Cam's lying face-down on the bed -- one knee drawn up underneath him, naked as the day he was born and every inch of his skin singing at him when he so much as shifts a muscle -- and Jackson's kneeling in between his thighs. (Daniel, Jackson insists on being called; here, now, in this bed, he will be Daniel and Cam will be Cameron, and Cam can usually remember to call him that out loud but he sure as hell can't change the way he thinks.) This is the breathing room, he knows; Jackson's giving him a few minutes to cool down, to back off if he wants to. Needs to. Jackson's nothing if not exquisitely courteous, even here. Especially here.

He can feel himself leaning into Jackson's touch. From the dip of the bed, yeah, but more from the way he can still feel the weight of Jackson's hand against the curve of his ass. Can still feel the scratch and burn of Jackson's nails digging into his skin. Jackson's barely touching him now at all, but Cam's still leaning into it, like his body's trying to say more yes harder. Or please.

He wonders, sometimes, how the hell he wound up here. What chain of coincidences, what set of decisions he made that led him to this bed, at this moment: naked, buzzing, painfully aroused, feeling as though his heart might leap out of his chest at any moment. If anyone had asked him a year ago, two months ago, whether he could ever imagine being so turned on he could probably come beneath Jackson's hand just from a single slap, he'd have called them crazy. And yet here he is, his face buried in the pillow, his hips lifting his backside up to display that reddened skin in the hope Jackson will find it appealing enough to continue.

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. And he doesn't know why (doesn't want to think about why), but Jackson seems to be more than willing to give.

He's starting to come back from that edge of sensation, just a little. Enough to be thinking about all of this, at least; enough to surface from the haze of his body shouting want want want at him. And it's like Jackson can see it, can sense it, because his hand comes down on the nape of Cam's neck with the lightest of ghost-touches, enough to make goose-pimples rise, and the promise of that touch catches Cam right back up with its claws and makes Cam shiver.

Cameron is lying face-down on the bed, one knee drawn up underneath him, and Daniel is kneeling in between his open thighs. Cameron, here, not Mitchell, as Daniel is Daniel (though sir would fall from Cameron's lips as easily as yes or please, Daniel will not permit it). Names are words; words have power; come now, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, its tops in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of all the earth. The nature of a language influences the habitual thought of those who speak it. No man understands the language of his neighbor, but that means nothing here. Tonight, Daniel will not allow Cameron to speak unless there is good reason; he is not interested in what Cameron thinks he wants.

Cameron's body understands what it wants far better than Cameron's mind does; that is, after all, the reason they have reached this point. From first hint to last confession, Cameron's skin cries out: to be touched, to be marked and tended and claimed. Daniel is touching him now, the fingertips of one hand stroking lightly over the red and lavish marks lining Cameron's back, hips, ass. Cameron's voice is silent, but his body is screaming: yes, please, more.

Daniel's nose is itching; he disregards it. Easy enough to do: he has been growing ever-more-experienced in setting aside the demands of his body over the continuum of his lifetime; his body is not his totality, and most days it will barely register on his radar. He has been unbuilt and rebuilt, cell to cell, nucleotides stacked upon each other haphazardly by some unknown hand to spell out the sequence that houses his self. He is vast, he contains multitudes, but that has been literal fact rather than metaphor more often than he is comfortable with knowing and it's easier if he just doesn't open those doors.

Daniel is thinking of memory, unreliable in the false light of the artifice of eternity: unreliable twice over, when memory has been stripped away and gifted back so many times, introducing subtle errors in transcription. Cameron is not thinking at all: he is stretched out, making of himself an offering, secure in the knowledge that Daniel's hands will hold him. Daniel touches: nape of neck, small of back, all the places that shiver at his passage. Such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enamelling, to keep a drowsy Emperor awake. No country for old men indeed.

This is the stillness (between two waves of the sea). Interstitial: from the Latin interstitium, past participle of intersistere: to pause, to break. In Ancient it is enterestere and it is conjugated irregularly. Languages are one of the few things Daniel has never lost.

