The house has night-lighting in every room, a luminous strip around the baseboards that gives enough light to navigate by if someone (Cammie) gets up in the middle of the night. It can be killed (or dialed up or down) from the same controls that run the house heat. It's shut off in Daniel's office (sometimes he likes to sit in the dark) and it isn't installed in the kitchen or the a/v suite, but it's there in every other room. It doesn't bother Daniel. Nothing that's constant does. Right now the bedroom is lit for early evening, though, not for sleep: the bedside lamps are both on, bathing the room in a soft warm glow (there are also recessed ceiling lights -- almost never used except when the room is being cleaned -- that can light the area to operating room brightness).

The house is an eclectic mélange of cutting-edge smart technology and down-home comfort (in that much, it reminds him of living on Atlantis, where the blankets on his bed were homespun and hand-loomed, and he opened doors by thinking at them); the furniture a combination of antique and hand-made. By now the items he'd left behind in storage when he went to Atlantis -- the only irreplaceable pieces of his life; the art objects and artifacts and collections -- have migrated throughout the house by an irresistible process of ornamental osmosis, taking up new residence on walls and shelves and tables.

The monster bed is one of the hand-made items, of course, so perfectly-proportioned that you don't realize its scale until you have a point of local reference. Right now the point of local reference is sitting in the center of it, regarding both of them with bright interest.

"C'mon, Nielson," she says, eyes dancing. "We gotta explore your sexuality here."

"I'm afraid," JD whines, camping outrageously and clutching at his towel (oh god, he really can be such a drama queen when he tries, Daniel thinks fondly). "This might fundamentally change my self-image here."

"I promise I'll still respect you in the morning," Daniel says.

"Just as much as he does now," Cammie adds.

"Not helping here, Mitchell," JD says.

Daniel snorts and pulls off his towel and grabs JD's, yanking it loose. He folds them together (lengthwise, so they'll drape) and hangs them over the footboard, giving the end an extra push to tuck it down between footboard and mattress so it won't slip free. Nothing is ever dropped casually on the floor in this household. Ever. Then he climbs onto the bed to collect a kiss from Cammie before settling himself at her side, his head resting on her shoulder.

JD moves onto the bed, and Daniel draws his knees up and opens his thighs. JD turns his head, pressing his face against the inside of Daniel's knee as he moves into position. Not quite a kiss. "Just relax," he says. "I promise I'll be gentle."

"I think that's my line, actually," Daniel says, and Cammie snorts, wuffling into his hair.

It should be stranger than it is, Daniel thinks to himself, that his girlfriend's gay boyfriend is about to blow him (while he's cuddling the aforementioned girlfriend) and most of what he's feeling is anticipation at the prospect of a really spectacular session of fellatio, one that (he knows) JD will enjoy providing. He's pretty much given up on hetero-or-homosexual panic attacks (pick one) by now: done is done (oh, Jack) and it's been eight months of this flying circus, and he and JD have done quite enough things to ensure the revocation of Daniel's Straight Boy Membership Card. Jacking off and rubbing off (masturbation and frottage and he teases JD now by insisting on the clinical technical terms for the acts; there is nothing clinical or technical about JD when sex is involved) and he knows the feel of JD's cock in his hand, how it hardens that last fraction just before he comes, the sounds he makes, the scent and feel of JD's come on his skin.

And Daniel still draws a distinction (a sharp distinction) between JD and "men." Daniel is not bisexual. Daniel does not have sex with "men." (Daniel is not crazy (okay not in that way at least): Daniel admits openly -- at least in his own mind -- that what he is doing with JD is sex; that he has sex with JD. JD is not "men.")

But JD has more sex with Daniel than Daniel does with JD (this makes sense in Daniel's mind) because JD will use his mouth on Daniel. And the sensation is exquisite. It seems (in its way) to be an end in itself for JD, but Daniel feels a desire (asexual, passionless) to reciprocate anyway, though he can't entirely take that last step to picturing … reciprocity. His feelings are tangled: love and affection and fondness and care … everything, in fact, but a sense of duty (I must do this because you have done that) and an erotic impulse (I want to do this because I want to do it.) There are times that he actually wishes that the Queer Fairy (one of the many mythical creatures that sprinkle JD's discourse) would appear in the middle of the night and sprinkle him with rainbow dust, so he could wake up in the morning and find JD an object of heart-stopping desire. (And Cammie merely abstractly beautiful? He wouldn't want that; perhaps he needs to see if JD's mythology includes a Bisexuality Fairy as well.)

He's more than half-hard when JD takes him in hand. He come fully erect as JD presses and rubs gently at the base of his dick with his thumb. JD knows how Daniel likes to be touched. He has for a while. Then JD pauses for a moment (not hesitating) and begins to lick all around the head and crown, slow careful swipes of tongue. The tattoos across JD's shoulders ripple as his muscles flex: JD is a living memorial. Daniel reaches across himself, finds Cammie's fingers with his, threads their hands together. This part, too, is familiar. Ritual and preamble. Cammie makes a small noise of interest and approval. (What is it with women? Or is it just Cammie? Daniel doesn't think he wants to know -- he's certain he doesn't want to conduct the research -- but he would have thought that the last thing on earth a woman would find sexually-arousing would be the sight of two men engaged in sexual congress.)

