What angel, if I called out, would hear me?
And even if one of them impulsively embraced me,
I'd be crushed by its strength. For beauty
is just the beginning of a terror we can barely stand:
we admire it because it calmly refuses to crush us.
Every angel terrifies.

Throwing Pebbles Up The Mountain
king is asking for my eyes, king is waiting for my legs, there is nothing I want more. Jack needs to take care of people, especially Daniel; what Daniel needs is what Jack's always wanted, but Jack doesn't know what it'll do to him to give it. Set after 2x09, "Secrets". Adult and explicit.

[ I'd been conjuring up all sorts of images of Daniel drunk and despairing. When he opened the door and frowned at me, seeming perfectly normal, it took me a second to re-think my opening strategy. ]

Eurydice, After
Daniel has evolved a number of coping mechanisms over the years; they're useful when you suddenly find yourself trapped in a Greek myth, and even more so when you're not sure which role you're playing. Set just after "Forever In A Day". Adult and explicit.

[ He is thinking of initialized voiceless labiodental fricatives, like 'fingers' and 'fuck' and 'faithful'. Jack produces a voiceless alveolar fricative, sibilant, and twists his fingers. ]

Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well
Daniel, Sam, and the definitions of loneliness and need. Adult and semi-explicit.

[ Sometimes Sam wonders what he did with his Friday nights before he came to spend them in her living room. And more than that, why he isn't doing it anymore. Then she remembers she promised herself she'd stop asking questions about Daniel a while back, after she'd caught the look in his eyes at the tail end of a bad night that said, plain as day: you don't ever want to know. ]

Nerve
Sam's always been the Good Girl. It takes Daniel to make her realize that being real is so much better than being good. Set after 7x13, "Grace". Adult and explicit.

[ She's in a gay bar and her teammate and sometime lover is cruising the crowd to find her a present. It's sweet. Somehow. It has to be sweet, because if it's not sweet, it's demented. ]

Metaphor
Cam's trying his very best, but he's beginning to get worried it might not be good enough. Daniel's got an advantage: he knows his best has never been good enough. Tag for 9x09, "Prototype".

[ Jackson's eyes are closed and his face is peaceful, more peaceful than Cam's ever seen it before, and he doesn't want to interrupt. In the candle-light, without his glasses, Jackson looks five years older, which puts him at about the age his file says he really is. Cam's caught by the flicker of shadows across his face and wonders what he's thinking. ]

Depth Charge
Cam fucks up a lot, but his biggest fuckup is thinking that Daniel's just this guy, you know? Quasi-tag for 9x16, "Off the Grid". Adult and explicit.

[ Sometimes talking to Jackson is like trying to hug a cactus. Only less cuddly. ]

A Valley of Dry Bones
Cam's always been good at facing facts, except when those facts have to deal with the things he doesn't want to admit, even to himself. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest. Semi-adult.

[ The way it works in war is that you walk straight up to the gates of hell and the thing that keeps you going is that you know the guy on your left side and the guy on your right side are just as fucking scared as you are but they've got your back and you've got theirs. He knew from the minute he walked in here that the SGC was on wartime footing, and apparently they feel like he hasn't been living up to his end of the bargain. ]

Inanna's Promise
Cam's brain might be having trouble coming to terms with what Daniel is offering, but Cam's body is absolutely on board. Companion piece to "Inanna's Ghost"; also available in a combined side-by-side version.

[ If it weren't for the way Jackson's never once hinted that this is something shameful, Cam would have died of shame a long damn time ago. And yet he keeps coming back, week after week, showing up at Jackson's door with his eyes turned down and his body already humming, and Jackson takes him in hand and spreads him out and makes him feel and oh, Lord, it's enough to drive him mad with how much he wants it, but he does. ]

Inanna's Ghost
Daniel believes in giving the people around him what they need, even if Daniel isn't particularly interested in the actions it will take to deliver. Companion piece to "Inanna's Promise"; also available in a combined side-by-side version.

[ The terms "sadism" and "masochism" were coined by a nineteenth-century Austro-German psychiatrist: sadism, after the Marquis de Sade; masochism, after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Daniel has read both their works, de Sade's in French, von Sacher-Masoch's in German. He finds them as dull and tedious as he finds all pornography; there has never been erotica he finds erotic. ]

Grace Notes
Though we had our troubles, we had them in a true perspective. The universe, as we could see any night, is unimaginably large, and mostly empty, and mostly dark. We knew we needed to be together more than we needed to be apart. (Wendell Berry)

[ When his phone rings in the middle of the night now, it's only rarely about the end of the world, and that's the second most important thing his new job has given Jack. ]

Like Water, Lying
Jack comes back to Colorado for a visit, and Cam thinks he's lost Daniel's attention for the week. Except he hasn't, not at all. And that's scarier. Adult, explicit, technically a threesome, BDSM-flavored. Also read Like Water, Lying (the Event Horizon Remix) by muck_a_luck.

[ Because he's almost positive, now that he knows what he's looking for, that Jackson and O'Neill are fucking. And Cam's okay with that, too. He knows he didn't have first claim on any of them, much less Jackson, and hey, there's still that little voice in the back of his head reminding him that O'Neill will go back to Washington, and Cam will stay here, and that's good enough. ]

Between The Ocean And Your Open Vein
A side-along story for 10x13, "The Road Not Taken": this is how you put a life on pause.

[ The first thing Cam thinks, when it becomes clear that Jackson's missing and won't be back anytime soon, is: O'Neill's going to kill me. ]

Make Crosses From Your Lovers
Vala understands more than people give her credit for. Jack needs a night off from living his life.

[ "Mountain gets heavy after a while, doesn't it," he says. It isn't an invitation to conversation, just a statement with which she fully agrees. It's odd to hear it voiced by someone who has always been able to come and go as he pleases, but she thinks there is something about the vastness of O'Neill that chokes at wearing chains of anyone's forging, including his own. ]

[ Like Little Mice We'll Wait: By princessofg, and I consider it canonical. Jack, Vala, and an opera; beautifully, gloriously them. ]

The Same Story The Crow Told Me
On a night like any other, six months after Daniel disappears: five dreams, five gifts, five pieces.

[ "Behold, I show you a mystery," Jackson says. "Third time's the charm." ]

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