(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. He has found nothing in all the reading he has done that speaks to him. Pain is something to be endured, not something to be pursued; and yet, Daniel keeps a shelf of the most useful references, the ones with diagrams and instructions. He does not know, yet, where Cameron's journey will take him, and he does not know what he will need to know to bring Cameron safely home.)

Cameron is lying face-down on the bed, motionless save for the leap and dance of muscle beneath his skin, and Daniel wonders, again, what bargains and compromises Cameron has made with himself to allow himself to arrive here. It is not important. There is a paraffin candle, uncolored, unscented, burning on the nightstand; Cameron's eyes had not stopped at it when Daniel led him into the bedroom, assuming it to be for ambience.

Daniel has never cared about ambience.

Jackson's apparently decided that the time-out has been long enough for Cam to have said no if he was going to, long enough for Cam to somehow communicate enough, stop. Cam doesn't want Jackson to stop. There's a part of him, a part he doesn't want to think about, that wishes he hadn't even been given the opportunity. It's the same part that sits up and takes notice as Jackson leans over him, bearing him down into the cradle of the bed, to reach for something over on the nightstand.

For a second, he wonders if Jackson's reaching for lube and condoms, if this will be the night Jackson decides to fuck him, and goddamn if his dick doesn't twitch at the thought of it before he stops. Jackson had spent hours, patient and implacable, drawing Cam's lines and limits out of him, and Jackson's been pushing those limits ever since, and Cam can't tell if the thought of Jackson fucking him actually turns him on or if it's just the thought of being forced over the one line he'd set in stone.

He can't see what's going on over him, but Jackson's other hand is walking his spine, tracing lines and bumps and scars, and that hint of connection is enough to keep Cam from panic; he rides the crest and the trough of anticipation, breathless to see what Jackson's going to do next, and the words itch on his lips: tell me, what next, what now. But Jackson's first order tonight had been don't speak until I tell you; at the time Cam had thought it would be the easiest command to follow that Jackson's ever given him, and it wasn't until he'd nearly bitten through his lip to keep from saying no please stop don't stop no please as Jackson sent him flying that Cam realized how much of a stretch it would truly be.

It feels like he's hanging there forever, Jackson's pants skimming over the stinging (so good) and burning skin of his ass (and Jackson's not hard, not even turned on maybe, and that sounds a wrong note in the symphony Jackson's playing on Cam's bones and nerves, but it's swallowed up so quickly in the harmony of Jackson's breath on the arch of his shoulderblade, Jackson's fingernails against the small of his back, that he forgets it again immediately). And just at the moment Cam feels like he's about to step out of his skin with the wanting, Jackson kneels back, and Cam just has a second to draw breath before the flick of fire spreads across his back.

He doesn't know, can't know, what it is, what Jackson's doing -- God, what Jackson's doing, what it is that makes him feel like this, what it is that reaches down inside his chest and pulses, burns, yes please and God Daniel no warring on his tongue. He has only a bare second to pray those words stay back in the heat and darkness behind his eyes before he realizes he's pushing back up against the empty air, reaching, begging, and the noise he can hear is his own breath vibrating out on a moan. He's trying to hold himself still, hold himself silent, the way Jackson has ordered him (because Jackson is doing what he wants, and therefore he will do what Jackson wants; nothing else, nothing more) but his blood is loud in his ears and he feels like thirty thousand feet and climbing.

