Monday and Tuesday were a 36-hour trek over P4G-772, the planet of balmy five-degree -- Farenheit -- temperatures, where they'd been trying to pin down the anomaly in the MALP readings that Sam thought might be a new naquadah isotope and turned out to be a glitch in the MALP's firmware. Daniel's toes didn't finish thawing until halfway to Wednesday, when the base's HVAC people were this close to bitching him out for turning up the heat in his office until it almost reminded him of childhood, of summer in Giza and the long slow bake of the desert.

He did remember to turn the thermostat down to a reasonable range before Wednesday morning's trip to Tollana for what Jack had taken to referring to the visiting firemen banquet. It was spring on Tollana, with trees having sex over every available surface, and Daniel quietly blessed Janet and the non-drowsy antihistamine formula she pumped him full of, which was actually non-drowsy instead of "coma-inducing masked by lots of caffeine". Of course, he could have done with some caffeine, since "evening meal" on Tollana currently nicely coincided with "five in the fucking morning" on Earth, but he could always catch a nap in his office later.

Which he did, waking up blearily at twenty-two thirty when the alarms went off and all on-base personnel were pulled in for a search-and-rescue on P8C-941; Daniel stifled a yawn against his shoulder as he checked his gear in the Gateroom. The Gate on '941 was at ten thousand feet and they didn't have time to acclimatize; by the time they got SG-17 dug out from under the rockslide, everyone was bitching about headaches and shortness of breath. Daniel eyed the plants growing wild around base camp, dead ringers for Erythroxylum coca, and amused himself by mentally building a case for failing his tox screening -- an old grad school buddy of his used to wax polemic for hours about the way the American war on drugs completely marginalized indigenous use of certain drugs as medicines, the use of the coca plant for treatment of altitude sickness being one of his prime examples. Instead, Daniel drank a lot of water and let Janet pass out oxygen and dexamethasone like it was candy when they finally got everyone back safe and sound Thursday morning.

Jack didn't take to the altitude at all, but Janet cleared him by Thursday evening, and they were off to the steamy jungles of M2X-379 (mid-afternoon local time) for basic recon, or what Jack tended to call the "tromp and poke" missions. They tromped and they poked and came up with a whole lot of nothing, and by the time they got home it was thirteen hundred, Friday, and General Hammond, praise God, gave them seventy-two whole hours off.

Daniel made his way home, opened the doors to his apartment balcony to get a little bit of fresh air into the place, and slept like the dead for ten hours.

They don't tell you about this in the recruiting brochures, he thought, and got up to brush his teeth. Eleven o'clock at night, and his body clock was so mis-wired it might as well have been flashing 12:00 over and over again for all the good it was doing him. Perils of working a few hundred feet underground, he supposed, and took himself into the bathroom for a shower that emptied his hot-water heater and left him feeling somewhat human again.

He'd almost forgotten that Colorado Springs was in the middle of what passed for a heat-wave; he didn't bother putting on clothes after the shower, just wrapped a towel around his hips and went to root around in his kitchen. Stale heel of bread, something unidentifiable that had probably started out life in the produce family, two cans of tomato sauce, and a box of raisins; he really had to go shopping more often, even if things did tend to go bad before he got a chance to use them.

Well, there was a reason the staff at the Waffle House knew half the SGC by name. Daniel picked up his chinos from the floor and rifled through them, fingers performing their ritual flick through the depths-of-pockets detritus. Once he'd separated out all the actual American money from the scraps of paper, the trinkets, the offworld coins and miscellaney that he somehow managed to keep accumulating even though he never wore these pants anywhere but around town and to and from the base, he counted up $23.87 and picked up the phone.

They all left their cell phones on no matter what time it was, in case the SGC needed to get in touch with them quickly, so Daniel called Jack's house line; Jack turned off the ringer when he was sleeping, and Daniel didn't want to risk waking him. He was just ready to hang up before the answering machine clicked on when Jack picked up the phone. "'Lo?"

"Jack, it's me," he said, cradling the cordless against his shoulder and rummaging through the pile of clean laundry he hadn't gotten around to putting away, mostly because it was nearly indistinguishable from the pile of dirty laundry. "You up and moving, or have you not slept yet?"

He could hear a bit of strain in Jack's voice, which was odd, because really, it had been a quiet week. As weeks go, at least. Well, nobody had shot at him, which was generally his mark of a quiet week. "Woke up a few hours ago. Let me guess: there's no food at your place."

