It's one of Cammie's 'good' days (he's nowhere near as adept at spotting them as JD is; that will take, he knows, years, not months), and she's got a teasing gleam in her eye when she announces to Daniel that he looks tired.

He's been on Earth six months, living with JD and Cammie going on four, coming to terms with a number of Interesting Life Challenges for about that long. (Not problems and not issues. Just pieces of information, and evaluating information and handling it appropriately is what he does, and it would be ... a little more convenient if all these items weren't so inextricably interconnected.)

JD is gay. And it's not, god knows, that he objects, but it's somewhat counter-intuitive, all things considered. In ways that Daniel will not allow himself to excavate and fully-inspect, because JD ... desires him.

To be desired is not exactly a new experience for Daniel. He's been desired by men and women, representatives of several alien races (from primitive and saurian to evolved and discarnate), and a few machines. He entered the sphere of influence of this household as Cammie's lover; he discovered that Cammie and JD had a relationship that might (might) be physically-chaste but is certainly emotionally-intimate; he found that JD and Cammie sleep together and that he was expected (both before and after he unequivocally moved in) to join them, and that sex in the Nielson-Mitchell household is a spectator sport.

The first time he'd made love to Cammie with JD there, watching and awake, had been strange, because he'd been aware that JD was watching him and not Cammie. After that it became ordinary (anything you do more than three times becomes ordinary), and Cammie had made comments indicating that she and JD had shared sexual partners, and for a while Daniel had wondered if he was expected to be on that menu, and nothing happened.

With three in a bed, somebody will always end up in the middle. When Daniel was only spending a few nights a week there Cammie was polite (he later realized) about things and took the middle. (Mostly. At least at the beginning of the night.) The moment he moved in, he realized he was engaged in war to the knife for one of the two outsides: neither he nor JD wanted to be trapped in the middle, and Cammie didn't want to have to climb over or wake up either of them to get to the bathroom (or make her way out of the center of a bed large enough that it ought by rights have a Senator and at least two Congressional Representatives). Chivalry ran a poor second to the hardwired hypervigilence of whatever lived under JD's skin, and eighteen years going through the Gate hadn't left Daniel feeling particularly serene either.

But Cammie tended to fight exceptionally dirty in pursuit of the only available outside spot -- because JD never ended up in the middle -- and there were nights that Daniel would have to resign himself to the middle, because he was never willing to fight hard enough to take the outside back again, something which Cammie apparently found hilarious. ("T'was pity stayed his hand," Cammie was fond of saying, whenever Daniel ended up in the middle. "Yeah," JD would always reply. "T'is a pity I've run out of bullets.")

And one night -- Daniel, disgruntled, in the middle, Cammie wrapped around him as a consolation prize, JD ignoring both of them, serene in victory -- Cammie had slid her hand over his hip and down his arm and her fingers circled his wrist, and she'd lifted his hand and arm and carried them sideways, and he'd known where they were going even before she set his hand down, softly and gently, on JD's erection.

JD's skin is fever-hot. Normal for him. Daniel had already known that; none of them bother fanatically with clothing. (Daniel wears more than the others around the house, but because he runs colder, not because of modesty.) Daniel had known what JD looks like naked; he'd been sleeping in the same bed with him every night for a month, just to begin with. Now he knew what JD feels like, too. Cammie's hand had cupped his, not so firmly that he couldn't wrench himself away. He hadn't moved.

Daniel had known absolutely that JD was perfectly awake and aware, and JD hadn't moved either.

And even then, Daniel had been on his way not only to loving Cammie, but to being in love with her, a prospect Daniel views with the same happy anticipation as the prospect of his own execution. (He'd prefer the execution, actually; he's not only cheated Death memorably but left the hangman waiting at the altar more times than he can count.) The idea that he might have fallen for a long con designed to rope him in as a boy-toy for her gay boyfriend was disturbing on more levels than he could easily articulate, especially given the gay boyfriend's pedigree. He hadn't believed it of her on the one hand, and on the other hand, he had been aware that she had been making him available to JD (or JD available to him, or them available to each other) ever since he became first a guest, then a resident of this house, and on the third hand, if there were anybody in the state of Colorado in an absolute position to be aware of Daniel's sexual preferences, it was JD Nielson, and Daniel had felt it would have only been reasonable for JD to, oh, have mentioned something to Cammie at some point before she dropped Daniel's hand over his penis.