A pause, a shift; the fire comes again, and this time he's waiting for it, anticipating it, and he can pick out each individual lick of feeling as it crawls over his back, like thermite kissing down to the bone. It's sharp, sharp enough as to almost be like knives, but there's something deep and broad and heavy about it too. For a second he thinks it's spreading, like Jackson's set him ablaze, and then the burn fades and recedes and cools, and he realizes it must be --

Wax. Jackson had a candle burning, when he led Cam in here and stripped him. And God, but Cam wants, wants to feel that razor line between not enough and too much, wants to be picked up and thrown into the center of it, wants to submerge himself in the ache and sting. It feels real, like so much else doesn't, like someone (Jackson) suddenly clicked the world into focus and narrowed everything down to nothing more than skin and body and blood. The wax falls against the small of his back, puddling, pooling, and he's pushing himself back up against it (yes please more) and reaching out, palms against the headboard, back arching, loose, burning, untethered --

Jackson's hand comes down against the nape of Cam's neck, holding him still, and it sends him crashing back down into the outline of his skin. Jackson never lets him go too far. Jackson is speaking, and the sounds become syllables, and the syllables become speech, and what he is asking, what he is demanding, is that Cam put words to the weight of what he is feeling. "Three words," Jackson is saying, and Cam's thoughts stumble over the sound of it.

He leans over Cameron's body, knowing the cotton of his pants is dragging across the reddened and sensitized skin of Cameron's ass, hearing it in Cameron's hiss and whimper, feeling it in the shiver that passes through the body beneath him. He walks the fingers of his other hand down Cameron's spine, feeling for each jut of bone until he can construct a map through his fingertips, taking careful note of which spots cause Cameron to press back against his fingers and which spots cause him to shy away.

The first drop of wax lands, neatly and precisely, where Daniel had intended for it to fall; the tiny tendrils of the droplet radiate from its center core as it marks the center of Cameron's shoulderblades, along the spine. Daniel has a heartbeat to admire his handiwork before Cameron is rearing back, leaning into the heat and burn, something he's always craved and always denied himself, and the sound he makes is halfway between yearning and pain. Daniel waits to see if there is any further response. Cameron is rarely speechless; the stream of words falling from his lips is often a valuable diagnostic tool, and yet tonight Daniel has ordered him to silence. Cameron is keeping his silence now, breathing out only on a pharyngeal vowel that resonates in the space between them. Daniel takes note of the sound; it is the noise Cameron voices when what he means is more.

The sinographs for yi (yì) and jing (jīng), placed together, are familiar to most Americans, if they are familiar at all, as the I Ching, rendered into English as Book of Changes; the implications of those two tiny characters cannot be unpacked in anything less than a paragraph. The great teachings of simplicity, substitution, and persistance. The wax, as it falls, turns trigrams into hexagrams: ming (míng) yi (yí), "darkening of the light", xu (xū), "attending", bo (bō), "splitting apart". Daniel is watching the future, unheeded, splashing itself over Cameron's skin as Cameron pushes his palms, open and flat, against Daniel's headboard, struggling to keep himself still. Daniel places his other hand on the nape of Cameron's neck; Cameron falls quiet. Daniel knows Cameron feels loosest when there is something there to anchor him.

"Three words," Daniel says, keeping his voice calm and neutral lest Cameron infer things Daniel does not intend.

(I need to know what you feel, and whether or not you enjoy it, Jackson's voice hisses in his memory. It's important that you be honest. And Cam is honest; Cam is always honest, except when he isn't, but there's no reason to lie to Jackson, and the way Jackson demands nothing but the purest truth is the most freeing and the most terrifying thing Cam's ever experienced.)

"It doesn't --" Cam is saying, before he can catch himself, before he can remember Jackson's orders (and oh, he's never been bad at following orders before, but he's never wanted to follow orders so closely before, and there's something lurking inside that knowledge, deep and weighty, that he can't make himself face). It doesn't go into words like that. But Jackson wants him to try. He fumbles for the words, for the right words, and he can feel Jackson's fingertips skimming lightly over the cooling shell of wax painted across his back. "Sharp," he finally says. "Rich. Strong."

They're not exactly right, but they're the closest he can find. Jackson's fingers trail down along Cam's tailbone, and Cam can't help but let his hips rise to follow, pushing, seeking. He can't tell if Jackson's pleased or irritated. Jackson shifts a little, and the breeze from the open window flutters across the underside of Cam's dick, against his balls. It makes him feel open and vulnerable, naked, bared beneath Jackson's gaze like an offering or a sacrifice. He shudders, but he forces himself still, because Jackson has ordered him to stillness and he will do what he is told.

