. The pain's back to bearable levels. He always forgets how bad it can really get until a bad day comes along. Normal days are bad, but they could get so much worse.
JD doesn't move to help him as he gets himself up to standing, but Cam knows that one slip, one stumble, and JD would be right under his arm to take his full weight. It's unobtrusive enough that Cam's actually willing to hold out a hand, grip onto JD's arm, as he steps out. His cane's already leaning against the sink, and he wraps the towel around his hips and reaches for it.
"Thanks," Cam says. Tenatatively, trying for a level of offhandedness to match JD's ease.
"Welcome," JD says, just as casual, and steps back to let Cam get by.
He's expecting JD to go back to his work, but no; JD trails along behind him as Cam thump-shuffles into the bedroom. It surprises him. JD's been fastidious about respecting Cam's space. Cam's too hazy to argue, though, and he lets the towel drop and stretches out on the bed. JD clicks off the lights, draws the blinds. Then -- just as Cam's about to tip back over into sleep -- comes back and sits on the edge of the bed.
"Don't move," JD says, and Cam's trying to figure out how to say wait what when JD's thumbs come to rest in the small of his back, right where the worst of the scar tissue is jutting up against his spine, right where the doctors had to cut and slice and shift things in order for him to have a chance to feel his legs again.
"Wait --" Cam says -- because that's where it's worst, that's where they're watching it, that's where he'll have to always be careful of for the rest of his life and one more fucking accident, one bad impact or injury and that's it, he's back in the fucking chair for good this time.
But -- "I know," JD says, sounding distant, and his thumbs are only stroking over Cam's skin, lightly, feeling out the shape and the placement of everything under Cam's skin with the barest of feather-touches. "Just seeing what I have to avoid. Relax, Mitchell, I know what I'm doing." He sweeps his thumbs up past the worst of the scarring, finds something that makes him stop and poke. Cam hisses. "Breathe," JD says, and then there's a short sharp shock of pain and Cam can feel his muscles shifting.
JD's barely using any weight at all. Cam can tell. It's just that everything in his back is so tight -- the things that don't work anymore, the things that are overcompensating -- that even his physical therapist despairs of it ever unknotting. JD straddles one of Cam's thighs, the insides of his thighs barely glancing Cam's naked skin, and makes a little noise of determination. Cam wants to protest -- you don't have to do this, I don't want you to do this -- but the first half of that might be true but the second half isn't, and JD's touch is just the right mix of compassion and dispassion. He closes his eyes, and he lets JD's hands move over his back, his shoulders, his hips, his ass. And without even knowing it, without consciously choosing to, he drifts off to sleep.
In the morning, when Cam wakes up and does his stretches, his feet are tingling and they ache, deep-down. But he'll take tingling and ache over numbness any day.
And that's how it is for a while.
They go through days where they argue about everything, from who used the last of the toothpaste (Cam) to who forgot they were out of orange juice (JD) to who broke the spine of the squirrel book (JD, and Cam's annoyed, because he's bitched at JD's habit of leaving books open spine-up to no end). Cam gets frustrated at himself for how slowly he's re-learning integrated systems engineering and JD gets annoyed at himself every time he re-invents the wheel. The weather changes, changes back -- early fall in Colorado is schizophrenic -- and plays merry hell with Cam's joints. They go through a lot of Pop-Tarts, a lot of coffee, and at least a few days where they communicate entirely by IM because they both know that if they say a word out loud, someone's gonna get shot.
But there are good days, too. The days when Cam actually forgets that he's crippled, because every time he's about to do something that would remind him, JD's right at his elbow taking care of it instead, always with that studied nonchalance intended to communicate that JD had been just about to get to it. The days when a problem they'd been working on just clicks, and one or both of them winds up awake all night working out subroutines and banging out code. The days when Momma calls, and can hear Cam feeling happy again, feeling useful again. The days when Cam forgets how strange this would look to anyone who wasn't them.
