The first time they offer Daniel a job, it's a joke. (But he's still tempted.)

He's a little bit fuzzy on what, precisely, Nielson-Mitchell Solutions does. "Solves things", Cammie says; "stuff with computers," JD says. Daniel knows they're making money from somewhere, and he knows there's an office down in the basement that runs the entire length of the house (even though he's never seen it), and he knows they provide some service (to the military?), and he knows they have to visit Washington frequently enough that Cammie has threatened to drag the Pentagon kicking and screaming into the twenty-first-century world of videoconferencing often enough for Daniel to be able to deliver the rant right along with her. That's the sum total of his knowledge about their work.

Intellectually, he knows they must be very good at what they do, from the simple fact that they can afford two homes (one the size of the house in Colorado Springs, and they won't let him contribute to the household budget, much less pay rent; one in the stratospherical real estate market around the Pentagon, to be occupied no more than a few weeks a year) and his soul-deep belief that neither Cammie nor JD is the type of person to accept mediocrity when they could achieve excellence, but he has no documentary evidence. True enough, occasionally one or both of them will disappear into the cargo elevator and down into the office (once for four days straight; there has to be a bed and kitchenette down there, right?) and surface a long time later, blinking and dazed. But to listen to them talk about it, they spend an hour every day reading email and then just fart around on the internet, and people throw money at them just because.

But Cammie makes a joke over dinner one night about stealing Daniel's services for Nielson-Mitchell, and Daniel expects JD to laugh, but when he looks up, JD is looking thoughtful. "Wouldn't be a bad idea," JD says. "You interested, Daniel?"

For a second, he is, even though he's sure they're joking. It's been twenty years; surely he's earned a little bit of peace and quiet? And he doesn't get it at the SGC. Sure, he doesn't go through the Gate anymore (doesn't even go down to level 28 anymore, if he can help it, and he's pretty sure the psychologists have managed to miss this fact, or at least he's hoping), and the SGC is more bureaucratic than Atlantis ever was: if you're not Gate-qualified, and he's not anymore, you don't go even if the galaxy's in mortal peril. But there is never a shortage of fires to put out, and he is still their foremost expert on the Ancients, and there's plenty of work for him to do on the Asurans even here in the Milky Way instead of on Atlantis; it adds up enough that 'peace and quiet' (or a change of work, rather, because nothing about Cammie and JD is quiet and peaceful) would be welcome.

He can't, though. He has a job to do. Support for the Teams. Defending the Program to Washington. "I'm -- needed," he says. "And I don't know what you could possibly want with --"

"Global economy, Daniel, try to keep up," Cammie says, promptly. "My Chinese ain't all that great."

Well, no, it isn't; her accent is all right (she can manage the tonal distinctions, at least, which is a lot better than most non-native speakers) but her grasp of vocabulary is rough-and-ready, and her grammatical understanding is limited. "I could work with you," he says, relaxing and smiling at her. A joke, then. "I'll make flashcards. Or you could pay my outrageous consulting fee under the table so I don't have to disclose it to the SGC."

Or maybe not a joke after all, because Cammie says, immediately, "Deal." He can feel his eyebrows drawing together, because -- even if it weren't a joke, he would have expected it to be some sort of sinecure, some way of looping him into their professional lives like they had their personal lives, some way of proving to him that they don't have anything to hide, some attempt at making him feel useful. Cammie's voice, though, carries a distinct undertone of oh, thank God.

Two days later, a stack of papers the thickness of a brick lands on the desk of his home office. He flips through them. The first layer, paperclipped together, consists of a nondisclosure agreement at least as complicated as the one he signed with the SGC (this one leaves out the provisions for being officially and legally shot and killed for breaking it, although he's pretty sure neither Cammie nor JD would let that stop them) and a work-for-hire contracting agreement naming Dr. Daniel Jackson as party of the first part and Nielson-Mitchell Solutions as party of the second part. He chokes when he sees the hourly rate they're proposing to pay him. There's a Post-It in Cammie's perfect copperplate reading "sign these and get them back to me"; there's another, in JD's messier hand, reading "we'll hold your fees in escrow so you don't trip the security review with the deposits and NO WE AREN'T JOKING. also, if you under-report your hours I'll kill you, and yes, I'll know."

He flips through the bundle. The rest of the papers (and there is a lot of 'rest of the papers') are the text of dialog boxes and program interface components and help text and software manual. He's already trying to figure out how to render the technical language; he'll have to do some research, but it won't be taxing. Nothing that even comes close to justifying the exorbitant rate.

JD's in the kitchen when he goes looking, contract in hand; the elevator platform isn't waiting on this floor, which means Cammie's still down in the office. "Um," Daniel says. "I wanted to --"

"Argue that you're not worth what we're going to pay you," JD says. "Save it. Consider it down payment in advance; this is the easy part, to see if you have enough hours in the day to do both this and what they need you to do at the Mountain. If you can, trust me, you'll earn the fees. We are sick to death of pissing away money to contract out localization to people who do a shitty job of it, and let's not even talk about the teleconferencing."

Daniel winces. Yeah, there are a lot of translators for hire out there, and a lot of them suck. "Still," he says. "It's a lot of money."

JD smirks. "Believe me when I say this, Daniel: we pay ourselves more. You decide to chuck it all and come to work for us full-time, we'll double what you're making with them. At least."

Daniel sighs. He puts the papers down on the counter, digs a pen out of the pens-and-pencils jar and signs; if this is a joke, it's an elaborate one, and if it isn't, well, he wouldn't wish most contract translators on his worst enemy, let alone his girlfriend and his ... whatever. "I don't --"

"Program's going public in two years," JD says. "Three, maybe. Four would be a miracle. It's a miracle they've kept it a secret this long. We'd always said that if we got ten, we'd be lucky." He leans a hip against the counter. Not quite in Daniel's space, but not too far, either. "You got it along this far. You can stand down now."

JD's tried to tell him that already, and JD doesn't understand. (Does. Doesn't.) Daniel has been with the SGC since the very beginning, and he's fought for it and bled for it and died for it -- more than once, even -- and he just can't walk away. But he doesn't want to argue; arguing with JD about his work always brings to light a whole host of things Daniel doesn't want to think about. "When it goes public," he says, instead, "we'll talk then." Because when it does, it's going to change, even more, and he suspects he's going to want to make his escape.

"When it goes public," JD says, "we'll be able to offer you three times; we've been getting ready for it for years." He lifts a hand and touches his fingertips to Daniel's cheek. It's Cammie's gesture. Then he takes the papers from where Daniel left them on the counter, picks them up, and waves them. "Bring you a copy of these when I come back up."

He whistles as he runs back down the stairs. Daniel is left standing in the kitchen, staring after him. "It isn't about the money," he says, to the empty room. He's pretty sure JD knows that, but he wanted to say it anyway.

To his surprise, Daniel finds he enjoys doing the work over the next few weeks, even if he is going to have to invent the thirty-six hour day. It's not hard, once he manages to build up the technical vocabulary necessary (and perfect localization is always a crap-shoot, but he's always enjoyed the game). To his even greater surprise, his first attempt at translating the program in question into Chinese comes back to him swimming in green ink (at least it's not red): things underlined and circled with arrows pointing to notes in the margins, where Cammie has scrawled do you really mean and are you sure about and once (it must have been late when she was reviewing it) just a frustrated-looking NO.

It's the first time anyone has dared correct him since graduate school (peer review doesn't count) and he is possessed, for a few brief seconds, with the desire to stomp down there and demand to know what the hell she's doing. (He won't. He was told in no uncertain terms, when he first moved in with them, that the door to the office was booby-trapped and if he touched it without a keycard there'd be a small and very localized explosion, and he'd pointed out that he -- unlike certain people in this house -- was a grownup and could be trusted to stay away from places if he was asked kindly without the juvenile threats, and Cammie had blinked and said that it actually wasn't a threat; apparently they've had problems with industrial espionage. JD designed the security. When Daniel heard that, he'd made a mental note: not kidding about the explosions.)