"Good or bad?" Jackson asks.

And Cam's breath catches, because to assign words that small to this, this wash of feeling, seems so petty and demeaning, like trying to squeeze his feet into shoes too cramped. But Jackson's fingers are stroking the top of his ass, all the places Jackson's spent the night slapping or smacking, and oh, God, it should hurt, and it does, but it hurts so pretty he can't help but ask for more. "Good," he says, "very --" and his voice catches, because good is the wrong word for what he's feeling, all bound up in his chest, aching all the way down through the pit of his stomach, shading into delicious agony. "Very good," he manages to finish, because if Jackson doesn't think it's good, Jackson might try to stop, and the last thing he wants right now is for Jackson to stop.

Cameron shudders beneath his hand, beneath the wax, beneath the weight of whatever pieces of himself he is allowing to break. "It doesn't --" he starts, but catches himself, biting his lip. Daniel can barely see it from his vantage and perspective, but he is familiar with the presence of the gesture, the provenance it signifies; he has asked Cameron to do something he finds uncomfortable. Daniel bid him to silence because Cameron, though rarely speechless, just as rarely says anything of substance, and Daniel is made weary enough by translating the language of Cameron's body to wish a reprieve from picking through the weight of his words.

After a silence (xiǎo chù, "the taming of the power of the small"; fēng, "abundance") Cameron says, boundless, breathless: "Sharp. Rich. Strong."

Daniel frowns. He has spent a considerable amount of time building a semantic map of the inside of Cameron's mind; sharp carries negative semantic weight, strong carries positive. He is uncertain of rich. It annoys him that he has to ask. "Good or bad?"

Cameron's hips tilt backwards, pushing up as though he's seeking Daniel's touch like a flower turning its face to the sun. From anyone else, Daniel would consider it a plea. He will, someday, determine whether Cameron's stated aversion to penetrative intercourse falls into the category of things Cameron has always convinced himself to be true, but that day is not today. Instead, he waits, and Cameron says, voice full of wonder, "Good. Very -- very good."

But Jackson rewards him with another hiss-crack of wax, liquid flame, searing his skin (so rough so hot so good) and the wax is dripping along his sides as it cools, and he thinks maybe he can feel Jackson's fingers following the wax and touching, exploring, and the pain and the pleasure and the weight of Jackson's gaze on his skin are all blending into one. He can imagine himself through Jackson's eyes, spread out and waiting and willing, like some cheap slut, like one of those boys, the kind (he's never dared to be) you push up against a bathroom wall in a bar and make them slide down to their knees, the kind (he's always dreamed of being) who swallow you down fearlessly and then wipe their swollen lips with the back of their hands and smile, the kind (he's always been scared to be) you take home and fuck until dawn. His dick is dragging against the sheets, and every shift of his hips, every stroke he makes against the cotton, makes him want to bury his face in the pillow and scream.

"Please," he's saying, "please, God, Daniel," and he doesn't even know what he wants, but he remembers even as he's hearing his own words that Jackson told him not to speak. He can hear Jackson blowing out the candle behind him, and the chill spreads through him (idiot, can't even follow one simple fucking order, can't even get that right) as Jackson leans over him to put the candle back on the nightstand. Fuck, he should know better by now, he should know, and he can't even describe the noise he's making in the back of his throat at the thought that Jackson's going to stop, but he pushes himself up to hands and knees anyway, suddenly cold and restless. He'd rather get up and take himself into the bathroom to get cleaned up on his own than have Jackson have to order him there.