It's odd. JD touches him now -- a hand on his elbow to indicate behind-you, a brush on the shoulder when Cam's sitting down and JD walks behind, a head leaned carefully against Cam's thigh when JD's sitting on the floor and Cam's up in the chair. Cam wouldn't know how to read it, except O'Neill came to visit him in the hospital a few times, alone and with SG-1, and when he'd been there with his team, he'd been the same way with them. It's like touch functions -- for O'Neill, for JD -- as touchstone, as his way of reading the lay of the land and reassuring himself that the people around him are still present and accounted for.
Cam doesn't mind. Not exactly. But there are a few embarrassing side effects to feeling this much better, both mentally and physically. His physical therapist had explained it to him in clinical terms: the libido shuts down for a while after something that stressful, without even counting the physical issues of nerve impulses mis-firing; give it time, take it slowly, don't feel like you're a failure, don't worry that you'll never be able to get it up again. And on the one hand, it's nice that apparently he's hit another step on his road to recovery, but on the other hand, he's got an Air Force General in the body of a seventeen-year-old computer hacker living on his couch, which would make dating hard enough even if he ever met anyone who wasn't part of his medical care, even if he could find someone who could see past all his body's imperfections.
And a few times a week, on the nights when Cam's bones are aching the worst -- even when he's trying to hide it the hardest, even when they're arguing the most -- JD follows him wordlessly back into the bedroom, climbs up next to him on the bed, and works his thumbs and his palms into Cam's muscles until Cam almost feels like sobbing from the relief. It's not sexual. It's not erotic. But it feels so damn good to be touched.
He knows better. He does; from one angle, JD is seventeen, seven-fucking-teen, and Cam is thirty-six. From the other angle, JD is -- fifty-two? Fifty-three? -- and Cam knows goddamn well what kind of world Jack O'Neill grew up in, with what kinds of attitudes and values. Untouchable from both ends. Cam's not a pervert. He's always looked at men and women with an equal eye, but teenage boys don't turn him on. But JD's so beautiful it makes Cam's chest ache, and it's not the body; it's the way JD wears it.
So he grits his teeth and tries to ignore it. It's just that his world is so narrow these days, he tells himself; JD's the only person he sees regularly, and they're all up in each other's space all the time. But the next time they're on fire with the code, swapping lines back and forth in IM, Cam is sitting on one end of the couch, and JD -- restless, energized -- stretches out the couch's length, puts the laptop on his chest, and puts his head in Cam's lap. Carelessly, affectionately. And Cam suddenly has to be up and away before he does something he'll regret for a long damn time.
He gets himself out from under JD, thumps his way into the kitchen. "You want a beer?" he calls over his shoulder. Simple, casual.
He can hear JD cursing under his breath from the living room. It's weird; Cam would swear he was angry with himself. "Yeah, sure," JD says.
When Cam comes back out, JD's sitting up again, hugging the other arm of the couch from where Cam was sitting. He's got one of Momma's hand-knit afghans slung around his shoulders, covering up all his skin and his tattoos. Neither one of them much bothers hiding their scars these days.
"Here," Cam says, and passes over one of the bottles of beer.
"Thanks," JD says. "Sorry. Forgot you weren't --"
It's the most awkward thing Cam's ever heard come out of his mouth, and there's a click inside Cam's head as a few things rearrange themselves. All of a sudden, Cam realizes -- for the first time in a really long time -- just how fucking much it must suck for JD to have lost everything. House. Home. Job. Friends. Family.
Lover?
And Cam's been a selfish, self-absorbed asshole for the past three months, but the revelation slaps him upside the head like Momma with a wooden spoon, and it must show on his face, because JD's expression locks down, goes blank and distant.
"No," Cam says, quickly, before JD can retreat entirely. "Which one of them was it?" Because that's it, that's got to be it.
"Back off," JD warns. He looks down at his computer screen. The subject of his former life -- of either of their former lives, but particularly his, O'Neill's -- has always been off limits. Cam knows this.
