December goes by quick as a bullet. Code review and user acceptance and the last little details of interface and bugfixes, and they're working seventeen-hour days to pull it all off by deadline. And Lord, is Cam ever grateful that they're still working out of the living room, despite the way it makes their world narrow in and close down until there's nothing but the two of them and a whole lot of code, because he can't imagine trying to keep to a schedule this brutal while at the same time dealing with the exhaustion of dealing with a world so unaccomodating of physical limitations -- it's amazing how much more energy he started to have when JD started handling all the little things like shopping and errands. Still, there's travel in there (JD comes with him on his trip East for the next round of demos, but it's to serve as hands and feet during travel when necessary; Cam has to be the one to be the public face), and the errands he can't delegate, and what with one thing and the next, it's the week before Christmas and they're just fucking wiped.

Cam does his Christmas shopping online, but it takes time to buy for family. They've used a complicated system of gifting for as long as he can remember: you buy for immediate family members every year, and get assigned another five names through lottery and pulling-out-of-a-hat. It's the only way to keep things even vaguely manageable. And his family's still touch-and-go on the topic of JD, but Momma puts him in the drawing anyway, which means Cam's stuck explaining the history and personality and tastes of Cousin Lorena and Uncle Roy and Little Jerry and Carson and Bella Jo so JD can make smart choices.

Cam digs up a first edition of Shumerische Grammatik mit Übungsstücken und zwei Anhängen for Uncle Al, bribes Uncle Bayliss with a fifth of really good vodka to make a lovely dovetail-joined cherrywood bookcase with hand-carved ornamentation for Susie Mae (and Maria, but Susie Mae's the reader in that family). JD helps him put together the care package for Raymond -- won't make it to Iraq by Christmas, but it's okay; Cam's gifting Raymie's whole unit, and it'll be welcome whenever it gets there.

His daddy gets a new set of high-end poker chips to replace the ones that are peeling and cracking, his momma gets perfume (it's a tradition), his brother Ash gets the complete series of Are You Being Served on DVD. Cindy Lou gets a gift certificate for a day of pampering at the spa (she deserves it); for Chandler, their oldest, it's a remote-controlled airplane (traditional gift from the closest uncle on a boy's eighth birthday), for Stewart a chess set (Ash is teaching him to play, and he's got a knack for it; Cam's a little embarrassed to realize the six-year-old can kick his ass). For little Lucy, Cam hesitates, but there's no real way around it; she's the first family baby in years he didn't knit a christening blanket for, so it's time to make up the lack now. He'll have to make it plainer than he usually likes -- lack of time, lack of practice -- but he's got a hundred suitable patterns lurking in his fingers' memory waiting to be called forth.

He's stuck on a present for JD, though. A proper Christmas present should either be something someone always wanted and never would buy for themselves, or something you crafted with your own two hands, or something that someone never knew they wanted but won't be able to live without. Everything he thinks of for JD is either hopelessly inadequate or completely impersonal or nothing at all like the message he'd want to send. He's glad when JD says, while they're sealing up the third of the boxes for Raymie and his men, "You wanna just skip the present thing, you and me?"

"Yeah," Cam says, with relief. Because JD gets it. Whatever it is they've got, the two of them, it can't be put into symbols that can be wrapped up and stowed under the Christmas tree. JD values symbols; Cam knows that much. Nobody who tattoos his stories under his skin like that doesn't. And it's not that Cam isn't looking for the right symbol, for the proper symbol. It's just that he hasn't found it yet, and he doesn't want to get it wrong.

But in the week leading up to Christmas, JD's suddenly quieter, more indrawn, and Cam can't tell what's causing it: stress or overwork or just the ghost of Christmases past come knocking on the door of his memories. It worries Cam, but he's figured out the difference between problems he can ask about and problems he has to just wait for JD to work through, and this isn't the kind of thing that'll get better for poking at it. He makes an effort to remember to touch JD more often -- not even sexual, though there's always that; their sex life is one thing that hasn't suffered from exhaustion. Just the sort of careless touch that JD so excels at, eats right up when Cam gives it back: the one that says I am aware of your presence, and I want you to know that I notice you.

And then, three days before they're scheduled to fly back East and plunge headfirst into the overwhelming bustle of family -- Christmas is even more overwhelming than Thanksgiving, which is why Cam's glad they had Thanksgiving as a test drive -- three things all happen in the wrong place at the wrong time. One, JD accidentally kicks his laptop off the coffee table while climbing over to go down on Cam -- JD's notions of how to communicate "time for a break" being singleminded at times -- and cracks the screen, necessitating a trip back to the manufacturer for replacement. Two, JD accidentally leaves a shell session open to his email inbox when he borrows Cam's laptop to check for updates on the repair. And three, Cam mistakes it for his own email, and opens up the message from "Lt. Col. Samantha Carter " before he realizes the mistake.

Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 07:56:08 UTC
From: samantha.carter@groomlake.af.mil
To: jdn@nielsonmitchell.com
Subject: RE: phone_home() subroutine

On Monday, 19 Dec 2005, "JD Nielson" wrote:
> Stumped. You got any ideas why this isn't working?

[snip code]
You're declaring etdigits as signed, but every time you're calling it,
you're treating it as unsigned. I think that's it, at least. I can't
tell, not without seeing the rest of the code. Try fixing that and see
if it helps?

> Leaving for Christmas command appearance in a few days, so if I don't
> hear back from you before then, have a good one.

I will. I wish I could make it this year, but Cam hasn't called me back
any of the times I've called him since -- well, you know. You'd better
be taking care of him for me.

--Sam

Cam stares at the email for a good long minute before closing the session and closing out the terminal window. There's something cold and furious in the pit of his stomach. He's known Sam Carter since back in their Academy days, and there have been years when they were nigh-inseperable and years where they didn't get the chance to say more than twenty words to each other. And part of the joy of joining the Snakeskinners had been the chance to work near her again, and part of the disjointed memories he carries of those early days in the hospital are images of her, eyes red, holding on to his hand fit to beat the band, saying over and over again "you did it, we did it, it's all okay", and he hasn't talked to her since the day JD showed up on his doorstop and saved him from slowly going crazy.

Not because he's mad at her. Not because it would be too awkward to be in touch with someone who used to know him when he was whole. Sam Carter's better than that; some people wouldn't be, but Sam's been close to family for long enough to know better. No, he hasn't talked to her since the day JD walked into his life because he knows she'll consider Jack O'Neill to be her commanding officer from now until the end of time, no ifs ands or buts, and because he knew she'd recognize JD in a heartbeat, and there's no way Cam could talk about his life now without telling her about just why he's happy.

Turns out, apparently, he didn't have to worry. Turns out JD hadn't entirely been truthful when he'd said he'd cut ties and never looked back.

When JD comes back from the corner store, cheeks pink, shoulders dusted with a sprinkling of water-drops -- must be snowing again -- and hands full of grocery bags, Cam's sitting on the couch, knitting needles in hand, and he's had to rip back the same five rows of the pattern repeat six times because he's built up too much of a head of steam to be able to keep track of the stitches. "Hey," JD says, kicking the door shut behind him. "Ran into Mrs. Chaisorn on my way back; she wants to know if we've got plans for New Year's Eve yet. I told her we'd probably be done with the last bits of this round of contract hell, but I didn't know if you --"

He stops short, puts the bags down on the floor. Crosses the room to crouch down in front of the couch, because (Cam knows) he can see the temper Cam's riding. "Hey," he says. "What's wrong?"

Cam yanks out an accidental yarn-over. "You said you cut ties with the SGC," he says. He's aware of how accusatory it sounds, and it would make him wince, but he's too fucking pissed. "With SG-1."

JD frowns. "I did. Why?"

His voice has a hint of mad in it, too: mad at the questioning, mad at Cam's tone, mad at the reminder. There's a part of Cam that cares, and a part of him that doesn't give a shit. "You left your mail open on my machine," he says. (slip one, knit two together, knit two together, knit two together, yarn over, knit one, yarn over...) "Thought it was mine. Read the latest before I realized. You didn't tell me you and Sam stayed in touch."

There's a pause, a fractional pause, the silence before the explosion. "We don't," JD says, voice calm. "Not really. She emailed me about a year back after I released a package on Sourceforge, asking if I was who she thought she was. I didn't lie to her. We've had a few threads going back and forth occasionally since then. I wouldn't call us 'close'."

Cam doesn't look up. He knows he can't risk it; he's not even sure why he's so angry, except that he's been going out of his way to keep clear of one of his oldest friends because he didn't want to cause JD any more hurt than he already carried. Maybe that's enough to make him this angry. "She send you out here to check up on me?" he asks, and oh, yeah, that's the other half of it, hard and cold and furious. "Sleeping with me your idea, or hers?"

He can see, just above the knitting he's keeping his eyes on, JD's face go shocked, then blank. JD rocks up to his feet and folds his arms across his chest. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just ask that," JD says.