Daniel tilts the candle; the wax splashes across Cameron's skin, pooling, cradling, falling and spilling to smear over the sheets. Cameron turns his head, buries his face in the pillows, grinds his hips against the bed. Daniel is wondering what Cameron is thinking, is feeling, to make him so aroused. Daniel's understanding of Cameron's experience is academic at best, but he is used to systematically disassembling a set of behaviors to find their component motivators, and this is no different. Just messier.

The sheets will need to be changed. No matter; it would not be the first time he has had to change or discard his bedlinens after one of Cameron's visits, and he has learned to keep a sufficient quantity on hand that if the weekend's activities should necessitate the destruction of several sets, he will still have more.

"Please," Cameron says, unbidden, unprompted, full of heartfelt delicious agony, the sound of a man hanging suspended between wanting and having. "God, Daniel, please."

Cameron is beyond rational thought; it is the plea of someone who does not know what he is asking for, who could not articulate the object of desire even if it were the only way he could hope to receive it. Daniel always must guess, at this point; he has learned enough, by now, to guess properly more often than not, and the times when he guesses incorrectly are little more than additional data to expand his understanding. He blows out the candle. Cameron makes a noise in the back of his throat, an epiglottal trill of desire, and Daniel reaches over him to place the candle back on the nightstand and take the bottle of lube from the glass of water in which it has been warming.

And then Jackson's hands (slick and sticky) close around his dick, and Cam lets the weight fall off his arms and grinds his face back into the pillow, and this time he does yell, because Jackson's got the stroke down perfect. Rough and ready, just a hint of a twist at the end, one hand stripping up and down Cam's dick and the other one gripping his balls, rolling them together, and oh God Cam can still feel every mark Jackson's left on his skin and they're all screaming at him as much as his dick is. His hard-on's been building all fucking night, and he's pushing his dick back into Jackson's hand and slapping his palm against the bed like Jackson was slapping his palm against Cam's ass earlier and for a second he wishes Jackson would do it again (wishes Jackson would push him strike him cut him hurt him catch that edge of fear and humiliation and let him ride it out until all the conflicting impulses come crashing down) before Jackson's thumb catches him just right and the only thing he's left thinking is yes.

When it's over, it takes him a long time to feel like he's breathing again, feel like he's anchored and steady, and it's the touch of Jackson's hands patiently working the wax free from his skin that finally does it. Jackson leaves off, realizing Cam's starting to think again, and sits himself up against the headboard. Cam doesn't know how he summons the energy to drape his arm over Jackson's thighs and hold there, but the minute Jackson stopped touching him his stomach started fluttering again, and he knows that if he doesn't touch, if he doesn't ground himself against that shining fire of Jackson's presence, he's going to feel like he's slipped out of phase with no hope of getting back for a long damn time indeed.

Jackson knows it too, senses it or intuits it or something, and he traces tiny circles along the top of Cam's spine with the edge of his thumb. Cam can feel all the promises in Jackson's touch, the careful calculated care there, and he shivers once and wonders for the thousandth time what the hell he's supposed to say after Jackson takes him apart and puts him back together like this. He always tries and considers a thousand things, from thank you to God yeah, and none of them would even come close to saying a damn half of how fragile and free he feels down so far he doesn't have words for it.

The wax cracks and flakes away as Cameron's muscles shift, as he rises to hands and knees on the bed, as Daniel's hands close roughly around his cock and stroke. In this there is no uncertainty at all; Cameron's cock has never been hesitant to inform Daniel about how it prefers to be touched.

Afterwards, when Cameron is face-down and spent on the bed, Daniel reaches for the towel he has learned to keep at hand. He cleans his hands, begins the process of picking the wax free. Cameron's face is incandescent, blissful. Daniel pauses to study it for a moment before resting the back of his hand against Cameron's cheekbone -- one quick brush, and Cameron does not even open his eyes. Daniel must run the edge of his nails along the sides of the smallest droplets of wax to free them, and when they lift, they leave raised red badges behind. Cameron will wear them proudly, Daniel knows, but they will have faded into nothing by Monday's dawn. He is careful.