And Cammie had breathed out in his ear, her voice warm with affection, and said: "Touching is a good thing, baby." And -- apparently to prove her point -- took her hand off his, slid it down his stomach, wrapped her fist around his penis, and squeezed, and pulled.

And he'd felt himself starting to get hard, because even being in the middle of a freak-out about the utter ambiguity of his life (even then he'd known Cammie's motives, though complex, were almost certainly not that clinically exploitive; Cammie is a loving woman) and under his palm, JD had been so hard that he might actually be in pain. He had still been expecting some hint (something for him to react to) -- JD to push his hand away, or push it down, and he hadn't gotten either one. But he'd been rocking into Cammie's touch by then (trying not to) and it hadn't been that it was irresistible, but comforting and familiar (even then), and he'd pressed his hand down (a little) and pushed up (a little) and heard JD's breath catch on a long slow inhale. He hadn't been sure whether he's being kind or cruel or just being manipulated; they could talk about it later.

They never exactly had, though. Not then, not a few days later when JD jacked him off while the three of them were in the Jacuzzi together, not when JD went down on Cammie one night when she had been riding Daniel and he'd felt JD's tongue touch him and he'd put his hand on JD afterward and gotten him off (properly that time; with lube). He'd rather have obsessed on the new unintended homoerotic component of his life than on the other things he could be thinking about (if he wanted to think about them, which he does not, thank you very much), because his little problem is not culture shock and it has not gone away (even when he separated formally from the Atlantis Mission, even when Atabyrius came back from Atlantis with the rest of his personal effects). He has a nine-to-five desk job at the SGC, and his Gate Quals lapsed a decade ago (something they didn't give a flying fuck for one way or the other in Pegasus goddammit) and without up-to-date quals, the IOA won't let anyone set foot through the Stargate even if the heavens have opened and the Legions of Hell are on the way.

He's been down to 27 a couple of times (General Napolitano's office) since his return. He doesn't plan to go down to 28 ever again if he can avoid it. He also doesn't plan on explaining to the helpful Psychiatric Staff of the SGC that the straw that broke the camel's back wasn't the war zone but coming home from it, because the idea seems ridiculous even to him. If he's broken (a-fucking-gain and he's so tired of working around his own broken places) he'll tend himself. He's careful. He doesn't take stupid risks. He's done his research (at home, on a system the SGC can't trace). He doesn't want to hear that acronym and he doesn't want to hear that this can be a permanent condition. (He's come back from the dead five times for god's sake.)

And in four mouths of being a part of the household he's gotten used to touching JD (to be crystal-clear, he's gotten used to the idea of masturbating JD) and having JD touch him back, and that seems (even in the privacy of his own mind) more than a little passive-aggressive and unfair. It's ... a greater degree of friendliness than he was anticipating, but that's all it is. Different culture, different customs (and he's lived in a lot of strange places, and if he wasn't expecting to find such a variant culture right here in his own back yard, he's pretty much given up assuming that the world will conform to his expectations) and he can adapt, because he knows damned well how much adapting both of them are doing in order to deal with him. (Daniel Jackson and his Little Quirks, and if he isn't a drug-addict or an alcoholic -- or an in-patient -- at this very moment, he knows full well, it is because of Cammie and JD.) Life is not about (should not be about) cash transactions (payment in goods or services for every value received) but all relationships are founded on a series of mutual concessions.

And tonight he isn't thinking about any of that as they strip off (all three of them, and he thinks nothing at all of JD's presence in the bed these days, even when he and Cammie are on their way to making love) and climb into bed with Cammie kissing him and touching him; laughing at him and catching his hands when he reaches for her.