He stifles the impulse, quickly; he will not descend to the screaming-match decibel level that's so commonplace around here. But it takes him a while before he can go through her notes calmly enough to give them due consideration. When he does, he's startled to find that it really isn't just blowing smoke, and it's not correcting him for the sake of correction, unlike everyone else who's ever gotten their hands on one of his translations. Most of the grammatical questions she raises are wrong, yes, but she didn't actually correct him, just ask him whether he was sure. The corrections are all on the parts he didn't actually understand, was just translating verbatim -- substitutions of one word for another, a notation that the technical expression means this or that -- and there's a note at the end, indicating that if he got all the way through it without wanting to strangle her she'd pay him a bonus. It includes an apology for being so picky.

He'd known they were doing -- something with computers; dinner conversations sometimes drift into talk of things like libraries (not the kind he means) and compilers (not the person who puts something together) and a whole host of complicated technobabble. But they've always been careful not to stray too far down the path to geekery in front of him (Cammie's rule; dinner conversation can't leave anybody out) and so he's never quite wondered. If you'd asked him three weeks ago, he would have said that for all he knew, they'd figured out some way to commit armed robbery via email. But no; apparently there's an entire software factory being run in the basement (he's got vague images of little bits and pieces being put together on an assembly line) and they produced this; the program they gave him to translate ('the application'; apparently, 'program' isn't the right word) is huge. And complicated. And very, very, very complex. Daniel's pretty sure this sort of thing is usually produced by major multinational corporations.

It makes him start paying more attention. And when he does, he realizes how brutally efficient they are, and how absolutely unstinting they are in demanding quality -- of themselves, of him. How fiercely protective they are of their business reputation. And they've been managing to make it look effortless.

He can respect that. And he's impressed, but a little (more than a little) surprised, too. Not by Cammie -- he doesn't know her history; for all he knows she was Cameron Mitchell, Geek Girl, growing up, and came back to it after she left her service. But JD? The thought of Jack and computers in the same sentence always used to give him a headache. (Which button turns it on again, Carter?) Re-invention? Someone Jack always was, and hid? Daniel keeps telling himself he doesn't care, because there was no rule saying that Jack had to tell him everything, and JD is entitled to be not-Jack. JD is entitled to have Daniel treat him as his own person, not as Jack-prime, not as a place to go for all the questions Daniel never got a chance to ask. But Daniel keeps circling around them anyway, the central (forever unanswerable) question: did he ever really know Jack, or not?

And if he didn't, if there were such a profound disconnect between his mental image of Jack and the reality -- did it matter? (Oh, the eternal unhealed scar, words flung at him at need, as cover: foundationless friendship; you never knew me, Daniel.)

He doesn't ask. Won't ask. But JD seems to notice the fact that he wants to, and bit by bit -- never overtly, never obviously, but through hint and allusion -- offers him just enough that he can fit together Jack's answer, through this unlikely voice from beyond the grave. A piece of Jack, and a piece that was always well-hidden. From others. (From himself, in a way.) An interest, and some skill and natural aptitude Jack went out of the way to aggressively conceal, because the government Jack served would have felt entitled to use it, and Jack wanted to keep it for himself. Daniel thinks the fact that JD can use it now, the fact that JD can bring it front-and-center into this new life, means something: a statement, a challenge. (Cammie claims to have taught JD everything he knows. JD says he hired her for her tits, not her talents.)

It's odd to think of JD as Jack Triumphant, but as he watches over the next few weeks, Daniel's conviction slowly grows, and finally he realizes what he's been missing: JD was never Jack's secret shame; he was Jack's personal escape route, and how many times had Daniel heard the lecture about never letting yourself get trapped in an untenable situation? And yet Jack had. (Promotion. Washington.) Jack would never turn his back on his duty, no matter how distasteful (that much Daniel knows, even if he knows nothing else).

But Jack would take escape if it were possible without compromising that. And the thought makes so many other things fall into place: Jack's insistence on saving his copy's life (out-of-character for Jack to do, Daniel remembers thinking at the time, and -- actually -- out-of-character for his copy to be so fierce in demanding its own life in return). Jack's insistence on taking personal charge of all the details of making his copy disappear. Jack's dead flat and uncompromising insistence to anyone who had seen the copy in the halls of the SGC that it had been him, de-aged like they'd thought he had been at first, to the point of pretending to remember conversations the copy had had.

The copy. JD.

Thought-experiments are Daniel's stock in trade. Thinking the unthinkable. Roads not taken. (Alternate realities: been there, done that, ate the fucking t-shirt.) And SG-1's greatest strength had always been that each of them could do the hard things, push themselves beyond the usual limits; most people only ever saw it in Jack and Teal'c, but Jack saw it in him and in Sam as well. (Minds are as dangerous as bombs. More so. Jack always knew that. Daniel should have remembered.)

He's been -- for the past year and a half -- wondering if his presence (here, with Cammie, with JD, as part of this whatever-the-hell-you-goddamn-call-it) is in some way a betrayal of Jack. If he's being disloyal to the memory of his friend. The question of JD's feelings for him is a murky one; the question of how much of those feelings came from Jack has never been approached, but Daniel's never been able to help feeling, in some way, that he's been cheating on Jack's ghost by accepting this arrangement. By being willfully complicit in his own seduction, always wondering if Jack had always hoped -- wanted -- and always trying to steer clear of the irrational conviction that if Jack knew what he was up to now --

But looking at it like this -- it makes sense. The idea that JD was somehow Jack's gift to himself. Jack's way of taking the road-not-taken. Jack couldn't escape in his own right (duty to others, duty to country, duty to planet). Daniel doesn't look for Jack in JD very often. He makes himself not look (and Cammie has never needed to tell him to treat JD as his own person, as someone who shares no more than a continuity of memory, vague and indistinct, with the man Daniel once knew). Maybe more of JD is Jack than Daniel ever thought.

So Daniel can sit, and carefully examine the data, and imagine Jack O'Neill -- slate wiped clean and a whole world of different choices before him -- growing up to be JD. It's not an exact experiment, of course (he's not starting from zero, clean slate, each iteration: JD remembers being Jack), but close enough. When he puts it like that, the answer becomes clear. (Or if not the answer, then one of many.) The potential was always there; who Jack was -- who JD is -- is (was) who each of them chose to be: based on the worlds they were born into, the choices they were offered, the choices they made. JD (escaping) took for himself the choices (freedoms) that Jack couldn't have. Had given up, for so many reasons. (Honor and duty and country and expediency and self-protection and so many others Daniel can't even guess at.)

JD left and Jack stayed, and Jack moved heaven and earth to give JD clear skies and fair flying. Did Jack know, Daniel wonders, what JD made of his (their) life? He must have. Daniel hopes he took comfort from it. God knows Jack deserved it.

And it should leave him (logically, considering his whatever-the-fuck with JD) to examine the basis of his relationship with Jack. To want to pick through a hundred remembered conversations (looks, touches) to mine for motivations, wonder whether and how much. But no. Jack was his dearest friend; this whole trip down alternate-universe memory lane has been about making sure of that -- not starting from a poisoned well, as it were -- and Daniel is satisfied. Satisfied, too, that even if (and he'll never know and he doesn't want to) JD's sexual orientation is something Jack shared, it's something Jack had made the decision never to act upon, and once Jack had made a decision like that, he would have kept it. No, what Daniel has with JD (unnameable; 'lover' isn't quite right, not fully) doesn't betray anything. As if (irrational, but still) Jack knows, though Jack was dead (though not yet buried) before Daniel saw JD again. Approves? Daniel won't go that far. But he knows he doesn't feel guilty, and that'll have to be enough.

And so, thought-experiment settled -- or at least temporarily shelved -- he picks up the phone and calls down to the office. Cammie answers. He can hear JD in the background, in full rant mode.