When he settles himself against the headboard, pulls his feet and legs into something resembling comfort, Cameron finally stirs, slinging his arm over Daniel's thighs and turning his face to bury it against Daniel's hip. He lets out a sigh, deep and satisfied, and Daniel rests his hand at the top of Cameron's spine, idly running his thumbnail over a splash of wax he missed. Cameron rumbles contentment again, and Daniel can feel his lips moving through the thin cotton: a kiss or a secret, unvoiced, unknown.

(The word respite comes from the Latin respectus: refuge, looking back. It shares a common root with the word respect, but they have become two separate concepts over the years. Daniel wonders, sometimes, whether all his valuable words came from Latin even before he began dreaming in Ancient, but that's the sort of question that has no meaningful answer, and it is therefore not worth the time it takes to contemplate it.)

He doesn't have a way of telling Jackson what this does to him, what this means to him, so all he can do is tug at the strings of Jackson's pants a little, wordless offering: let me do for you too. And Lord, Jackson's self-control is fucking impeccable, because if Cam were doing this to someone (but he wouldn't be) he'd be jumping out of his skin right about now, and all Jackson does is shift his hips a little and press his dick up against Cam's palm to say his yes in return.

Cam rubs his face against Jackson's thigh before he can help himself -- Jackson's not looking for affectionate from him, he knows; these are transactions conducted as coldly and calmly as any back-alley negotiation. In the middle of the night, when Cam can't sleep, he can face the fact that Jackson's trying to fix him, trying to give him something Jackson thinks he needs rather than something Jackson wants to give. But that's not all too comfortable to think about, and Cam's got manners, besides, and, well, there are times when the only way you can say thank you to someone who's done something (something so intense) for you is to do something right back for them.

He settles himself between Jackson's thighs, draped across the bed, and Jackson's hand comes to settle at the nape of his neck again. That touch more than anything else makes him feel content, contented, and he slips his fingers into Jackson's waistband to free Jackson's cock. And God, but he feels selfish, because Jackson's cock is beautiful and Cam never can get over the charge he gets from being permitted to suck it. "This okay?" he asks, one last attempt to make sure Jackson's here with him, and Jackson runs his hand gently through Cam's hair and pulls him downward.

Cameron's fingers are playing with the draw-strings of Daniel's pants. Absently at first, a kitten batting at a dangled string (and oh, that comparison, if he spoke it aloud, would earn Daniel a snarl from Cameron -- but it is true nonetheless), then with a growing sense of purpose, as Cameron tangles his fingers and tugs, lightly: an invitation, an offering. "I could --" he starts, before realizing he is uncertain if the injunction against speaking is still in effect.

His meaning is clear. In Cameron's world, a gift such as the one Daniel has given him is to be reciprocated; to fail to do so is to devalue the offering. Daniel has yet to decide if he finds it charming or tedious.

Tonight it is more tedious than charming. Daniel is not in the slightest bit aroused; he is, sometimes. There are nights when Cameron's body, on offer, has the capacity to thrill him; there are nights when Cameron's trust, given so beautifully, can strike an odd tenderness in places he'd thought were long since scarred over. This is one of the nights when Cameron's need is little more than a puzzle to be pieced together, a variable to be optimized for. To be tuned: like one tunes a piano, sounding a note and waiting to hear how it resonates, like one tunes an engine, bringing it to its highest performance. The care one takes with a precious and valuable thing, to make it its truest and most perfect self, does not require the one who tends to be a part of the equation.

And yet, Cameron's need to give affection is a part of him, twined alongside his need for danger, so deeply rooted it could not be pried out even if Daniel were interested in doing so. Which he is not; affection has been a liability for him more often than not, but for Cameron, it is not liability but necessity. Daniel understands this. He cannot provide one without providing the other; to do so would be unacceptably cruel.