"Or yours, I'd bet." Daniel unearthed a black t-shirt that might have been part of a uniform or just something he'd picked up in a three-pack at the JC Penney's. "Waffle House? I don't feel like going alone."

Jack chuckled. "Waitresses still trying to pick you up?"

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Every time."

"I could eat," Jack said. "You wanna pick me up, or should we meet there?"

"I'll get you in twenty," Daniel said, and hung up the phone. Phone conversations between them were conducted with military precision, not like his conversations with Sam, who always seemed more willing to talk when she wasn't in the same room as you. He tossed the phone onto the bed, threw a change of clothes into his rucksack -- it wasn't unusual for him to wind up just crashing at Jack's, and he couldn't remember if any of his clothes were still over there -- and was out the door in five.

Jack had left the door unlocked for him, and Daniel let himself in and toed off his shoes automatically; it wasn't one of Jack's house rules, but Daniel had picked up the custom long ago. "Honey, I'm home," he called, and then rolled his eyes, because that was pure Jack and would have never come out of his mouth five years ago. They really had been working together too long.

"Hey," Jack called from the kitchen, and shuffled out with a cup of coffee in hand. He was barefoot, wearing only a pair of ragged USAF sweats, and he was moving like he wasn't quite awake yet. He waved a hand behind him. "Half a pot left; help yourself."

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Is it the good stuff?"

"Isn't that rule fifteen? Thou Shalt Not Feed Daniel Shit Coffee?" Jack scratched at his belly, slowly rotated one shoulder; Daniel could hear the pop across the room.

"No, rule fifteen is Thou Shalt Not Ask Sam If She Has Packed Sufficient Feminine Hygeine Products While Thou Art In The Gateroom. You're thinking of rule sixteen." Daniel contemplated a cup of coffee, decided he'd save it to get the taste of the crap Waffle House coffee out of his mouth once they returned. "You wanna go to the one on Eighth, or the one on Fillmore?"

"Fillmore's closer," Jack said. "Lemme just go change."

Daniel wandered into the living room and dropped onto the couch. Jack was reading Tom Clancy's latest, probably due to the same impulse that made Daniel go see Tomb Raider the month previous. Daniel read the blurb on the back, winced, flipped it over, pondered putting it down, but it was there and it was printed words, so he started in on the prologue while he was waiting.

He was into chapter two when he heard Jack swearing from the bedroom. "Jack?" he called.

"Yeah, yeah," Jack called back, and by now Daniel could tell when Jack was in pain and trying to hide it.

He got up and wandered to lean a shoulder against the doorframe of Jack's bedroom. Jack had managed to pull on his jeans, but he was struggling with his shirt; Daniel could tell, now that he was looking, that Jack couldn't raise his arms past shoulder height and was probably having trouble turning his neck, too. "And Janet let you out of the infirmary?" he asked.

Jack jumped a little. "Jeez, warn a guy, willya?" he grumbled, which made Daniel pretty sure that Jack was in a lot of pain, because that was the only time Daniel could manage to sneak up on him, even at home when Jack's subconscious sentries were turned down. "It's nothing, just all the weather changes this week. Old bones."

"Right," Daniel said, and crossed the bedroom to take the shirt out of Jack's hands. Jack gave him a death glare, then sighed and held out his arms so Daniel could pull the shirt over them. Instead of taking the hint, Daniel put two fingers on the top of Jack's left trapezius and probed.

"Oh hey ow oh," Jack said. Daniel walked his fingers along down to the collarbone, and Jack said something else with a lot of incoherent vowels.

"It's no wonder you can't move," Daniel said. "I can't actually tell what's bone and what's muscle here."

"Yeah, I gave the masseuse the week off," Jack said. "I'll be fine with three Advil and some food."

"You actually could probably use a few hours with a massage therapist," Daniel said, and pushed up his glasses. He slung Jack's shirt over one of his own shoulders and put his hand over Jack's shoulder, digging his thumb lightly into the scalenes and cocking his head at the hiss it prompted. "Or some yoga." He walked around to Jack's back and splayed his fingers over the middle of the trapezius.

"I said, I'm fine," Jack said. "I just slept wro -- onnnnng."

Daniel smirked and kept working his thumbs down the sides of Jack's spine. "Right," he said. "Which is why you can't lift your arms. Or turn your neck. This doesn't just go away by itself, Jack."