And oh, Cam knows better. Knows better. But he can't stop himself. "Sure," he hears himself saying. "I've been pretending I didn't know her for the past five months for your peace of mind. What else have you been pretending about for mine?"

It comes out of nowhere. Cam's always known JD moves like lightning when he wants to, but when JD's knuckles plow into his jaw, well, he doesn't see that coming at all. His fingers are all tangled up with yarn and needles, and he can't get up out of the damn couch's clutches fast even when he's got help and he doesn't think JD will be inclined to help him. His jaw screams at him. JD isn't trying to really hurt him, he can tell -- if JD wanted to hurt him, he'd be dead -- but JD didn't exactly pull his punch, either, and Cam looks up to find JD staring down at him with murder in his eyes.

"I don't do pity fucks," JD says, neat and clipped and simmering with rage. "And if you ever suggest I do again, if you think the last five months have been because Carter told me to come fix you, I'll break your jaw the next time."

Two years ago, Cam would have come up swinging. Two years ago, Cam could have come up swinging. "Sure," he snarls: angry at JD, angry at his useless legs, angry at himself. "Because babysitting a cripple is your idea of a good fucking time."

JD's jaw twitches, and then Cam can see -- even through the mad he's in the midst of -- JD do something extraordinary; he closes his eyes, and a ripple runs all through his skin, and he says, tonelessly, "One of us needs to be out of this place in the next two minutes. If you can't take stairs today, I'll go."

It only makes Cam more pissed, even though he knows in his heart of hearts that the two of them can't fight clean when they're this riled up. They've already proven that, and they're stronger for knowing it. But in the mood he's in, it's just another proof that JD's -- doing something; he can't even tell why he's mad about it really, except he is. He doesn't say anything. He just drops his knitting to the floor and reaches for his cane and his coat, and out the damn fucking door he goes. He's got just enough presence of mind to remember to bring his cell phone with him. Just in case.

Every step down the stairs is an eternity, and the snow's settled in in earnest, and Cam's pissed off and heartsick and all he wants to do is call his momma and listen to her tell him it'll be all right. Except he can't, because there's no way he can tell her any damn part of all of this to make it make sense. So he doesn't. He settles in on the bottom step -- too damn cold out there to sit outside, even though the air would probably do him some good -- and he starts making his way through the loose network of old friends and friends-of-friends until he finds someone who's got the phone number he needs.

She answers on the fourth ring, the same way she always answers. "Carter."

His throat closes over at the sound of her. She sounds happy. It takes him a minute before he can manage, "Your idea or his to pretend you didn't know each other?"

He won't have to explain it. They never have to explain to each other; they're the kind of friends who could go without talking for ten years and pick the conversation straight up where they left off. She doesn't do anything stupid like pretend she doesn't know who it is on the other end of the phone, pretend she doesn't know what he's talking about. She knows him too well; she can hear that he's angry about something, and she knows that the only thing anyone can do when Cam's angry is give him the truth. "I didn't say one way or the other, so I guess it was his. I haven't talked to him more than twice since he got there."

Cam has to know; he has to. "Was that your idea?"

He can hear her puzzled frown. "He asked if I knew anyone who used to be with the program who fit what he was looking for. I knew you did. I knew you were probably going stir-crazy. I gave him your name and number and asked him to let me know how you were doing, because you weren't returning my calls and your momma said you weren't talking to her much either. Cam? What's wrong?"

He doesn't say anything. He can't. Her voice sharpens. "Cam? Is everything all right? What do you need?"

"Everything's fine," he manages, through the lump in his throat. "Just -- just needed to know, is all."

"You fought about something, didn't you." She sounds suspicious. "Is he -- I mean, I know the General can be -- difficult, but I thought -- he sounded like he'd made some decisions --"

It's odd how neither of them are using names. The habit of secrecy is hard for them both to break, he guesses. "He's fine," Cam says. "It's just --"

He can hear the tiny shocked noise she can't quite cover up, and he guesses he must have let something creep into his voice that he shouldn't have. "Momma said you were seeing someone, but she didn't say who," she says. A little too rushed, a little too panicky. "Cam, is it -- are you --"

"I had to know if you sent him," Cam says. Or hears his voice say, because he doesn't feel like he's in the driver's seat of anything right now, but he's pretty sure either way that he doesn't want to hear her finish that question, doesn't want to know what verb she'd put in there. They've never talked about sex, not really -- sex with other people, sex with each other. Never openly. He's known some of her lovers and she's known some of his, and she's never said a word about how some of his lovers are men just like he's never said a word about how some of her lovers are assholes. He loves her like family and they're near sibling-close, but there are some places it's better if they just don't ever go.