And so he closes his eyes, forcing himself to be aware of his body, to be present, immanent and incarnate, carnal, in a way he finds more uncomfortable than not. Cameron is not one of the people he can give himself over to; not yet, perhaps not ever. To balance on that knife's edge between arousal and submersion, he must be in the proper mood, and tonight he is far from it. But he shifts his weight anyway, allowing Cameron's palm to fall lightly against his penis, and thinks of physical things: the flutter and press of Cameron's lips, the earthy smell of Sam's inner thighs, the weight of Jack's body against his spine, holding him, bearing him, leading him fearlessly down into the darkness.

Cameron makes a soft purr of pleasure, rubbing his cheekbone along Daniel's skin, and shifts himself to drape, bonelessly, between Daniel's thighs. Daniel rests his fingertips at the edge of Cameron's hairline, along the nape of Cameron's neck, feeling the gooseflesh that rises to meet him; he lets his head fall back against the wall as Cameron pulls his waistband down. At least his mind is quiet tonight; he may be thankful for small mercies.

"This okay?" Cameron says, his breath feathering over the head of Daniel's penis, his eyes caught cool blue by the streetlights as he looks up. Daniel knows what Cameron is asking: sir may I touch you sir may I please you sir please take me in hand and tell me what to do. But Cameron is not quite ready to acknowledge that their evenings are about submission, so much more than they are about sensation, and so all Daniel does is run his fingers through Cameron's hair and murmur assent, cupping the side of Cameron's head, holding him as he takes Daniel into his mouth in the way Daniel knows he always forgets how much he craves.

And Cam goes where Jackson tells him, opens his mouth and closes his eyes and tries to keep his jaw loose and his teeth out of the way, and Jackson cups Cam's cheeks and rolls his hips (up, in) and there's a part of Cam, standing distant and watching, that's glad Jackson can do this with him, can let himself go enough to feel, because he's always known Jackson doesn't have an outlet of his own, and if he can give Jackson something, something even a tenth as transformative as what Jackson gives to him, then maybe Jackson will be willing to keep doing this. And if anybody Cam knows needs to get the hell out of his head for a little while, it's Jackson.

It's a small voice, though, and quiet, because the rest of Cam is too caught up in the way it feels for Jackson to be fucking his throat, pulling him along, taking and claiming and using him. He's dizzy with the thrill of it, dizzy with the glory, and he surrenders that last bit of self into Jackson's hands and swims in the warm glow of knowing someone else is there to hold him for a while: Jackson's hands are strong, and his shoulders are stronger, and maybe (in giving himself up to Jackson, in letting Jackson decide for him, in shutting the hell up and getting the hell out of the way) Cam can find a little bit of quiet in the small and tender spaces between.

Cameron needs: needs to be well-thought-of, needs to be challenged, needs to be of use. Needs to be pushed and prodded and forced out of the tight small patterns he's built for himself, needs to be coaxed into laying down his lies and walking away until he can find the truths he's been hiding. And his needs are not so arduous to meet, after all; Daniel has seen, has been, far worse. He strokes the side of Cameron's jaw, and he is thinking about warm things, welcoming things (Cameron's mouth and Sam's cunt and everything Jack is to him), and he is concentrating on the slide of skin through lips and the dark wet furnace of Cameron's desire.

There is a place inside Cameron's head that Cameron does not know, that Cameron has never reached, that he has spent his entire life circling in fascination and backing away from whenever he comes too close. Daniel understands this. Cameron's body shouts it at him, in frantic and urgent semaphore, even as Cameron's voice denies. There is nothing so tragic as an unrealized dichotomy. And so he brings his other hand up to Cameron's face, cradling him roughly, and he rocks his hips and fucks Cameron's mouth and listens to Cameron's body telling him yes, yes, please, like that. And in all of it, what he is doing is taking Cameron in hand and leading him down: past the guardians, past the gatekeepers, stripping each shield and guard away with the careful ruthlessness of the twice-dead, the thrice-born. He knows Cameron will hang bare, suspended, freed of every weight he has given up unto Daniel's hands, until something can unfold inside him to be reborn into light and sunshine.