"Sure it does," Jack said, faking cheerfulness. "Couple of days off, hot shower or two, no heavy lifting. I'll be fine by Monday. Come on, food."

"Lie down on the bed," Daniel said, and nudged Jack with a palm to the small of his back. "Face up. I'll be right back."

"And here I've been telling Teal'c that my virtue is safe with you," Jack said, but he went. Daniel headed for where he'd dropped his rucksack in the entryway; he was rummaging through it as he came back to the bedroom, mostly looking through the strata by touch until he found the bottle of massage oil. Not the same one he'd carried all through grad school, that one was long gone, but a near cousin. Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed when Daniel came back in.

"Really, Jack, I said lie down," Daniel said.

Jack eyed him semi-warily. "Ancient Egyptian custom? Mystical Abydonian rite?"

Daniel waved the bottle of massage oil like he'd brandish a flashlight. "Grad school survival trait." He piled Jack's pillows up against the headboard; Jack hadn't bothered to make his bed when he'd gotten up, so he also shoved the covers out of the way before sitting down at the head of the bed, crossing his legs and pulling a pillow into his lap. He patted the pillow reassuringly. "You'd be surprised how badly you can mess up your neck and shoulders by hunching over a lab bench for sixteen hours a day. We'd trade backrubs in the lounge over pizza all the time."

Jack raised an eyebrow at the mention of Daniel's past -- not something he was really forthcoming about at the best of times, really. But grad school had been one of the first times since he'd moved back to America where he'd been around people for whom touch was casual, and he'd been shocked to realize that without even noticing it, he'd taught himself the American concept of "personal space bubble" and hadn't realized how much it had conflicted with his early socialization; those nights had been the first time he'd felt comfortable for a very long time.

Daniel knew that Jack didn't have a very well-defined concept of personal space either, at least not with the people he actually gave a damn about. It had been fucking up his reading of Jack's signals for longer than he'd care to admit. Jack waited until Daniel patted the pillow again and then stretched out, his feet hanging off the foot of the bed, to put his head in Daniel's lap.

"Down a little more," Daniel said, and Jack obliged, until just the back of his head was resting against the pillow. Daniel poured a few drops of oil into his hands and rubbed them together to warm it.

"I have a hard time picturing what you must have been like in grad school," Jack said. Being horizontal must have reminded him of his perpetual sleep debt, because he let his eyes drift closed and relaxed, ever-so-slightly.

And Jack had never asked about it, either, which Daniel had at first taken as indifference -- which, all right, it probably had been at the time -- and finally realized was courtesy. "It was a while ago," he said, and ran his fingers over the tops of Jack's shoulders and up the neck to his hairline.

Worse than he'd thought; Jack hissed at the touch. Daniel lightened the pressure a little. "Getting longer every year," Jack said, and then seemed content to fall silent.

Daniel rolled Jack's head gently to one side and started work on -- oh, he could never remember the names of the muscles in the neck, no matter how many classes he'd taken in anatomy to aid in skeleton reconstruction, but he traced his thumb slowly along the lines and curves of them under Jack's skin. Still sunburned a little from last week on Mertaxis, he noticed, though it had mostly faded to tan. He rested his fingertips on a knot and pushed, tentatively. Jack huffed out one long breath and then quieted again.

"Too rough?" Daniel asked, his hands stilling.

"Nah," Jack mumbled. "Hurts like a bitch but -- oh God -- don't stop."

It had been a long time since Daniel had worked on someone so silent. A long time since he'd worked on anyone at all. Sarah had always been a moaner, he thought, and it was weird how little the thought hurt. "Quiet, at first," he finally said, and Jack made a thrumming "hrm?" noise without bothering to open his eyes. "In grad school. You said you had a hard time picturing what I must have been like."

"I can't imagine you quiet," Jack said.

Daniel curled his hand over Jack's neck, rubbing with the base of his palm. He could feel the muscles giving a little, unlocking themselves from full-attention and starting to slip along to parade rest. "I did say it was a while ago."

"Would've thought you'd have been full of fire," Jack said. "Correcting wrong theories. Ranting about Budge."

Daniel laughed, softly. "You didn't know me back then," he said. For a minute, he distracted himself by wondering what it would have been like, if a young Captain O'Neill had crossed paths with Daniel Jackson, grad school student. They probably wouldn't have had two words to say to each other. It was amazing, he thought, how circumstances could make or break so much.