They have to be careful (always) and he knows how much she hates that fact, and all he can do to make it invisible for her is to let her lead and do his best to tell her (never saying) that any tentativeness on his part does not stem from a lack of desire. He would happily fling her down on any available surface and ravish her if the thought of increasing the damage that she lives with didn't terrify him.

Tonight is a good night, though. She wrestles him down onto his back, has him pinned beneath her, lying on his chest, smiling down at him, lips parted in triumph, and he's expecting her to swing her leg across his hips, to straddle him. He's hard. He wants her.

And he feels JD take hold of him and suck him into his mouth.

He'd lost track of where JD was. It hadn't mattered; JD's presence in his space doesn't disturb him; most of the time he doesn't feel the constant need to know exactly where either of them is in relation to him. Now he arches and stiffens (what the hell does he think he's doing?) and he feels JD's mouth lift away but JD doesn't remove his hand and Daniel feels ache and arousal and shame and self-contempt, because Cammie's lying across his chest looking down at him, and he knows she can read his face. JD can't see his face, but he doesn't have to; he's got his hands all over him (one hand on his goddamned cock, the other resting on his thigh, and Daniel knows perfectly well what he's just telegraphed).

"Never knew a man yet to turn down a good blow job, honeybaby," Cammie drawls, and her voice is honey-sweet and lazy. There's nothing in it but affection.

She lowers her face to brush his lips with hers, and all he wants to do is bolt, and he doesn't really have a lot of compunctions about kicking free of JD so he can, but his arms are trapped between his body and Cammie's, and he doesn't know what will happen to her if he shoves her and she falls wrong. (He's already seen her fall twice, and it was terrifying, and the first time he collected a bruise where JD stopped him when he was moving forward to catch her as she fell and the second time he had the sense to stop and wait and see what they wanted him to do.)

JD still hasn't moved.

Daniel turns his head away, not wanting Cammie to see his face, knowing it won't help him conceal what he's feeling. And what the hell is he supposed to say? It's a little late to declare a sudden revulsion for oral sex, considering the fact that he's been an enthusiastic past-recipient of Cammie's favors (and she has been willing to render them up far more often than she's been able to render them up; they have to be so careful about sex -- in the past few months he's gone from wishing they could sleep alone, just the two of them, once in a while, to being grateful JD's there to act as their spotter to make sure she doesn't get hurt) and it's probably equally tardy to take the line that no taint of the homoerotic impulse will sully his personal cosmos. He's pretty sure that ship sailed the first time he let Cammie put his hand on JD's penis and didn't either scream or faint. And if Daniel isn't rejecting either the universal act or the universal concept the only thing that leaves for him to be rejecting is the individual involved.

"It wouldn't be reciprocal," he manages to say. (Successfully managing to sound prissy and cryptic and judgmental -- oh, good going, Dr. Jackson -- and possibly as if he's condemning the entire idea -- and by now he's not even sure what idea that is.) And he hates telling the truth nearly as much as he hates knowing it. But he owes both of them that much.

"Oh, hell, is that all you're worried about?" JD says in disbelief.

"Shut up, asshole," Cammie says crisply. "Baby mine," she says, and when she speaks to him her voice is gentle. "Nielson here likes sucking dick." She brushes Daniel's mouth lightly with hers. "It's kind of a gay boy thing, honeylamb, he don't need his poor ol' dick sucked at all."

"You're sure as hell not getting your mouth around it talking like that, you big-assed bitch," JD snaps.

"Like I had a hope in hell on a good day, you little cocksucker," she snaps right back. (And Daniel doesn't think that's quite true, but his certainty of whether or not JD and Cammie routinely engage in any of the conventional range of sexual behaviors -- however you care to define 'conventional', since he's holding the line on 'sexual' -- changes from day to day.)

Daniel feels a soft warm weight as JD rests his head on his stomach. "Both of you know damned well that any time I'm looking for a blowjob I can get one in fifteen minutes or less by putting my hair up in pigtails and hitting one of the zoomie bars. Not going to die of sexual frustration here."