She's pissed at him now. He can tell by the timbre of her indrawn breath. Pissed and upset and confused and feeling like she's just gotten the legs kicked out from under her. Which settles something. It means she didn't know JD drove stick too, which means she just found out something she didn't know about O'Neill.

Which means she hadn't sent JD to him. At least not for that. Which means that this wasn't some kind of fucked-up reparation for guilt, the guilt he knows she still carries, the guilt of being the one who put his name in the running for the Snakeskinners and being the one whose ass they'd died to save. She'd cried at his bedside when she'd thought he'd been drugged to oblivion; she'd apologized to his semi-aware self, over and over, but once he'd been up and around (as much as he could be) she'd given him nothing but forced smiles full of the hidden pity that he'd already learned to resent.

And now she's pissed at him: pissed at his implications, pissed at his underlying accusations. Pissed that he's told her something she didn't want to know.

He cuts her off before she can say anything. Before either of them can say something they regret, because he's had enough of that for one damn night. "I'm sorry," he says. Means it, too. "I --"

But his throat closes over before he knows where that sentence might be going, and all he wants to do is put his fist through the wall and rewind this day so it never went down the way it's been going.

Her voice, when she speaks, is quiet. Resigned. "I hope you two are happy," she says, and it shouldn't feel as final as it does; she means it, he knows. Hopes that he's happy; hopes that he's well. He just can't shake the feeling that her sentence is a closing door, a hand putting the period at the end of a novel. Something about it makes him wonder if she's putting paid to the two of them, or to something else entire.

He has to laugh, but it's the laugh of impending hysteria. "He socked me in the mouth 'bout fifteen minutes back, but -- yeah. We kinda are."

"Well, you probably deserved it," she says, and yeah, okay, he's calmed down enough to cop to the fact that he kind of did. "Is he --" Her breath catches again, and shit, shit, he's starting to see the shape of it. Of what she's never told him, and why this hurts her so badly, and what little quiet dreams she might have been cherishing. JD never told him. Cam wonders if JD even knows.

Of course JD knows. Cam just wonders if O'Neill does.

"Is he okay?" she asks, and God does his heart break for her.

"Yeah," he says, quietly. He can give her that much. "He's okay." Fiercely okay, vividly okay, like JD is grabbing onto "well-adjusted" and digging in his claws and refusing to ever let it go no matter how hard he has to work to hold it. He wishes he could tell her about some of it: about the tattoos, about the conversations, about the way JD's hand falls thoughtlessly against Cam's skin when they're sitting within touching range. But something tells him Sam would see the tattoos as a symptom and the touching as a sign, and the conversations aren't his to share.

He offers up what he can. "You should come visit." Come see. Come ease your mind.

She laughs, and it's sharp and broken. "I don't think that would be a good idea. Not yet." She pauses. He can hear her sucking air, the way you struggle to get your breath back after someone's punched you in the solar plexus. "Not -- not because of you. You know."

"Yeah," Cam says, because he does. Because Sam's just told him without needing to use words that she's in love with Jack O'Neill sure as sunrise, and Cam's not so cruel as to make her look JD in the eye until she's good and ready. And ending this conversation is the kindest thing he can do for her right now, so he says, "I'll let you get back to what you were doing. Momma'll want to hear from you on Christmas. We can talk then."

"Yeah," she says. Weak and shaky, and oh, Cam's glad they're not in the same room right now, because he's always been brought low by the sight of a woman's tears. "I'll talk to you then, okay?"

Cam's left holding his cell phone in both hands, turning it over and over and over, and with a little nagging voice in the back of his head asking why? Because he knows himself; the kind of headful of steam he'd worked up doesn't come from nothing, doesn't come over nothing. And he knows himself well enough to know that he can't go upstairs, can't face JD again, until he knows what set him off so badly. Whether or not JD wants to talk about it, and Cam's pretty sure JD won't want to talk about it, Cam needs to know why.

Not the thought of pity, because he already knows JD doesn't pity him. Or maybe that's it; maybe it's because JD's never shown pity for him that he got his back up so quickly at the faintest hint that there might have been some lurking, that it might have always been a hidden motivation. He doesn't think that's it, though. It's a good enough reason for the surface anger, but it rings wrong for the deeper ones. If it'd been just that, he would have flashed furious for a minute or two and then calmed down and gotten to the bottom of it all.