Then he gasps -- hips rocking up -- as (preliminaries completed) JD opens his jaws wide and swallows him down. It has always been easy for Daniel to give pleasure. Harder for him to accept it. A skill he's learned, because giving pleasure pleases him and inevitably the converse must be true. And it doesn't matter that JD's gay and Daniel isn't. In the dark, all cats are grey, because after midnight (so the saying runs) bodies don't give a good goddamn.

Only no. (Yes, no, maybe, like so much in Daniel's life.) It doesn't matter to his body, but it matters to him. He reaches down with his free hand -- the one not holding Cammie's -- and strokes JD's hair, his shoulder, feeling the heat of the sleek smooth young skin beneath his hand, feeling the warmth and pleasure in his groin build and coil. And this is good (so good) but it isn't right. No. Wrong word. Wrong concept. This isn't complete, and that's been enough for him for a long time and (he knows) it would be enough for JD forever but they can't go on like this.

"I want-" he says, hearing his own voice hoarse and soft and husky with arousal (it always shocks him to hear himself sound that way). "Show me how."

JD lifts his head, resting the tip of Daniel's dick against his chin, and gives Daniel a faintly-irritated 'why the fuck are you bothering me now' look. "What?" he says.

"Boy wants you to teach him how to blow you, Nielson," Cammie says. Her voice is lazy with amusement (but Daniel hears the pride, too) and she unclasps her hand from his to stroke his shoulder.

"Now?" JD demands. "'Cause I'm a little busy here."

"No time like the present," Cammie says. "Get your lazy ass over."

JD takes Daniel's eyes, and holds them until Daniel nods. Daniel has no idea what he's doing (going to be doing), and he knows both of the others know that, and normally such a voyage into the unknown with an audience would make him balk. There's a difference, though, between failure and inexperience; he's willing to be inexperienced with them.

JD grumbles and mutters and gets up on his knees. He's already hard. "You know what to do with one of these, right?" he says, glancing down at himself.

"You can't be trying to scare me by waving it at me," Daniel says. "I've got one of my own, you know."

"An' I've got a cane, and I'm not afraid to use it," Cammie says. Warningly. JD flops over on his back, squirming around sideways so that he can wrap one arm around one of Cammie's legs.

Daniel kneels between JD's legs, palming himself and squeezing absently. The interrupted blow-job isn't painful; no more than a pleasant ache of arousal. A background and baseline of physical sensation to urge him in the direction he already intends to go. And okay, yeah, he knows this part. And the position, if not the partner, is familiar. So (for that matter) is the body/mind disconnect: the bransle of intellect and arousal, and he's not absolutely sure why he's here, except that it's something he wants in a strangely sexual-asexual way, because men's bodies don't turn him on. At all. He clasps JD's erection carefully. That isn't new. He's had his hand on it before. Lowers his head and opens his mouth. Takes a deep breath and sticks out his tongue, touching it, then puts his lips over the exposed head (JD isn't circumcised; Jack was; JD is not a Xerox, but a reimaging sprung from the loins of a demented Crick-Watson game of Three-Card Monte run by a rogue alien determined to replicate every bad cliché from lurid pulp fiction).

Slick. Strange. He thought it would be hot, but no; apparently the temperature of the inside of the human mouth is high enough that even though JD's skin always feels fever-warm when Daniel has his hands on it, he (his cock in Daniel's mouth) does not feel hot, though his skin beneath Daniel's hands, against his shoulder, radiate their familiar warmth. His free hand is on JD's thigh. He strokes gently, absently, wanting to apologize for his purely amateur performance. The scents and the textures are all wrong (he cannot help but think of Cammie, gloriously female); he locks those things into the back of his mind, away from the moment.

"Use your tongue," JD says. "And get your goddamned teeth out of the way." The raggedness in his voice would make Daniel smile, if that were possible at the moment. As it is, it gives him a certain sense of triumph. (And note to self: he will never take anything about a blow-job for granted again, because both Cammie and JD can manage to press their lips up against his pubic bone. And not drool. He can't manage either feat: he can only take a couple of inches of JD's dick into his mouth without gagging, and he's still salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs, dribbling all over his clenched fist and down his chin.) JD gives him terse breathless orders, and Daniel follows them as well as he can.

He has no idea if he's doing this either well or right, and nothing about it is comfortable (not the position, on his knees and hunched over; not the fact that he's nearly strangling himself on this new sexual variation he's elected to pursue; not the fact that his mind has decided that now is a good time to present him with every single one of the nonce-names for the male genitalia that he's heard beneath this roof in the past eight months -- of which 'meat popsicle' is possibly the most genteel), and despite all that, he is shaking with the intensity of his need to be here. The thought that JD might push him away, might stop him, is intolerable (terrifying), and it isn't because of a sudden sexually-reoriented carnality on his part. He knows it wouldn't be an absolute rejection of him, but Daniel wants … to be good for JD. To give him pleasure this way, and he doesn't understand why. ('Jus' roll with it, honeybaby,' Cammie's voice says in his mind, and Cammie's usually pretty smart about things like this.)