"This'd better be important, baby mine," she warns. "I'm in the middle of tellin' himself all the ways he is dumber'n a box'a hammers with all the smart hammers taken out --"

"A very important task," Daniel agrees, gravely. "Can you take time from it to spare for dinner, or should I call for takeout?"

"Oh, bite your goddamn tongue," she says, the same way she always does. "We'll be up in ten an' don't you even think of it or I'll kill you both. We got plenty'a land an' I know I can find some quicklime an' a shovel."

He laughs as he replaces the receiver. He's fairly sure he's not supposed to find death threats so endearing. But Cammie is a law unto herself.

He doesn't call for takeout -- worth his life, and he knows it -- but he does take out three of the meals in the freezer (stuffed baked chicken and green beans and rice pilaf all put together in nice single-serving Tupperware and frozen against a night when Cammie can't cook) and pop them into the microwave. The banes of his existence tumble out of the freight elevator precisely ten minutes later, looking simultaneously distracted and annoyed. (Daniel had been startled to discover the elevator upon his first visit -- full elevators in private homes are exoribitantly expensive and full of rules and regulations and he does not want to know how much they had to pay the architect to have the plans drawn up or pay the contractors to have the work done, because he knows it couldn't have been there when they bought the house; nobody in the world but Cammie would locate an elevator in the kitchen. And yeah, it probably tanked their resale value, but the minute Daniel had stopped to think about it, he'd realized how necessary it was.) They have the air that says they're not only hard at mental work, but also fighting again. (But when are they not?)

"Tell him he's being stupid," are Cammie's first words, as she stalks (or her equivalent) over to the table to sit down.

"Tell her she's being stubborn," JD snaps back.

Daniel reaches out a hand, and -- daring -- grabs the waistband of JD's jeans, drags him in close, puts his arms around JD's waist. The way Cammie always does to him. The way Daniel always wants to do to Cammie, and he can't (always worried he'll break her), but that thought isn't fair. It's time to stop thinking of JD as a proxy. As a substitute.

"You're both stubborn," Daniel says, mildly. "And I'm staying out of this argument. Because I am not stupid."

JD stiffens all over (out of surprise, Daniel thinks; still more interested in squabbling than anything else). "Are, too," he mutters. Incredible maturity: his perpetual hallmark.

"Jackass," Cammie says. "Mule."

Daniel doesn't let go, and JD sighs and relaxes against him. Daniel drops his face to the side of JD's neck and breathes out. (Cammie's gestures, Cammie's body language; they'll do as a basis to build a language from; he'll figure out his own vocabulary someday.) "I'm starving, you know," he says, conversationally. "I made dinner." (Cammie snorts.)

"Yeah, if you get your hands off me, we could go eat," JD says, without moving. The irritation's gone from his voice now, though.

"No hitting at the table," Daniel says.

"No promises there," Cammie says, her voice dire. "Get your asses over here, you two. Food's getting cold."

JD keeps shooting glances at him as they eat. Not irritated, not annoyed (he's saving that for Cammie), but confused, like Daniel's done something outside his range of experience and prediction. The two of them (his own personal crosses to bear, and never mind that he's happier than he's been in -- years) bolt their food and squabble like children. (Cammie throws a green bean at JD at one point. Apparently JD is very wrong.)

JD's away from the table like an arrow the minute he's done, tossing his plate into the sink and thumping down the stairs two at a time. Cammie yells after him, "Better not come down there to find you've checked your goddamn wrong code into Subversion again!"

"Fuck you, Mitchell!" drifts back up the stairs, and Cammie smiles a little before turning back to Daniel.

"Seems to me I smell epiphany," she says, gently. "Anythin' I should know about?"

And it shouldn't be as much of a comfort as it is, knowing she can see it (read it on his face, read him). It should bother him. (Having someone -- two someones -- be able to see through him. It's been a long damn time.) It doesn't, but neither does he want to (neither can he) explain it. He gestures, inarticulately (it sounds better inside his head than 'flails wildly'). "No," he says. "Yes. You probably don't have time right now to listen to a ninety-minute lecture on the theoretical basis of self and identity." And self-identity, and sexual orientation, and how it is all made manifest in the confusion that is his life right now. He doesn't know which part he's sticking on more, that he might be sort-of in love with a man -- with JD -- or that he's in love with anyone. Anyones. No matter what sex they are. "I've just been thinking," he says, instead. "It's nothing important. You'd probably better go stop him from, uh, subverting your code?"

"S'all good," Cammie says, peacefully. She wraps her hands around her water glass and regards him, assessingly. "He tries, he'll find I locked him out of the repository before I came up for dinner while I was distracting him by yellin' at him, an' he can't yell at me back about it, 'cause then he'd have to admit to trying to check in code he didn't clear by me first. I got the time if you need me. If a ninety-minute conversation about self and and identity is what it'd take to make you feel better, I'm all ears."

She would be, too, which is what never fails to astound him about her. He makes himself smile, reaches over the table and takes both of her hands in his own. Easier to say, instead of "a woman" and "a man", "in love with Cammie" and "in love with JD", and if he'd gotten here through love for Cammie, well, Cammie is loveable.

"I'm all right," he says, only halfway mendaciously. He will be all right, at least. Eventually. "Go. I don't want you to have another excuse to fight with him."

She grins at him. "Daniel, you ain't figured out by now that boy an' I just like fighting, you ain't been payin' attention. You sure?"

"I'm sure," he says, and manages to summon a slightly-more-genuine smile. "Confused. Unconfused. A little of each. I -- you know how it is when you figure something out and you have to spend a little time getting used to knowing that you know it? Nothing new for me, but ..." She's watching him, listening to him -- Cammie's listening is a palpable force -- and he realizes that she must know at least part of what his epiphany involved; she's too perceptive not to. "It's not that I'm not happy with anything I figured out. It's just ... new." It's just fucking terrifying, but he doesn't tell her that. There are a lot of things that frighten Cammie (he even knows some of them), but being in love (realizing you're falling in love) isn't one of them. He actually thinks he'd get more sympathy from JD. He makes shooing motions. "Go. Fight. Let me know if you need me to bring down a mop and a bucket to clean up the blood later."

"Ain't killed him yet, ain't gonna change my mind this far in," she says -- the sound of her agreeing to defer the conversation for later -- and hauls herself to her feet. Then makes her way over, leaning on her cane, to stand next to him. She puts a hand under his chin, tips it up so he's looking at her face. It's gone calm and serious -- not sober, just weighty, and it's not that he thinks Cammie's all fun-and-games or incapable of taking things seriously (far from it), just that it always seems slightly odd when she drops the rough-and-ready air of cheerful good-naturedness that she somehow always manages to retain (even when she's screaming at JD).

"I love you, you know," she says, quiet and sincere. She can say it. It takes his breath away, every time he hears her say it. And she never makes him feel as though he is being expected to say it back. "Confused or no, it don't much matter. Love you either way. And so does himself, in his way. Whatever it is you're working out behind those pretty blue eyes of yours, you take your time; we're not going anywhere."

Half-a-dozen defensive conversational parries come instantly to the forefront of his mind. He rejects all of them as being unworthy. Of himself, of Cammie. Even of JD. It leaves him with nothing to say, because what he wants to say (what he ought to say) strangles in his throat: I love you both. So he lifts his hand to capture the hand she's offered him, squeezes it gently. "There's ice cream for later," he says instead.

She smiles. He thinks she might hear the other part, somehow. It's all right; he can't say it unencoded, but it eases something to know she can hear what he really means. "Don't tell himself that," she says. Then bends down, kisses him -- lightly, but with promise -- and thumps herself off to the elevator.