So there's something more there. Something lurking underneath all the nice neat surface answers, something he should probably figure out before he sucks it up and goes back upstairs to apologize, because if he doesn't know what twigged him he won't be able to steer clear of it again. And God, but he misses the days when he could strap on his tennis shoes and go running until his chest was heaving and his calves were burning and his mind was silent and still, ready to let the conclusions he knows he knows bubble up from the spot in his subconscious where they're lurking to float past his conscious mind. But he can't do that anymore, and he's going to have to find a different way of dealing with it.

Doesn't mean it's not yet another thing that sucks about his life right now.

He shoulders himself into his coat and shoves the cell phone into his pocket. It's cold outside, bitter cold, the kind of cold that he'll never get used to as long as he lives; he catches himself thinking that he'll have to try to talk JD into moving to a warmer climate, shies away from the thought before he can do much more than stub a mental toe on it. It's the kind of cold that gets down deep into his joints and makes him ache for days; it's why he's been staying inside as much as possible, why JD has been the one to handle grocery shopping and errand-running and all the other thousand things able-bodied people don't think twice about doing. The air is clear and dry, so cold it hurts his lungs, but it tastes like freedom anyway. Cam's always been bad at staying cooped up.

The snow he'd seen on JD's shoulders when JD came back upstairs -- half an hour ago? Not long, at least -- had stopped at some point; a light dusting of powder covers the sidewalks. Not enough to shovel, but it had been warm enough before the sun went down that some of the perpetual winter snowbank at the curb had melted and is re-freezing underneath. He can feel the ice lurking beneath his shoes, beneath the rubber tip of his cane, even despite the salt the Merchant's Association spreads around after every new storm or every warm day. The ice slows him down, but he won't let it stop him. He places his feet carefully, and he tests each step before he commits to it, and his knees and his thighs and his back hurts like sweet blazes but he's not going to give in.

It's not the same as a good long run, but it's what he's got available to him. The downtown streets are all decked out for Christmas, lights and garlands, and there's a decent enough crowd that some of the storefront shops are still open, even this late. He goes by the host of restaurants they know so intimately, the bars that make him almost want to stop and get a shot or two of something to -- no; the way he's feeling right now, one shot won't be enough and the last thing he wants is to come home drunk and disorderly. Not smart.

So he keeps putting one foot after the other, head down, concentrating on where he's stepping and looking for ice patches or rough spots or even just a fucking sidewalk crack -- all of which have tripped him up in the past, and he doesn't particularly feel like courting a dislocated knee or a broken ankle from falling wrong. He's not going anywhere in particular. He's just walking, and trying to give himself space to think.

His fingers are red and cracking with the cold by the time he works his way around downtown and back to their building. That's the part he always hates; it reminds him too much of a snowfield in Antarctica, of drifting in and out of consciousness and watching his skin redden, then whiten. It reminds him of being pinned. Being helpless. To this day, he doesn't know how long he was trapped in the wreckage before the rescue teams came. He doesn't particularly want to know.

It takes him three tries to unlock the downstairs door, fumbling and uncertain, but he doesn't let it bother him; he tries to hold on to the things he's realized, and the things he thinks he knows how he has to say, and he gets himself up the stairs an eternity at a time and doesn't let himself think about what he'll do if he doesn't find JD on the other side of the inside door.

The living room's empty; the lights are off. Cam almost loses his hard-won serenity before he sees JD's shoes placed neatly behind the door, where they always are, where there's little chance of Cam tripping over them. He leans against the door for a minute in relief, and then sheds his coat and hangs it up and thumps slowly into the bedroom after a detour into the kitchen for his nightly handful of pills.

The lights are off in the bedroom, too, and JD is in bed: lying on his side, his back to the door, sheet pulled loosely around his hips and the dark lines of his tattoos showing stark and bold against his pale skin. His being there is a good sign. Cam doesn't bother with trying to keep quiet; JD wakes at any level of noise, and the more Cam tries to be quiet, the more JD's reflexes interpret stealth as threat. He crosses the room, and sits down on the edge of the bed, and unties his shoes one by one.

JD is awake; Cam knows JD is awake. But he's silent, and JD's silence is the kind that can fill a room.

There are some things they can only say in the dark. Or rather, there are some things JD can only say in the dark, and some things it has to be dark for JD to be willing to hear. Cam's got the feeling this conversation will be full of them. He sets down his other shoe. As he's working his way out of his pants, he says, "I'm sorry I got so upset."

Never hurts to lead with an apology, Momma always taught him. JD doesn't move, doesn't say anything, but Cam hadn't expected him to.