He sits down on the couch again. Close enough to JD to be within the sphere of 'personal bubble' he's projecting, but then again, JD's jaw is twitching like right now he has a personal bubble the size of the entire apartment. "It's okay, you know," Cam says. "What was it you threw at me a couple of months ago? I'm not the only one who has problems? Goes both ways."
"You have no fucking idea," JD snarls, and then -- before Cam can say anything, do anything -- he's up off the couch and pulling on a shirt, a jacket, and slamming out the door. Cam can hear his footsteps thudding down the stairs, two at a time. Even if Cam wanted to follow, he couldn't.
Cam sits on the couch for a minute, thinking about new lives, about starting over. Then he plugs the power cord back into JD's laptop, so JD doesn't come back (if JD comes back) to find the battery completely drained, closes the lid of his own laptop and rests it on the table, and then shuffles off to his bedroom. The least he can do is give JD the illusion of space when he returns.
He wakes up in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth and a lean, hard body pressed up against his back. The panic starts to spread before he gets a hold of it. He already knows his subconscious thinks of JD as no threat. He just doesn't know why JD's here.
"All of them," JD says, in his ear, soft and low. It takes Cam a minute to remember; he'd asked JD a question, hours before. And apparently JD can only answer it in the middle of the night, in the dark. "In one way or another. But the one you're talking about, that was Daniel. Came out of nowhere. Broadsided me. And he's completely fucking straight."
Cam wants to say something -- anything, he's not sure what, but it's the kind of pause you fill with some meaningless expression of sympathy. JD's still got his hand over Cam's mouth, though. He can't even say it with his face, because he's on his side and JD's behind him.
JD's behind him, and he's still talking, in a rough-edged voice that sounds far older, far calmer, than it should. "And he died a few times, and I died a few times -- I think technically I win, if you count the tortured-to-death-and-revived thing, which I do, let me tell you -- and lots of other things happened that are past your security clearance, and then I woke up one morning as me instead of him and he went off to live our old life. I spent a few weeks mad enough to spit bullets, and then I woke up one morning and realized I didn't envy the poor bastard for having to deal with that mess. That he could deal with it for us. That the downside to all of this was that I didn't get to have his life anymore, but the upside was that he didn't get to have mine. That I got a do-over, and I didn't have to hold to old choices. So I play with cool toys, and I fuck men, and I'm going to make us rich, and someday, way down the line, I'm going to call him up and tell him how it would have gone for us if we'd turned left instead of right and thank him for taking all the weight so I didn't have to, because I know damn well he'll never understand what kind of a favor he did me."
JD's fingers stroke Cam's cheek. Cam can barely breathe. "But you don't get to ask about it," JD says. Still calm. Still quiet. "You weren't there. You might have heard about it, you might have read the reports, you might know on paper what it was like. But you weren't there. You came in at the end, and you pulled off a miracle, and you got dealt a shitty hand for your sins and your reward and they should have done better by you. But you'll never know the reality of it. So you don't get to ask. Maybe someday I'll tell you. But you don't get to ask. You got it?"
Cam nods, in the dark, against his pillow. He's hyper-conscious of JD's breath in his ear, the beating of JD's heart against his back, the way JD's legs are tangled with his. JD smells like soap and good clean sweat. He must have been running.
"Okay," JD says. And then -- Cam's heart stops -- dips his head to rest his lips against the curve of Cam's neck, just behind the ear. "Now go back to fucking sleep."
And JD lets his hand fall from Cam's mouth, drapes it over Cam's side, and -- apparently between one heartbeat and the next -- falls asleep.
JD doesn't go back to sleeping on the couch after that. They don't talk about it -- Cam's not sure of the extent of JD's conversational prohibitions, and JD apparently doesn't see the need to bring it up. He just moves into Cam's bed the same way he moved into Cam's apartment, the same way he moved into Cam's life, and it's barely another week before Cam wakes up in the morning with JD sitting cross-legged between his knees and stroking his thighs. JD raises an eyebrow, and Cam only wonders if it's pity or desire once before JD's mouth closes over his dick.