Left alone (they'll have forgotten his very existance inside of ten minutes), he stares at the wall for a little while. Then he gets up. By now, he knows the proper procedures; if he can manage a wet lab, he can manage a kitchen, at least if not asked to cook. Dishes get rinsed, then stacked in the dishwasher; Tupperware gets scrubbed thoroughly, then stacked; silverware in the basket, make sure nothing's caught, flip the sign to 'dirty' because it's not full enough to run. He wanders around the house for half an hour, not really doing much; wander and think, the way he always has, and there's a lot of house to wander through. They don't regularly use more than a fraction of it. (Six bedrooms. One's made up for guests. One's Daniel's combined office and library. One's an A/V room, JD's pride and joy. One's Cammie's gonna-kill-you room -- as in, "I don't get a door to shut, I'm gonna kill you", one's their library, and one's the one they all sleep in. They always wind up in the kitchen anyway.) Room enough to house a dozen people. He'd thought that was why they'd invited him to move in, at first.

Eventually, he catches himself, and makes a face. He goes back to the kitchen, makes a pot of coffee, goes to his office, and pulls his task list for the night off the house news server. And while he's there, he should just post a message: Epiphanies of Daniel Jackson, latest in an endless series. It's not as if they don't use the news server as the twenty-first century version of the passive-aggressive Post-It note half the time -- okay, assuming you can fit fifteen hundred words of rant onto a Post-It note. Or maybe he should just let them guess. Or maybe he should change his name and move to Tibet. The problem with Option Three is that he doesn't want to leave them. Family. (Lovers.) He sighs. Back around to the starting gate again, assuming carousels have starting gates. He's pretty sure they don't.

About the time he realizes he's clicking aimlessly through and reading years-old messages (Cammie, waxing vitriolic about the state of a project Daniel knows nothing about; JD, with a four-thousand-word screed about the importance of not leaving the remote control in the other room that detours into comparing Cammie with Pol Pot and Castro and culminating in something that looks like it could have been written by James Joyce; they never expire old messages from the newsgroup, just buy more disk space when it's necessary) he just gives up and realizes he's not going to get anything done. He quits his newsreader, hovers his mouse over his word processor, sighs again, quits that, and logs off completely. Then he goes back to the kitchen. More coffee. Maybe some ice cream.

While he's prepping the next pot, he can hear the sounds of revelry-by-night coming from the elevator shaft. He braces himself, and a minute later, his peripatetic inamorata and her semi-platonic gay boyfriend come spilling out, faces flushed, talking a mile a minute. He can't understand more than one word in ten of what either one of them are saying. Cammie's the one to grab Daniel (dropping her cane to do it; JD stoops to scoop it up, unremarked, and props it against the table by her hand) and kiss him. Thoroughly.

"Geniuses," she says, when she finally lets him go. Her eyes are dancing. "We are geniuses."

"I'm a genius," JD corrects. "You display occasional moments of insight."

"You're something, all right," she shoots back, and then kisses Daniel again. "Three weeks early," she announces. "Three whole goddamn fucking weeks."

Daniel slides his hands around her hips (to hold her close so he can feel her against him, to make sure he's not going to accidentally knock her over, and the one is as important as the other) and quirks an eyebrow at JD. "I take it you had a breakthrough," he says, dry as bone.

"Got the damn thing up to a ninety-nine percent recognition rate," JD says, happily, opening the freezer door and rooting around for the ice cream. "Which is what the contract specifies. Which gives us three whole weeks to shoot for ninety-nine eight --"

"--which would put us ahead of the competition by a whole two percentage points--" Cammie chimes in.

"--which would mean we are guaranteed a shitpot of money next year even without having to do a damn lick of work but customizing for each client," JD finishes.

"Congratulations," Daniel says. And it's easy to set aside his burgeoning epiphanies when they both turn to him and smile like that.

He never quite comes back to it, either. Work to do and fights to referee and lives to lead and, well, he just forgets. And then there's a day, six weeks or so after that, on a Saturday that's no different than any other Saturday (not really), and Daniel walks into the laundry room (his day for the laundry) and opens the washer and sees a load of wash.

It's faintly damp. (Been there for a while. Days.) And he starts to drag it out, and he catches a whiff of moldering fabric -- just a whiff, but Cammie's nose is sharper than his and God help you if you don't do the chores to her standards -- and he wonders what monster of unspeakable infamy loaded the washer and ran a load and then just wandered off, and Cammie wouldn't, and he knows he didn't. He thinks about dumping in more detergent and starting the cycle over again, and then just slams the lid and stalks out into the living room. JD is lounging on the couch (apparently he has no bones; Daniel has observed this before), staring at his computer. (Work and play and some forms of sex, the computer is always with him. Possibly grafted on.)

"You ... asshole," Daniel says, without preamble. (If he hadn't known the words before -- and he had -- he'd certainly know them after two years of living here. Still, they aren't words he uses. Normally. Unless he's trying to get their attention.)

JD looks up, surprised. His eyes narrow speculatively. Daniel points, a sweeping gesture of Victorian theatricality, in the direction of the laundry room.

"It's your turn," JD says.

"It's your laundry. In the machine," Daniel says. "Get your ass in there and deal with it."

JD smirks as he sets his computer aside and slinks to his feet. "Don't have a cow, man," he mutters (too young to know that phrase; too old to know that phrase; Bart Simpson made flesh). As he nears Daniel, he sidles past and aims a swat at Daniel's backside, but Daniel's ready for it (by simple virtue of having watched a similar maneuver played out, oh so many times, between JD and Cammie). He turns inside the blow and grabs for JD's hip. JD's counter is a simple and ruthless ankle-sweep; they both go down.

"You are still an asshole," Daniel gasps, a few minutes later (lying on his back, looking up at JD; predictable).

JD smiles. (Angelically.) "Glad you noticed."

And Daniel (fingers curling on JD's hip, JD's weight pinning him down) thinks of last words and checkmates and the fact that he's so bad at this and the fact that he's always hated being laughed at. Oh, what the hell, he thinks. You can always make Cammie throw him out later. And he grabs JD's shoulder with his free hand and pulls him the rest of the way down.

He only gets away with it because of the element of surprise; moving JD when JD doesn't want to be moved is like trying to shift a rock. And what he actually gets (at first) is bumped foreheads. Then JD pulls back, just a little. And kisses him. Properly, improperly. On the living room floor. In broad daylight.

And there's an element of hesitancy in the kiss -- like JD's expecting Daniel to pull away at any minute, like JD's expecting him to take it back, and realizing it, Daniel's heart breaks, because -- how much of this whole delicately-balanced equation has been JD holding back? JD trying to keep from startling him? And aside from the fact that it's a tragedy that JD should have to hide anything, if he's had this much problem processing and adapting to the bits JD has shown him, what will happen if they were nothing more than visible iceberg, ninety percent lurking underneath the cold and black waters waiting to blindside him?

But then JD makes a noise, soft and desperate and wanting, and softens against Daniel, draping bonelessly over his body. Giving up. Giving in. Giving clues, and Daniel's startled he can read them -- want, want, want. Cues and wishes, and his hands are moving over Daniel's body, but more than that, his body is pressing into Daniel's hands: touch me. Please, God, touch me.

And he can't not touch JD. Daniel has always responded to need, to information, to communication; it's possible he's invented an entirely new sexual orientation here. Or not. He doesn't actually care at the moment; all he cares about is the fact that JD is naked to the waist, and that's nice, and more naked might be better, and the floor is damned hard, and he can't get JD as close as he wants him, as JD wants to be, and that is frustrating as fuck and also he can't breathe. Breathing would probably be easier if he didn't have a full-grown man lying on his chest, if he weren't wrapping himself around that man as much as he can in this position, if he weren't kissing him as if there were no tomorrow. (Oxygen is overrated; Daniel's died by drowning once, and he can say that for certain.)

When JD breaks the kiss, Daniel says, in a rush, gasping, "Yes I want you, please God don't ask me to explain my sexual orientation, no I'm not going to take it back or change my mind ever. I love you. I love both of you." He can say the words if they aren't in English. Farsi. Jack knew it. Maybe JD remembers it. Maybe someday soon Daniel will be able to say it in English.

JD's eyes register shock for one brief second before he locks it down and lets it be papered over by want-want-want again. Shock, and disbelief, but not the kind left by unpleasant news; more in the way of hearing something he'd never hoped to hear, something utterly welcome and utterly unexpected. "I won't ask," he says, low and soft, and when he kisses Daniel again, it's almost savage. "I love you too. I have for a very long time."