"Thing is," Cam says -- pulling off his shirt, chucking it and his pants at the laundry basket, missing as always; he'll have to remember to avoid them in the morning -- "I thought I was pissed off because I didn't want pity. Then I realized two big things that made a lot of other things fall into place."

Still no reaction. He stretches out on his back, pulls the sheet up over him, folds his hands behind his head. He can feel the heat coming from JD, the way his skin always seems to run a couple of degrees hotter than everyone else's, the way that Cam's always been careful never to wonder whether that's just the way he is or whether something went wrong in the making of him.

"I know there are plenty of things you won't ever talk to me about," Cam says to the ceiling. "I know there are plenty of things you don't want to say to anybody, and I know just enough about what's in 'em to know that a whole lot of them are things I don't really want to hear. And I won't ever make you talk about 'em. Won't ask, won't push. On one condition."

He takes a deep breath. Waits for a second to see if JD will say something (anything), but when JD doesn't, Cam goes on. "I'll take 'I don't want to talk about it' and I'll take 'maybe someday' and I'll even take 'shut up, Mitchell,' but I won't take you lying to me. Not about anything, but especially not about things that have to do with me. With us." If there is an 'us', he thinks, but doesn't let it stop him. He keeps his voice as steady as he can. "And there's a difference between things I need to know and things that don't concern me, and I know you know the difference. I won't take you keeping secrets from me that concern me. I'll never once push you on the rest, but that's something I won't compromise on."

He waits. He'll wait as long as it'll take to get an answer, to get an acknowledgement, but the only thing he gets is JD's voice in the darkness: calm, quiet, controlled. "What's the other thing you realized?"

Deep breath. "That I'm pretty sure I'm falling in love with you, and that's why it hurt so bad."

He doesn't know what he's expecting. The realization, when he'd had it, had nearly kicked him in the pants; obvious in retrospect, impossible to have predicted. Cam's always been good with his feelings, always been in tune with his emotions and ready and willing to listen to them, but maybe something about JD -- who isn't -- had kept him from being able to really explore them this time. And he'd spent the rest of his walk trying to keep himself from thinking about what JD's reaction is going to be, because he knows JD and he's got a sinking feeling he's just set fire to the life he's been building for the past six months and should prepare to fiddle while it burns. But he can't ask JD not to hold out on him if he isn't prepared to do the same in return.

He hadn't been expecting JD to laugh.

Laugh thick and bitter, sit up and put his legs over the side of the bed and bury his face in his hands. Cam lifts a hand, gets ready to roll himself over. "No," JD says, and Cam freezes. JD always knows where he is in a room. JD always knows when Cam's about to touch him.

It's so quiet Cam can hear JD breathing. He closes his eyes. Starts thinking about what he'll do now, what he'll do instead of what they're doing. Maybe best to move back home for a while, wait out the winter weather and see what there is in the spring. He's become a much better programmer in the past few months than he ever has been before. He'll be marketable somewhere.

"Don't do this," JD finally says, his voice muffled against his palms. "Don't make it be about this."

"I'm sorry," Cam says. It's all he's got. "I --"

"Shut up, Mitchell," JD says, and Cam's bound by his own words; he shuts.

The bed shifts. Cam opens his eyes; he's enough of a masochist to want to watch JD walking out on him. But all JD does is get up and walk, still naked, over to the window. He rests his hands on the windowsill, and he bends over and rests his forehead on the glass, and Cam thinks he might be looking to cool himself off a little. The glass leeches the heat from his skin; Cam can see it fogging up.

"I never told you why my wife left me," JD says. Simple, calm, not a bit of anger or upset lurking in there, but it breaks Cam's heart anyway. Then the words get from his ears to his brain, and he nearly stops breathing, because he's suddenly listening to Jack O'Neill and he hadn't even noticed. Hadn't realized. He should have been able to tell.

He sits up. "No," he says, just as quietly. "You didn't."

"Lots of reasons. Lots of stupid reasons. Stupid on my part, not hers. But mostly because I'd never fucking talk to her." JD turns his head, and his eyes are nothing but two black smudges as he lets them settle on Cam's face. "Promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistake this time around. Promised myself I'd learn to open my mouth. New body, new chances."

Cam has no idea where JD is going with this, so he just nods, feeling wide and uncertain. This all suddenly feels like the wrong way to go about things, the wrong frame for the conversation, the wrong confrontation at the wrong time. But done is done, and he can't do anything but wait for JD to say something else.