"Daniel --" JD says, sounding strained and urgent, and his hand is on Daniel's shoulder, trying to push him away, and Daniel doesn't understand why (why now) but he knows he doesn't want to be pushed. And then it's too late; JD's coming, and Daniel made up his mind before this started that he'd swallow, but he wasn't expecting to be hit in the back of the throat. He chokes, gags, pulls back coughing wildly (spits and chokes, but he can't help it). Come spatters JD's thigh. Daniel sucks air, gasping.

Cammie's laughing like a lunatic.

"Jesus, Mitchell --" JD says. "Daniel, you --?"

But Daniel isn't finished yet. He wants to make it right. Or something (he has no fucking goddamned idea, actually; maybe if he's lucky one of the other two will tell him later). He turns back and sucks JD's dick back into his mouth (slick and blandly salty and a little soft and the glans has a rubbery texture and he presses it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue).

"Oh god --" JD groans (stiffening and shuddering and Daniel feels the last spurts of ejaculate trickle out against his tongue). "God, god, god…"

And then JD's hands are clutching at his shoulders, urging him gently away. Daniel sits back on his haunches (feeling as if he's been kicked in the small of the back). He supposes they should call the experiment a success. He's about to say, well, something to JD when Cammie makes what he can only categorize as a sex noise (he can catalogue their vocal but non- verbal forms until the end of time, Daniel thinks, and not achieve a satisfactory taxonomy).

"C'mere, baby," Cammie growls, and her voice is all hot dark honey and smoke. "I wanna taste him on you."

Daniel untangles himself from JD (who immediately rolls over on his stomach) and crawls up to the top of the bed. He braces himself carefully across her, and Cammie reaches up and takes his face in her hands. The way she kisses him -- passion and need and hunger and yearning, sucking at his lips, his tongue, licking his face and his chin -- fills him with sharp regret for the fact that not only is this one of her bad days, but that she has any bad days at all (not a new regret, never new, but there are days when it is merely the background to their lives and days when it makes him ache -- for her and for all of them).

(There are an infinity of potential universes. In one of them she was never shot down over Antarctica. In another she walked away from the crash without a scratch. In a third, she was fully rehabilitated and returned to active duty. So many possibilities. But this is the one they live in.)

"You better be cleanin' up that bathroom, is all I got to say about that," Cammie says over his shoulder. Daniel feels the bed shift (though not by much; custom-made, like the sheets); JD is on the move.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch, fucking bitch," JD chants in bored tones. He walks past them, towels over his shoulder, then (a moment later) heads in the direction of the kitchen carrying nested ice cream cartons and spoons.

Daniel would like to ask a lot of stupid questions right now. (Even he knows they're stupid.) And asking questions (stupid and otherwise) is not only the defining paradigm of his entire life, it's the thing that has propelled him into every single situation-cum-catastrophe he has ever found himself in, because he starts by asking 'why' and goes on to 'why don't you' and finishes up with 'I really don't see why you don't' and by then it's too late. People are either shooting at him or he's in prison. And while neither case is likely to apply here (okay, not the prison part; the shooting, maybe), he still thinks questions are right out. (You wouldn't like any answers you got, he tells himself. Don't start.) Reciprocal states are supposed to be perfectly balanced (yes, he's spent too much time listening to engineers), and he and JD are now in a reciprocal state (aren't they?) but he feels even more off-balance than before. As if he missed a question, or an answer, and he's not quite sure where to start looking to find them.

"Could be you want to go wash up a little, babydoll," Cammie says, running a fingertip down his collarbone; "you go into work tomorrow looking like Boys' Night Out, you gonna raise a few eyebrows. An' you can turn out the lights, you'd be so kind."

He kisses her again lightly (finishing up rather than starting up) then gets up and turns off both bedside lights before he walks into the bathroom. Didn't exactly get the sex that was supposed to be on the menu, but a little temperance won't kill him. He's not a hormonal teenager anymore. Not a teenager of any kind, in fact. He washes his hands (sticky) and takes a washcloth to all the portions of his anatomy that Cammie's tongue missed. Apparently the aftermath of a badly-managed blowjob has a lot in common with tipping over a mug of coffee; despite the fact that you begin with a fixed and theoretically finite amount of fluid, it seems to increase exponentially in direct proportion to the inconvenience possible.

When he comes back to the bedroom, she's settled down in the center of the bed, which is a little surprising, as usually they fight it out for the edge. She pats the mattress. "Come to bed, baby. I'm cold."

Not true (he's reasonably sure; he'd like to be really sure; would like to know her as instinctively as JD does). He climbs into bed beside her and pulls the covers up over both of them and cuddles close. "It's warm in Egypt," he says.

"That it is," she says. "We'll ride camels and buy fake antiques."

"Hm," he says. "Skip the intermediate steps. Just buy camels. Safer, too."

She chuckles and threads her fingers through his hair, a fond and familiar caress. He's already too close to sleep to say anything by the time JD finally comes to bed, and in the morning, the previous night seems very far away.

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