Maybe Daniel's not the only one who can't say the important things in English.

Then JD is kneeling up, over Daniel, then back further until he's bouncing to his feet (young bones, boundless energy, and there's something so right in it that it makes Daniel's chest ache). He holds down a hand. "Come on," he says. "Floor's hard." (The floor's not the only thing.)

There has been sex before. This is different. (--How do I love thee? Let me count the ways--) In the first place, Cammie's nowhere in sight, and Daniel doesn't care. In the second place, it's the first time the two of them have actually been naked in bed together during the daylight. (Cammie's distinction. Nude is unclothed. Naked is unclothed and up to something.) Daniel's business has always been the truth (sold like sausage in the marketplace) but he's never been a big fan of truth in his personal life. Knowing it. Giving it out. (How long until he told his closest friends he had a living relative? How long until he told them anything about his past? The answer to both those questions: he didn't. The reason they know (knew) any of those things is that the information was pried out of him, under duress, in the line of duty.) But there's truth here, because he's found it for himself. Offering it up, accepting it in turn. Not only love, but passion.

Because (tardy and scholarly revelation as they press their bodies together -- naked, avid; this time he's the first one to kiss) he's had his mouth around JD's dick a number of times (improving on his first performance) and JD's blown him more times than he can count, and he's even had his mouth on JD's neck and his tattoos and his shoulder and his back and bitten him on the ass once or twice (for reasons he can't remember just at the moment; he suspects Cammie is at fault somehow) but now, today, is the first time Daniel's ever kissed his mouth. Because lovers kiss, and the mouth is the gateway to the soul (the Greeks believed; so did the Egyptians) and many cultures (the Chinese, for example) don't kiss at all and others (the Arab world) believe a kiss is more intimate than sex.

He wants to kiss. He wants to touch. Love, passion, desire: it doesn't matter.

"Tell me what you want," Daniel says, resting his forehead against JD's. He means it. He knows there's more. There has to be.

"I want you," JD says. Low and soft, desperate. "I want you to fuck me."

Cammie's influence, Daniel knows, that the word 'fuck' (no curse word in this household, unless it's meant to be) means so much more than simple penetrative intercourse -- Cammie and JD have been fucking for years, and yet Daniel thinks the number of times they have (by standard American definitions) had sex could be counted up on no more than fingers and toes. But that's not what JD means. He knows that's not what JD means. "Tell me," he says (heaviness in his chest, a warm pressure, a yielding: love and panic and lust and passion). "Show me how."

JD's skin is hot (JD's skin is always hot) and his mouth is greedy. "Yes," JD says. "Just -- I want you. Touching me. I want --" He rolls over lies back, pulling Daniel over him, mouth to mouth with their legs tangling together and their hips pressing. Cock against cock, electric, electrifying. Daniel bears his weight down against JD, breathless, full of -- Desire. Need. Not offered out of comfort, not offered out of some cosmic sense of fairness, not offered because he thinks it's what JD wants. (All reasons he's brought to this bed before, one after another, searching for the right one.) No, this is offered because he wants to, because he needs to: needs to give, needs to take.

"It's not hard," JD says, against his shoulder. "I just want to feel you. Please."

Daniel breathes in, steady and controlled, and lets go of his nerves. Time to panic later. His window for homosexual panic closed a long time ago, anyway. "Yeah," he says, and his voice is rock-steady solid.

JD wraps his legs around Daniel's waist, arching up against him. It makes Daniel laugh. He's seen JD nude and he's seen JD wanting, but never like this, and the laughter isn't so much at the situation but from the experience of seeing such beauty, reflected.

"Get the lube," JD says, in an undertone. "Take it slow."

Daniel has a vague, academic understanding of the mechanics (i.e., he would have said he knew exactly what to do, up until the moment he was actually kneeling over the body of his lover with the lube in his hand). The saving grace is that JD is not shy about giving him clear and explicit instructions. Lube here. Fingers there. More lube there.

And then JD says they're good to go, and he's trying to get everything lined up and make this work and -- slick, slippery -- and he's deflowered virgins (more than one, actually, but he thinks of Sha're, he thinks of their real wedding night, and he suspects that if she could see him now she'd be laughing her ass off) and JD's no virgin but for God's sake how --

And JD reaches down and puts his hand over Daniel's wrist and pulls, and hitches his hips up and Daniel slides forward, gasping. In.

"There," JD says. "That wasn't so hard, was it? Push."

"For definitions of 'hard'," Daniel mutters, and does as he's told.

Tight. Hot. Slick. It's like being deep-throated by an anaconda. JD hitches up again and wraps his legs around Daniel's waist, and at least something about the position is familiar.

He's beautiful.

"You can't hurt me, Daniel," JD says. His face is flushed, lips parted, and Daniel scrabbles for a moment before he figures out what to do with his hands. Slides them under JD's ass and pulls him close and thrusts. That doesn't work for long; he has to brace himself on his elbows.

"This is the worst sex you've ever had," he tells JD.

"Yeah. No. Shut up," JD answers, and does something with his hips, and arches his spine and --

He hopes it isn't the worst sex JD has ever had. Because, oh God, it's good. He can't stop thinking about why (wondering about why; analyzing the question; sue him: analysis is what he does). He hopes it's supposed to take a while, because he's mildly distracted (he likes being mildly-distracted; if he weren't, he thinks he might be breaking indoor land speed records here; probably not good). Lure of the forbidden? True love? Novelty? The sounds (oh God the sounds) JD is making? (He must be doing something right.) He loves -- He wants --

He wants to fucking hammer JD right through the goddamned mattress, is what he wants. And JD seems determined to make him do it.

Slick, and rough, and JD's spine flexes against the mattress like there are advantages to him having no bones, and JD's hands are everywhere against his skin. Raw and aching desire, JD's legs wrapped around his waist and JD's ankles locked together in the small of his back and for the first time, the first time ever, the sense that JD is holding nothing back. (How long has he been?) And Daniel lets go of the last lingering bits of restraint he'd been keeping, and he pushes himself up on his arms, and he tells himself JD's not going to break. It's too much and it's not enough, and he doesn't know what would be, but he's got time to figure it out.

He's reviewing his performance options when it occurs to him that he's reviewing. Past tense. He's lying full-length on top of JD, his teeth in the long thickness of muscle between shoulder and neck (not breaking the skin) and JD is stroking his hair, his neck, his back.

"Said you couldn't hurt me," JD says, low and soft. (And no, Daniel can't. Not like he can hurt Cammie, and -- a thought, a question; will this hurt Cammie? But no. Cammie already knows.)

He turns his head just enough to press his face into the side of JD's neck. "Didn't say anything about the fact I was apparently going to die," he mumbles. He's wrung out. Exhausted. From the emotions, more than the actions.

He feels JD laugh as much as hears it. "Yeah, wouldn't think that'd be a problem for you. You're heavy. Move."

Everything's sore -- muscles never-used, never-suspected, and he can barely imagine what JD must be feeling, and he thinks (distracted again, distracted still) that he hopes JD -- that it was -- that JD enjoyed --

But JD wiggles and heaves, and Daniel is slipping free and rolling to the side, and the tangle of arms and legs might never get sorted out at this rate. JD nuzzles at the curve of Daniel's collarbone, along the lines of his neck, somehow satiated and satisfied in a way Daniel can't put his finger on. "Like that," JD says, a low calm purr. "Just like that. Yeah."

Daniel studies his face. Familiar, and so-familiar-it-should-look-different, and beloved (yes, beloved) and wholly unexpected. He lifts his hand to cup JD's cheek (Cammie's gesture, Cammie's touch; time still to find his own) and JD does what he always does when Cammie touches him like that: turns his head into it, nuzzles Daniel's palm, his tongue slipping from between his lips to flick against the base of Daniel's thumb.