And from there, it's like a door's been unlocked, like Cam found the code for the secret bonus level of the video game of his life, because he should have known that JD would be driven and inventive and seemingly inexhaustable. They fight like they can't stand each other over code, over systems, and then JD pushes Cam back against the couch and blows him stupid. They work for hours, straight through meals, and then JD kneels up on the couch and takes Cam's laptop away, takes Cam's hand and closes it over his own dick, and they jerk each other off, all awkward angles and sweaty fumbling. They stretch out in bed and Cam touches everything he can reach, pulls on JD's nipples and leaves marks on his throat, and JD leans and bends so Cam can get his mouth on JD's dick without hurting.
Sometimes he forgets, but JD never does. JD is always careful. There's a night when Cam rolls them over so he's bearing JD down into the mattress, his dick nudging up at that perfect valley behind JD's balls, and JD's hips are snapping up and up and up in time with his muttered epithets. It's good, it's more than good, and they haven't talked about it -- any of it -- but JD groans and spreads his legs wide, brings his knees up, and yeah, like that, Cam wants. He goes to haul himself up to his knees, get the condoms and the lube he's started keeping in the bedside table in anticipation of someday, and then he's down over JD's hip, banging a fist against the sheets, trying to breathe through the pain.
"Dammit," he says, "God damn it," but JD just squirms out from under him, spreads him out on his back and does something with his spine and his hips, liquid shimmy, rubbing his ass along Cam's dick, and the pain's forgotten. JD's the one who gets the condoms and the lube, and JD's the one who gets his own fingers wet and slippery, and JD lowers himself onto Cam's dick by painstaking millimeters until Cam's eyes are starting to cross.
You don't have to take it slow for me, he's about to say, until he notices the frown of concentration right in the center of JD's forehead. "Slow," JD grits out, "never done this before --" and Cam realizes he doesn't just mean in this body, he means at all. But then JD's gripping Cam's hips with his thighs, and JD is rocking himself steadily back and forth, and Cam's got his hand on JD's dick and they're both trying like hell not to make enough noise so the restaurant customers downstairs can hear them.
September turns to October. JD pronounces them three weeks from code-complete. Cam flies to Washington, puts on a suit and tie, and spends an hour showing PowerPoint slides to the third assistant underling of the Secretary of the Navy. He doesn't even think about detouring over to E ring, to what's never publicly called Homeworld; if it had still been Hammond there, he might have, but O'Neill's a two-star now, and that would be more weird than Cam's brain could handle. He comes home with a big enough check to justify all the hell they've been putting themselves through and the promise of more where that came from, and he comes home to code freeze and JD straddling him on the couch and wordlessly apologizing for making Cam fly under someone else's hands.
Momma starts making noises about Cam bringing his partner home for Thanksgiving, and she means business partner, but Cam hears it with a capital P. JD seems to delight in getting dirty looks from people by making out in public. Cam starts watching the classifieds for a bigger place, a nicer place, and he knows JD catches him doing it, but JD doesn't say anything. Their argument about the GUI ends with Cam throwing a couch pillow at JD and JD threatening to set Cam's cane on fire. Cam wins, and tries to be gracious in victory.
JD catches Cam laughing one lazy Sunday afternoon, and he pushes himself up from where he's draped over Cam's chest -- mindful of where he puts his weight, always sure he's not leaning on something he shouldn't -- and asks, "Hmm?"
"Nothing," Cam says, tracing the arch and whorl of ink over JD's shoulder. "Just thinking that I've never had a thing where both people could say they were robbing the cradle before."
For a minute he worries he's gone too far, but then JD is laughing, and JD grinds his hips against Cam's and Cam's dick decides that's enough philosophizing. Apparently he's okay with being a pervert.. : | read comments - post comment - back | : .