JD finally sighs. "I'd really like to put my fist through this window right about now," he says, conversationally.

Cam finds his voice. "Wish you wouldn't," he says. "Cold outside."

Simple things; inane things. JD sighs again. "You really mean it when you say you don't give a shit if I don't tell you things, don't you."

"Yeah," Cam says. The small of his back is starting to burn from the way he's sitting, but he doesn't want to lie back down and he doesn't exactly want to swing his legs over the side of the bed and sit like that, either; that would tempt him too much to get up, walk over to JD's side. To touch. He doesn't think JD wants to be touched right now. "Unless they have to do with me. Because it's about --" He fumbles for the right word. Can't find one, but there's one that comes close. "Respect."

JD nods, once. Then looks away. "Whole lot of unprogramming to do."

"I know," Cam says. He tries to make it as gentle as he can. "I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. To me."

"Yeah." It's JD's this sucks voice. He straightens up and comes over to the bedside. Sits on the edge of the bed, right next to Cam, one hip propped up on the bed and the other foot on the floor to brace him. Cam wants to hold his breath; he makes himself breathe anyway. JD's hands come up to cup his face, lightly, and Cam's heart beats just a little faster, because even when JD's calm and resigned, he's dangerous.

"I never expected you," JD says. "You need to know that."

JD's thumbs are stroking Cam's cheekbones, like he isn't even aware he's doing it. The spot he hit earlier still hurts; it's going to bruise. Cam swallows, hard, and licks his lips. "Okay," he says. It's a relief to know; it's a relief to have it spelled out like that.

"Go to sleep," JD says, low and hypnotic. Cam wants to protest, wants to point out that nothing's been resolved and if there's one thing he's learned about relationships, it's that you should never go to sleep with something unfinished hanging over your head. But JD's face and JD's voice tells Cam that there won't be anything else said, and Cam knows better than to push, as much as he'd like to.

He lies down, and JD stays where he is. Cam doesn't know what he's expecting, but JD puts a hand on his chest and leaves it there; Cam isn't sure if it's to hold him down or just because JD wants to touch and that's the easiest place to reach. He hopes it's the latter. He's tired enough, worn through enough, that he's asleep within minutes, and if JD moves, Cam doesn't notice.

Cam wakes up face-down in the bed, the covers tangled around his waist, a pillow over his head. It's chilly in the room, but not brisk. He climbs slowly to awareness on the wings of the knowledge that the apartment is empty; he isn't sure how he knows. He's overslept. Not that his life has a schedule, but his body clock does, and it's played him false.

He holds on to the hope that JD is out for his morning run. It sustains him through his shower, as he's getting dressed. There's a note propped up against his pill bottles in the kitchen. Smartest place to leave it; there's nowhere else Cam's guaranteed to look. I'll be back. Don't worry. Don't wait up. -J

Cam holds the note in his hands for a long time, before setting it down on the counter and rooting through the cabinets to find something he can call breakfast.

Morning turns to afternoon; afternoon turns to evening. Cam settles himself on the same spot of the couch he always uses; the living room's too small to stand having a desk crammed into it. The ergonomics kind of suck a little, and Cam's sure his physical therapist would scream bloody murder if she saw, but it's comfortable enough and it keeps his back from aching in a way a desk chair wouldn't. He can't seem to concentrate on what needs to be done, so he spends the day hacking on the ftp client he's writing in his spare time because he hates every single one he's ever tried. He isn't expecting to get anywhere, but to his surprise, as soon as he's down in the guts of the code, instinct takes over and he's absorbed in his work.

He doesn't think about anything but the code he's trying to write. He's said what he has to say, and now it's up to JD to decide whether or not to accept it. Fretting won't get him anywhere but an ulcer and an early grave from stress.

Evening turns to night, and JD still hasn't returned. Cam gives up at around ten o'clock and microwaves a slice of the pizza left over from two nights back. He eats it over the sink. When he's finished, he turns the paper of JD's note over and scribbles on the back: Wake me when you get in.

JD won't, but that's not the point. Cam leaves the note propped up against the pharmacy and takes himself on off to bed. He's careful to keep to what's become his side of the bed; until he hears otherwise, he'll assume JD's going to still have want of the other.

To his surprise, he does wake up in the middle of the night -- not completely, not to full consciousness, but just enough to recognize the sounds of the door shutting and locking, the sound of footsteps, the dip of the bed as JD slides into his accustomed place. He stirs, intending to say something -- where have you been or have you figured things out or even just hey -- but JD settles skin against skin, rests his forehead against the back of Cam's skull, and wraps one arm around Cam's chest the way he always does. "Shh," JD says, nothing more, and Cam slides right back under. JD smells of soap and clear, crisp mountain air, and his skin is cold with winter the way it all-too-seldom is.