"Was that --" Daniel starts -- was that okay, was that what you wanted, what else have you been wanting because I want to give it to you, oh God I don't know what I'm doing here -- and JD makes a face and bites down. Gently. Daniel yelps.

"I said yes," JD says. "Like that." He pauses. "But if you want to practice, I wouldn't say no."

And Daniel has to laugh. Because that's how JD says things; that's how JD asks for things; his words mean do that again as soon as you think you can, and by the way, don't fucking freak out on me. "Practice is always good," he agrees, solemnly. "It's how we learn things."

"Yes," JD agrees, blandly. "And one of the things we learn is that dried lube itches like a bastard."

So it's up and into the shower, and Daniel would hate JD for how easily he moves (echoes of once upon a time, when he was the one who was young and unfettered, but he sets it aside) if JD weren't so matter-of-fact about it. He scrubs Daniel's back. Daniel scrubs his front. It's sweet, and domestic, and nothing at all makes Daniel stop and wonder what the hell he's just done.

"Change the sheets, too," JD says, when they're out of the shower and toweling themselves off. "I don't want to hear an earful from herself about how if she's going to have to sleep in the wet spot, she damn well wants to have been part of making it."

Another stab of panic (quelled, quickly): Cammie knows, but what will she think? Daniel has never understood the two of them: their odd mind-meld, their bickering, their complete lack of boundaries, and it's not that he thinks he's crossed some line (he doesn't think they have lines), but --

"Stop thinking," JD says, irritable as always, and snaps the top sheet at Daniel as he strips it off the bed.

"Like that's going to happen," Daniel shoots back, and grabs at the tangled mass of blankets at the bottom of the bed to heave them off.

"Man can dream," JD says.

"Yeah, well, dream on," Daniel says (and oh God, is he channeling JD now? If there were a Hell, he'd be going to it just for that.)

It isn't -- precisely -- that Daniel feels awkward being naked; casual nudity is enough of a common thing in the house that JD keeps sweats and shirt by the front door in case someone knocks and he has to open it -- but he's feeling a little too naked at the moment. So he pulls on a clean pair of underwear. First pair that comes to hand from the stacks of folded clean laundry on top of the dresser, so they're actually Cammie's: red boxers adorned with flaming skulls. Today is a day for trying new things. They're a little loose in the waist, but they'll stay up.

"She'll bust your ass, you know," JD says off-handedly, seeing him.

"For getting into her pants?" Daniel answers. "I don't think so." (Hell. Going there.)

JD snorts. Daniel goes to the linen closet for clean sheets. When he comes back, JD's put on a set of his skimpy Date Night underwear; in the red thong and nothing else, he looks like an invitation to riot. (And Daniel wonders when -- or is it if? -- male bodies became his own personal invitation to riot. It may just be JD. He'd rather it was, just, well, because. Maybe the two of them should go to a gay bar so he can check.)

When the bed's made up fresh, he and JD head off to the laundry room. There, JD pulls the original bone of contention -- his abandoned laundry -- out of the washer without comment. Sheets are Monday, not Saturday (Saturday is personal laundry, Part One, with overruns as needed; if the house didn't have a schedule, as Cammie often says, Disorganized Chaos would reign, and Disorganized Chaos is the worst kind; there's actually a schedule of what gets washed on which day posted, with snarky emendations in an entire rainbow of marker colors) but Daniel puts them in now anyway. In the spirit of hiding the body. Hopeless, he knows already.

Absently, in the middle of reaching for soap and softener (and untangling the wad of sheets as he loads them in, so they won't knot up and unbalance in the drum), he reaches out and runs his hand down JD's back, resting his hand on JD's hip for just a moment. He's not sure where this seemingly-constant urge to touch came from (oh, yes he is, but he strangled it and stuffed it in a sack and buried it at the crossroads of his future and his past decades ago, and he's a little surprised to see it back now).

"Admit it," JD says, in the process of sniffing each piece of his laundry individually and separating kith from kine. "This is all about having company on Laundry Day."

"You know," Daniel answers, "it doesn't matter how much you sniff that, she's still going to be able to tell you didn't re-wash it all."

"There's ice cream in the kitchen," JD says.

Before Daniel can answer that apparent non-sequitur, the front door opens with a clack and a rattle. He hears the rustling of shopping bags being put out of the way for later unpacking, and a minute later he can hear Cammie thumping (slow and gradual) across the house. "You two killed each other yet?" she hollers.

Daniel's first impulse -- silly, really -- is to try to duck and hide. But all JD does is yell back, "Laundry day!"

A minute later, she pokes her head in, raises an eyebrow. "Now, I know I didn't change the schedule," she says, looking at Daniel and knowing somehow, even though he's gotten the lid shut and the load started by now. "Thought we'd housebroken you out of peeing on the sheets, Nielson."

"Figured as long as we were doing laundry anyway, we might as well get everything dirty first," JD says.

And really, he should give up ever trying to keep a secret around here. Because Cammie knows, and God damn their practical telepathy, anyway. He braces himself for some as-yet-unspecified disaster, tries to think of some way -- any way -- he could reassure her (if it comes to that) that when it comes to her and JD, he doesn't mean or, he means and. But all she does is lean in, collect her welcome-back-from-outside kiss from Daniel, and then snap the waistband of JD's thong. "I can get behind that," she says, and just like that, it's okay.

He feels ... giddy (probably the precise word); not too many shocks, but too many ... anti-shocks. (Stupid word. He doesn't have a better one.) How, after all, can you feel a sense of relief when you had only just become aware there might have possibly been something you needed to feel relief from? (Just contemplating the attempt to construct a Venn diagram of their tripartiate relationship makes him dizzy.) Dear Miss Manners: I am very relieved to discover I have not (after all) stolen my girlfriend's gay boyfriend... Or something. The interesting problems of the modern age. Which aren't problems after all, thank God. He should have realized. Because he can look at Cammie and feel desire, and look at JD and feel the same, and Cammie is smiling at him. When Cammie smiles at him, all is right with the world.

"You look peaked," JD says, poking Daniel in the side. "You need ice cream. After all, you need to keep up your strength." He smirks. Alea iacta est. Daniel holds out his hand and JD steps close, letting Daniel's hand rest on his hip.

"Don't start without me," Cammie says. "Anything." She wheels, pivoting on her cane, heading for the back of the house and the bedroom.

"Hah," JD says (an answer to so many of the things Cammie could have meant). He moves away, heading toward the kitchen.

There, JD chugs a full bottle of Gatorade (Daniel hates Gatorade, but right about now he thinks of stealing some -- no, gone), then dishes up ice cream. In the Nielson-Mitchell household -- the Nielson-Mitchell-Jackson household -- ice cream is a delicacy generally eaten a la carton, but today JD gets out bowls and cruises the cabinets, burying the helpless ice cream beneath marshmallows, M&Ms, crushed Graham cracker, fistfuls of the good chocolate chips, dried cherries.

Daniel sits down at the kitchen table and rests his chin on his hands. "Why bother with the ice cream?" he says, studying the growing mountains of things being heaped into the bowls.

"It's a pretext," JD says, going back to the fridge for the whipping cream.

When Cammie comes back, she's wearing a pair of Daniel's boxer-briefs -- apparently turnabout is fair play -- and a sports bra. And Daniel realizes, looking at her: something that (when he met her) he had to force himself to ignore -- her scars, her injuries -- has been, for a while now, something that merely is. "There," she announces, with relief. "I am now no longer overdressed by a factor of twelve." She eyes the bowls. "Oh, God, you're tryin' to kill me, aren't you?"

"There's dried fruit in there," JD says, unrepentant. "'S good for you. You get anything good at the mall?"

"Couple of pairs of shoes," Cammie says, absently, and settles herself down. Not in a chair; on Daniel's lap, and he holds his knees together and holds himself very still so she doesn't fall, and tries to figure out where to put his hands so he isn't groping her, and he has the most sinking sensation that this was somehow planned. (Then he stops. Catches himself. A few minutes ago he'd been worried that Cammie would be hurt by the prospect of him-and-JD; then he'd been worried that Cammie would feel excluded by the prospect of him-and-JD; is there anything to be hurt by, at the thought that Cammie loves him and loves JD and wants them to love each other? Lot of reprogramming to do.) Cammie elbows him in the ribs, much more gently than she would JD. "Couple of books, too."