He cupped Jack's cheek in his hand and turned his head in the other direction. Jack's breathing was starting to even. Daniel stroked his fingers down the side of Jack's neck, feeling the pulse fluttering gently beneath his fingertips, feeling the way Jack trusted his hands.

Jack opened his eyes and looked up. "So, tell me," he said. Soft and sleepy.

They'd never really talked about it. For all that Jack knew him better than anyone ever had, Daniel could never remember actually sitting down and swapping any bits of life story. Jack had been there for all the important things, the defining things -- at least the ones from the past five years -- and everything beyond that seemed to exist more in abstract than in reality. Sometimes Daniel felt like he could divide his life into two epochs. Before Stargate and After Stargate. Jack still knew more about his life Before Stargate than anyone who wasn't there for it, but he learned it all through osmosis.

It was quiet in here, though, and dark outside, and maybe Jack wasn't the only one relaxing. "I was young," Daniel said. He worked his thumb into the curve where neck met shoulder, his eyes unfocused, feeling his way by touch. "Chicago doesn't do a terminal MA, so I was a doctoral candidate at nineteen. And I looked young at nineteen --"

"You look young now," Jack said.

Daniel flicked his ear -- Jack yelped -- and then went back to kneading his thumbs into the spot he suspected was causing the worst of Jack's neck problems. "I looked younger then. It wasn't until I declared the triple program that the guys from Linguistics adopted me and decided they wanted to turn me into their younger brother."

He didn't feel like telling the rest of the story -- by the end of it, it didn't exactly paint him in the most flattering of lights -- so he fell silent again, except to add, "Take a deep breath," and when Jack did, "and let it out," and dug his thumb into the meridian point at the top of Jack's shoulder.

"Jesus," Jack said, and went limp.

Daniel stroked his palms over Jack's shoulders, up along his neck. He'd forgotten how open this made him feel, how sensitized to the smallest breath and tremor of his partner. It itched under his skin, almost; with his hands on Jack's skin, his attention narrowed down to noting more than this, he imagined he could almost feel the worst of Jack's pain in his own back and shoulders.

He'd never say that where Jack could hear, though, because the route to mockery would be swift and keen. "Can you turn over?" he asked, cradling the back of Jack's head in his hands.

"Does it mean you're gonna stop?" Jack mumbled, and groped at the covers for a moment before getting a hand down for leverage and rolling over.

Daniel eased himself out from under Jack's weight. "No," he said. "Just give me a minute."

The air conditioning clicked on as Daniel pulled his t-shirt over his head, reached down to where he'd dropped his rucksack and rummaged for a pair of sweatpants. The moonlight fell across Jack's face, made one eye glint as Jack opened it, lazily. "Naked time?" Jack asked, sounding drowsy.

"I need to be able to move. Half of this is about body weight, not hand strength." Daniel was used to stripping in front of Jack; he'd gotten over any lingering modesty quickly. He put a knee up on the bed once he was changed, poured more oil into his hands. "Are you warm enough?"

"Yeah." Jack closed his eyes again. "You never told any of us you could do this."

"You never asked." Daniel rubbed his hands together, warming the oil. He straddled Jack's back, one knee on either side of his waist, and stroked the oil on in one long slide of his palms up either side of Jack's spine.

"Nggggh," Jack said. Something shifted under Jack's skin as Daniel reached the center of his shoulderblades; the short quick crack was too loud in the silence of the room. "Oh, God, I felt that."

Daniel chuckled. "I heard that. That might be what was out in here. Don't you ever go to the chiropractor like Janet keeps telling you?"

"Witch doctor," Jack mumbled into the pillow.

"Witch doctor who'll keep you from screaming when you try to put your shirt on," Daniel countered, and put his hands back where he'd gotten the vertebrae to pop, walking them lightly down the sides of Jack's spine and trying to see if anything else could likely be shifted.

Jack hissed as Daniel's fingertips went over something that was so tight Daniel couldn't tell if it was spine or muscle. "I don't like strangers putting their hands on me," he said.

"Yeah, I know." Daniel didn't know the reason, but he'd always assumed it had something to do with Jack's years of service before they'd ever met, the chapters of Jack's book locked up so tightly even Jack didn't know where the key'd been thrown. He rested his palms at the top of Jack's lats and took a deep breath, trying to center himself, trying to sense. If he closed his eyes a little, squinted and tilted his head, he could almost imagine he saw the points of tension, like angry snarling traps beneath the skin.

"Your hands are so warm," Jack said, distant and sleepy.