And it's a comfort, and it eases something tight in the depths of Cam's chest, and when he wakes up again with the morning sunlight in his eyes, it doesn't hurt as much as it probably should to find JD gone again. The note's been turned back over, and a line's been added to the bottom: yes, I remember we've got plane tickets for tomorrow.

Cam stands in the kitchen, his eyes closed, his heart beating. He's half furious and half hurt and half resigned and half hopeful, and he doesn't care if that adds up wrong. He can't decide if he's pissed off or not, until the whole situation comes crashing down on his head and he's laughing. Laughing not because it's funny, but because it's so utterly ridiculous that it's a perfect sign of what his life has become.

He settles in to work with a lighter heart. He doesn't understand -- every time he thinks he understands JD, something else rises from the depths to broadside him -- but somehow, he thinks he doesn't quite need to. JD came back, and came back to their bed, and that fact might not mean as much as it looks on the surface, but it means a lot to Cam, and, well, it might be the only good sign he's got, but as good signs go, it's not a bad one. JD is thinking, is all. Just so happens that JD has to do his thinking somewhere other than here.

Cam can do his thinking just about anywhere, and what he's thinking about today is what he knows of Jack O'Neill. Not just the parts JD has told him -- though those too, and they're important, because the way JD talks about O'Neill's life at any given time is a sign of how much he feels bound by it -- but the parts Cam knows thirdhand, by osmosis. He's been in the same room as O'Neill (and conscious for it) so few times he could count them on both hands and not need to resort to his leftover toes, and O'Neill's a master at presenting to the world nothing more than the face the world expects. But Cam's got a good enough read on people to know one important thing. O'Neill would have left too, just like JD did. But O'Neill wouldn't have come back.

For a minute he thinks of calling up O'Neill's office in Washington -- pardon me, sir, but I'm looking for advice on dealing with the version of you I'm fucking -- and he presses his palm firmly against his lips to keep from breaking out into hysterical laughter.

Before he heads to bed, he turns the note over again and underlines every word of the sentence on his side of the paper. Then, just so JD can't claim innocence or misinterpretation, adds a few exclamation points for good measure, and adds (I really mean it) at the bottom. He doesn't expect JD is going to pay attention, but he wakes up in the middle of the night when JD's weight settles onto his chest and opens his eyes to find JD staring down at him, expressionless.

"Hi," Cam says, tentatively. JD doesn't say anything, just keeps looking at him. Cam once spent a summer with Aunt Aggie, waking up every morning to find her damn prissy Siamese sitting on his chest and giving him the thousand-yard stare. JD's got the same might-claw-your-eyeballs-out look in his eyes. Cam knows better than to ever make the comparison out loud.

Just when Cam's about ready to concede that JD followed the letter of his note, if not the spirit -- woke him up right and proper, even if Cam had meant "wake me up so we can actually have a conversation about this" -- JD says, precisely as though he's continuing a conversation that had only been placed on pause while he went to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a drink of water, "I can live with that."

It actually takes Cam a minute to realize what the fuck JD is talking about; he'd almost forgotten the ultimatums he'd given. When he remembers, he licks his lips. "Which part?"

That gets a faint, tiny smile. "Both of them. You're right. I've been holding out on you. Won't say I'm sorry. But, you need more, okay. I can live with that."

Cam takes a deep breath. "Okay," he says. He feels slow, sluggish. He knows JD well enough to know that's not why JD chose the middle of the night to keep going with this conversation, but he also knows JD well enough to know that JD will consider it an added side benefit. "Is there anything else --"

Anything else you've been holding out on me, it's going to be, until JD's hand comes down on his mouth. Cam sighs; JD has direct and indirect ways of getting him to shut up, and this is one of the time-honored direct ways. "Yes," JD says. "There is. But not right now."

It pisses Cam off. He's spent the past two days waiting for JD to get his shit together, and he's put his entire life on hold waiting for some kind of resolution to the fight, and he doesn't want to push, but he also doesn't want to go through the stress and strain of a family Christmas with this hanging over his head, and he'd like to think he deserves a little bit of consideration. "I --" he starts, lips moving against JD's skin.

JD shakes his head, quickly. "Not now," he repeats, and then for the first time ever, Cam sees something almost like fear in his eyes. He takes a deep breath. "In the daylight, okay?"

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