"Oh, God," Daniel groans. "My to-be-read list is enough to take me into next century."

"Yeah, every book in the universe ain't about you, mister," she says. She grabs one of his hands, plants it firmly on her hip and wriggles her butt (and oh, hey, at least he's the next thing to gelded at the moment; there's always an upside to a situation if you look hard enough).

"Sure, but he'll read anything that has words in a row," JD says, heartlessly. "I've even seen him picking up your pink books, Mitchell." (Cammie's enthusiastic love of what she calls "brain-candy romances" -- soaring glorious paeans to heteronormativity -- horrifies Daniel. The fact that he's started enjoying Cammie's brain-candy romances horrifies him more.)

JD pours the heavy cream into a bowl and gets out the whisk, the vanilla, and the bottle of Grand Marnier. (There's a perfectly-decent, well-stocked liquor cabinet in the living room that nobody uses; drinking liquor is kept under the sink, for reasons Daniel doesn't understand, and cooking liquor is kept on the shelves with the other cooking supplies, and never the twain shall meet. Except in case of emergency.) A few minutes later, he's spooning mounds of lethal whipped cream onto the tops of the bowls. "You wait a minute, I can nuke some hot fudge, too, Mitchell," he says.

Cammie groans. "Yeah, and you can explain to my rat bastard physical therapist where those extra three pounds came from. An' for the record, Nielson, they aren't pink."

JD laughs, adds spoons, and brings the bowls over to the table. He goes back for the hot fudge, but Cammie's already started in on her bowl of ice cream, and Daniel can't reach his around her, so it's perfectly logical for her to feed him. When JD comes back, he rolls his eyes to see that his creations have already been disturbed, but he portions out the hot fudge equally (and liberally) anyway. Then he settles down in the chair next to Daniel-and-Cammie, puts one of his feet against Daniel's knee, slouches in the chair, and says, around a mouthful of his own ice cream, "I've seen them. They're pink."

"Not," Cammie says, feeding Daniel another mouthful of death-by-sugar-coma. "Some of 'em are gold."

"Like the walls of a mothership," JD says, in heartfelt disgust, and Daniel has to snort, thinking of, oh, say, Anubis deciding to go into the publishing business.

Cammie laughs. "Oh, yeah, Nielson, exactly like that, I'm sure. 'S'matter, you afraid of some ittle girly books? Daniel ain't afraid of some ittle girly books."

This is a perfectly untenable position. (Not Cammie in his lap. That's ... rather nice, actually, and as she wriggles herself into a more comfortable position, he thinks that this must be one of her good days; not pain-free, but pain-manageable, enough that she could go out without escort and still come home and be moving this freely, and it's been a long time since she's had one and he's glad. For her. For the fact that this happened on a day when any unpleasant fallout -- although he's starting to let himself believe there won't be any -- wouldn't make a bad day worse.) But either he has to annouce that he is afraid of some 'ittle girly books', or he's going to find himself defending mindless illiterate codswallop as the spiritual successor-in-interest of Homer. He supposes it depends on which of them he wants to piss off more.

"Some of them are purple," he says. (He's heard of the Twinkie Defense. He's decided that -- at his trial -- he's going to try the Ben and Jerry's Defense. Dairy-product-driven insanity.)

He'd have thought it would be odd. Or awkward. Normal people, he's pretty sure, just -- don't -- do -- this. But his life isn't normal, and it hasn't been for longer than he cares to think about, and a lap full of girlfriend and the taste of the skin of his -- lover? yes, lover -- in his mouth somehow seems more right than any piece of 'normal' he could imagine.

And he listens to them bicker (endlessly, constantly) and he realizes: this is what he's been needing; this is what he's been barely aware of needing. Security and love and acceptance and home. And realizing that, something else comes clear, something he's been circling for what feels like so long: it isn't that JD is Jack, on a different trajectory. Or it is, but it isn't only. JD is also Jack stable, Jack secure and content, in a way Daniel never could have guessed at, and knowing this makes Daniel understand (fractionally, fractally) the bond JD and Cammie share: Cammie helped him find that stability.

Daniel always knew (always thought he knew) that Jack's loyalties ran deep, but deep and sharp: sharp enough to cut you, if you ever did anything that would make Jack feel betrayed, and Jack was always expecting betrayal. That's part of what's different between Jack and JD. JD isn't expecting treachery anymore.

He's lost in thought, contemplating these revelations, when he realizes the weight on his lap is sliding free. Cammie puts her (empty) bowl in the sink and turns around. "A'ight," she announces, to the room at large. "Somebody's gonna have to come help me work off some of these calories."

She walks off without waiting to see the reaction. (Still leaning on her cane, but there's more sashay in it than usual.) Daniel looks at JD. JD raises an eyebrow. "You heard the woman," JD says, and gets up to follow her back into the bedroom.

Daniel refuses to listen to his brand new Inner Twelve-Year-Old (other people get Blaupunkt stereos or top-of-the-line iPods; he gets his own personal Imp of the Perverse) offering him straight lines about the Weight Room (yes, they have one) or 'at least they changed the sheets' or not going in the water for half an hour after eating. He just makes sure that all three bowls are in the sink and rinsed, before following the other two down the primrose path to personal damnation. (For values of damnation involving large bowls of ice cream and afternoons full of sex; damnation apparently isn't what it was popularly supposed to be, but so few things are.)

Cammie is sitting on the edge of the bed when he arrives, with JD standing between her knees, between her thighs. They're kissing. He's never actually seen them do that before. JD is cupping Cammie's face with both his hands, and she has both of her hands on his hips, not to pull him close, just to hold him there. The kiss is long, and slow, and lazy: no urgency, no destination but the journey. Daniel pauses in the doorframe. Examines himself for jealousy: finds none. It's beautiful.

They're both his. He's theirs. And they're each others'. A conjugation of relationship that's formidably-complex, because each relationship is entirely different in everything (now, at last) but degree. It's a triangle, but in the best way, not the worst, because the implication of triangles is (has always been) that someone is left out (it's what's implied, after all, in the concept of the Eternal Triangle: a war that all three sides lose). And in this triangle, everyone is left in.

Better.

"You planning to stand over there all fucking day?" JD asks (without heat), a minute or so later. He's straightened up, but his thumb is still running over Cammie's lips.

"Considering the view I've got, I'd say yes," Daniel answers, leaning against the doorframe. (And he's understanding, now, a little more about what makes Cammie want to watch; he could, in fact, stand here for hours. He's a little sorry Cammie couldn't be there to see him and JD, earlier. But no. There'll be other times, and Cammie will know that first time had to be for them alone.)

"View's a lot better from over here, honeybaby," Cammie says, throaty and low. She holds out a hand to him. And Daniel smiles, and walks over to the bed.

One hand on JD's hip, one hand on Cammie's shoulder. And Daniel can feel Cammie's skin beneath his touch as he kisses JD, and she slides a hand over the small of his back, down to cup his ass, and he has never before truly known the meaning of the words 'an embarrassment of riches', but now he does. When he breaks it off -- to refocus his attention, to shift the apex of the triangle again -- Cammie's watching them both, her eyes lidded. Smiling.

"Now that's pretty," she murmurs, and JD laughs.

"Your own personal peep show," JD says. Puts a knee on the bed, then -- changing his mind, apparently, about where he's going -- lies down behind her, curled up around her, stroking the lines of her back as she leans back against him like he's the world's most smartass backrest. It leaves Cammie sitting, propped up on her hands, which are planted behind JD's back and thighs on the bed.

She looks up at Daniel, and there's love in her eyes, and fondness, but she's not -- quite -- smiling anymore. "Come kiss me, Daniel," she says, dark and inviting.