"Shh," Daniel said, and worked the side of his hands up underneath Jack's shoulderblades, bending over, putting his weight behind it and leaning. He listened to that tiny voice inside his head that told him when enough was about to click over into too much and backed off, just a little, kneading along back in towards the spine in tiny circles.

"Such strong hands," Jack said. Daniel wondered if he even realized he was speaking.

"Shh," he said again, and rocked his palms up into the base of the trapezius muscle. Another two vertebrae popped, and this time Jack moaned, quick and soft until he caught himself.

So beautiful, Daniel thought, looking down at the map of scars beneath his hands. Another thing he couldn't ever say out loud.

Instead, he fit himself over Jack's back, palms and forearms and elbows positioned just so, like the Sphinx, his weight balanced on his arms. He waited for Jack to say something, but Jack did nothing but breathe, in, out. He could almost feel the warmth flowing from his hands, into Jack's body, seeping into all the cracks and aches and soothing them away.

Eventually, he drew back again, and started working each pressure point in turn, thumb underneath opposite palm, holding, releasing. By the sixth, Jack was quivering. By the tenth, he was rumbling, a sound halfway between moan and purr, deep in the back of the throat on each exhale.

When the complaints of his wrists grew too plaintive to ignore, Daniel paused, brushed his fingertips over Jack's cheekbone; Jack barely stirred, his breath dancing over Daniel's palm.

"My hands are dying," Daniel said, quietly. "Take a minute, and then see if you can move a little better. If you can't, I'll take five minutes to rest them and then keep working."

Jack's muscles felt like putty beneath Daniel's other hand. Daniel stroked along Jack's spine, feeling the shiver, and then slid to one side to sit on the bed, rotating each wrist in turn and listening to them crackle.

Just as Daniel was beginning to suspect Jack would drift back off to sleep, Jack gathered himself and rolled to his side, long and languid. "I do feel better," he said, and added, after enough of a pause for it to almost be awkward, "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Daniel said. His wrists were sore, aching, but he wasn't quite ready to abdicate the permission to touch yet; he caught Jack's hand in both of his own and drew it into his lap. Jack started, shifted against the bed, but Daniel dug his thumbs into the flesh at the base of Jack's palm and Jack relaxed again, making soft chuffing noises without even realizing.

"You can do that anytime you'd like," Jack finally said, calm and relaxed.

Daniel laughed. It cost him a lot to set Jack's hand free, running his fingertips over the palm one last time as he set it back down against the mattress. "That'd go over really well in the mountain. Half of everyone already thinks we're all crazy."

"We are crazy," Jack said, and stretched his arms over his head, palms flat against the headboard, pushing. Daniel watched without watching, telling himself he was only evaluating the quality of his work. Jack could move now, at least. It was a job well done, and in some small way Daniel missed being able to bring someone that ease.

"You still hungry?" Jack added, after he'd finished testing the edges and limits of his muscles to see where the twinges started now.

Daniel pushed up his glasses with the back of his hand. "Yeah," he said. "Starving."

Jack nodded. "Me too," he said. There was some weird tone to his voice, but Daniel couldn't read it, and let it go. Jack pushed himself up, pausing for a second to sit at the side of the bed, rocking his neck from side to side. Daniel had to smile at the pop, pop, pop, because he knew how good it felt to finally be able to coax some relief.

"Here," Daniel said, and got up to hand Jack his shirt. Even in the low light, he could see the smudges his fingers, still damp with the massage oil, left where he clutched it; he winced and brushed at them with the back of his hand. "Sorry."

"For?" Jack said, and then looked down. He shrugged and pulled the shirt over his head, carelessly, then ran a hand over his hair. "Don't worry about it. Laundry day tomorrow."

"We lead such exciting lives." Daniel turned away, swapped the sweats for his pants, pulled his own shirt back on. When he turned back, Jack was standing right up next to him, and Daniel took a step back, automatically; he hadn't heard Jack's footfalls.

"Thank you," Jack said again, and this time it wasn't awkward at all, but Daniel dropped his eyes and looked down at his hands anyway.

"Really," he said. "It's no problem. Come on. I'm ravenous."

He turned to lead the way out of the bedroom. He could hear Jack falling into step behind him, and for a second, Jack's hand lingered at the small of his back, then fell away.

"You ever gonna tell me the rest of that story?" Jack asked, his voice coming from behind Daniel in the hallway.

Daniel had to smile. He said, "Someday."

. : | read comments - post comment - back | : .