Daniel's depraved enough (apparently) that despite this exciting side-trip through twenty-first century sexual mores, he's still fairly hard. Or perhaps it's the five-finger cock-ring that's taken up permanent residence at the base of his penis. JD talks about debauching Air Force cadets without the least indication of self-consciousness or historical resonance, and as he does, Daniel feels warm moist puffs of breath gust over his groin, stirring his pubic hair ticklishly, spilling over the turgid sensitive flesh that is the territory under dispute.

"He's damned good," Cammie says seriously. (And if she's the one offering JD's sexual services, why is it that Daniel's the one who feels like the white slaver?) He looks at her in faint puzzlement. There's a certain logical fallacy in her presenting (as of her certain knowledge) testimony as to JD's sexual expertise in connection with a part of the body she does not, herself, possess. "People talk," she says in ingenuous explanation.

And perhaps, Daniel thinks despairingly (in an unsettling combination of aroused, annoyed, and tired), if he lives another half-century, he'll learn when to keep his goddamned mouth shut. Because he certainly can't invite JD to blow him (especially now). That would be nearly the same thing as seducing him (or offering him some counterfeit of sexual enticement) and he has made so many compromises with the man he thought he was (the man he thought he was going to get the chance to be) in the last two decades, but he will not pretend to feelings he does not possess. He likes JD, and he's probably as fond of him as he is of anyone (if JD won't trade on whatever continuity he possesses with Jack, Daniel won't invoke it either). He's willing to touch JD sexually because that's what JD wants and what Cammie wants and Daniel doesn't mind; he's willing to let JD touch him because JD wants that too (and Daniel has already given up trying to understand why Cammie wants the things she wants; he counts himself lucky when he knows what she wants). But there are still lines he's trying not to cross, and asking to be serviced by someone whose body he does not desire crosses one of those lines.

He opens his mouth -- needing to somehow manage to say something both true and kind, because there are three people on Earth that he thinks of as friends, and two of them are naked in this bed with him right now -- and Cammie begins to nip at his mouth, at his chin, at his jaw, at his throat. "So pretty," she whispers between kisses. "Wanna watch you come. Wanna see you, an' hear you, let you do anythin' you want to me after, baby. Wanna touch you an' watch you now." She runs her tongue over his lower lip. "You know I don't play fair, not in bed. You know that."

She works her arm out from between them and cups his face. He presses his jaw into her palm, managing (finally) to drop his elbow to the bed to work his wrist and fingers carefully from beneath her breasts (she purrs and arches as his fingers brush a nipple) to wrap his arm around her shoulders. The only thing he can think of to say seems idiotic. 'Why, thank you, Cammie, if you'd enjoy seeing it, I'd very much like to have JD blow me stupid.'

And JD presses his face into Daniel's groin (and Daniel presses his face into Cammie's hand) and Daniel feels JD's tongue drag a long slow wet stroke up from base to tip at the same time Daniel is digging his fingertips heedlessly into the muscles at the back of Cammie's shoulder and trying to suck her tongue into his mouth.

He thinks he'll have to concentrate and force his attention away from what's happening, but he doesn't. All he has to do is relax, and that's easy, because Cammie's kissing him and touching him and making little happy noises in the back of her throat and he's got one arm around her and a hand filled with the warm weight of her breast. They're making love, all three of them together, and while it's confusing (or it would be confusing if he were actually capable of complex thought at the moment) it isn't threatening, because they have both spent a very long time proving to him that they are no threat to him. And it is easy to respond to JD's touch (JD's mouth) because it is not possible to doubt that JD wants to be doing this (and so he is not taking but giving and that makes it possible to ... receive).

Wetness and suction and pleasure; warmth (heat; JD's mouth is like a furnace) and care and affection and kindness and love and some of those things are abstract and some are concrete and he does not know which of them is the absolute trigger for his release. His fingers slip over Cammie's skin. He feels JD's shoulder slide along the inside of his thigh. Done and spent and sped.

"You are so goddamned pretty when you come," Cammie says, leaning in to kiss him again.

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