And he does. Her lips, first, and when he's dizzy and breathless with the taste (her, and Grand Marnier, and ice cream and chocolate and a dozen other wonderful things), he slides down to kneel on the floor, between her legs, and kisses her elsewhere.

Daniel loves this (doing this to her for her with her). And now it's all new. It's not just to-and-for-and-with Cammie now, but JD (too), and he's not sure what made it change (sea change, into something rich and strange), but he's bone-deep certain that it has. Salt-sweetness of woman, of Cammie; there's comfort in knowing how to please her, to lap and nuzzle and tease (and he's sure -- okay, fairly sure -- that she won't hit him, or not hard anyway, while his teeth are in such close proximity to all this delicate flesh; he can tease with impunity). He slides his hand up along her thigh (firmly; if he tickles her, she will smack him) and slides his fingers into her. (Cramped quarters; angle's a bitch; he supposes he should have done some undergraduate work in the back seats of cars to get ready for this sort of thing and the little voice in the back of his head will never die, will it? Probably not. There was probably some kind of nanotech in the ice cream. He puts nothing past JD.)

It's all worth it, though. Hearing Cammie's breathy sighs, and JD's saying something he can't quite make out. Knowing they're both involved in this is almost like Sex Squared. He really thinks they should come with a warning label.

And by the end of it, when he looks up, she's slithered half-off the bed, propping herself up with one heel on his thigh where he's kneeling before her. Her elbows are hooked around behind JD, and she's arched half-over him, pulling, tensing, swearing up and down and sideways. JD is propped up on one elbow, his other hand cupping one of Cammie's breasts, providing her a comforting presence of touch; JD's eyes are on his face, and Daniel flushes hot at the desire written there before he lowers his mouth to Cammie's sex once more.

"Fuck," Cammie finally says, limp and wrung-out.

"Again?" JD says. But it's not banter here, not their typical back-and-forth push-and-pull, as much verbal sparring as conversation; it's just a gentle tease, loving and affectionate. As Daniel watches, JD strokes his hand over her chest, down her belly, down to her thigh. Daniel lifts his own hand, rests it over JD's, as Cammie shudders with the last aftershocks of her pleasure.

"Up," JD says, after another moment or two, and Daniel has the enormous good sense to brace the heel of his hand at the edge of the mattress and lock everything as still as he can. Cammie pushes up off him, onto the bed, rolling over with an assortment of faint sighs and curses. His own ascent is less graceful (muscles still assuring him that he's got a desk job these days, thank you very much and hallelujah); he managed to stiffen up enough while kneeling on the floor to make getting up neither quick nor a thing of beauty. Up it is, though. (And speaking of 'up', though still more-or-less in the abstract, he'd been sure a couple of hours ago that he might not ever be able to have sex again in his lifetime. Now it doesn't seem to be out of the question. Possibly even before dinner.)

He stretches out on the bed beside Cammie. She's lying face-down, her head pillowed on her arms. JD is kneeling over her back (not touching her at all, except with his hands, sweeping over her shoulders and working his thumbs into her muscles). The sounds she's making are halfway between pleasure and pain (probably all pleasure, but they really do sound alike sometimes). She turns her face towards Daniel as he lies down. "Hi," she says, lazily.

"Hi, yourself," he answers, brushing her upper arm with the backs of his fingertips.

"Do you next if you want," JD says, jerking his chin to indicate his hands.

"C'n I watch?" Cammie says, her drawl thicker than usual. She groans deeper -- JD must have hit one of the knots that have taken up permanent residence.

JD pauses and focuses back on the spot that made her groan, redoubles his efforts. "Sure," he says. "If you can stay awake for more than thirty seconds after I'm done with this." (Not just that JD wants to relax her. Backrubs after sex are common, and he'd been surprised the first time he'd seen it, and now he knows it's to keep her muscles from stiffening up and rendering her up unto misery the next morning.)

"Yes," someone says, and when Daniel plays back his tape of the last few seconds, he realizes it was him. "Yeah. I want."

And JD looks up, startled in a way Daniel doesn't often see, because JD can tell: he doesn't mean yes, please, JD, I'd like you to rub my back next, and he doesn't even mean yes, please, JD, I'd like you to blow me. He's ... not sure what he means. All he knows is that he wants.

"C'n be damn sure I'll stay awake for that," Cammie says, her voice a little sharper, and JD coils down to kiss her on the shoulder.

He said it. He can't take it back. Doesn't want to, not really, but the prospect is both thrilling and frightening at once. And he could examine his motivations (fairness, reciprocity, curiosity, a desire to leap all the remaining hurdles in one fell swoop), but he doesn't. He just presses himself up against Cammie's generous body and watches JD work. It's actually quite lovely; he realizes he never gets tired of watching the way JD's ink changes and shifts on his skin (time, now, he supposes, to ask what it stands for; he knows there's meaning there). He actually finds himself struggling to stay awake. A combination of adrenaline crash, good sex, and a paralytic infusion of sugar. Also, it's warm, and he's comfortable. (JD and Cammie have the thermostat wars; Daniel simply hides behind Cammie, as her thermostat agrees more with his, though JD would make someone the perfect hot water bottle if he'd just stop trying to kill them all.)

He's actually dozing when JD strokes a hand down his chest and says, "Roll over."

Daniel does without question, reaching under himself absently to adjust himself more comfortably against the sheets before settling flat. JD straddles his hips. "Ain't gonna do yourself any good up there, Nielson," Cammie says slurrily, and JD answers "Fuck you, Mitchell," (honestly, it's like an antiphon: the litany of the First Church of Obscenity) as he sets the heel of his palm just behind Daniel's shoulder and bears his weight down gently. Daniel makes a faint plaintive noise, not quite a complaint.

"You are tight as a fucking board, Daniel," JD says.

"Virgin on prom night," Cammie clarifies.

"No, wait, they get them drunk first?" Daniel's asking, not quite awake, as JD wraps both his hands around Daniel's traps and squeezes. Apparently there is going to be a back rub. JD is muttering, in dark injured tones that indicate that Daniel is just trying to piss him off here, about muscle knots and years of damage and at least fucking Mitchell has a fucking excuse and the last JD heard nobody fucking dropped a fucking plane on Daniel's fucking head.

"You forgot 'fucking Daniel,'" Daniel points out.

"All things in their proper time," JD says, resting his forehead against the back of Daniel's skull for just a moment.

And yes. He knows what JD's doing. This is his third warning. Fair warning. If he wanted to panic and back out in one of a thousand moderately-tactful ways, this would be the time. He doesn't. He may panic, yes, and he's not sure what to expect (aside from, okay, the obvious: penetrative male intercourse, an equation that he's been on one side of today and is about to be on the other side of) and he has absolutely no idea of how to be good at it. He's pretty sure by now, though, that JD has a good idea of his precise level of experience (having been involved in approximately 99% of the same-sex milestones of Daniel's life.) And more to the point, the flexibility of his spine.

"Yeah, I'm not going to get anywhere further with that today without either drugs or high explosives," JD says after a few minutes more. (Daniel thinks he's selling himself short: if Nielson-Mitchell goes balls-up, JD can hire himself out tomorrow as a massage therapist.) "Let's move on to where I stick my fingers up your ass."

Cammie snorts. "So fucking romantic, Nielson."

"Yeah, I wondered if you were still awake," JD says. And Daniel might have (once upon a time) figured that having an audience for this would be the last thing he would have wanted (potential for disaster; potential for embarrassment). But no. He's glad she's there.

"Hold my hand, darling, I'm frightened," he says to Cammie (only ninety percent jest), and is rewarded with the sound of her laughter, deep and unfeigned.

JD swats him on the rear, then reaches around to cup his jaw: a quick caress. Then he's climbing off (to get the lube) and when he's back, he's kneeling between Daniel's thighs, pushing them apart with his knees. "Just relax," he says. "Pretend I'm your proctologist."

"Oh, my God," Daniel says, starting to laugh. "If my proctologist ever did what you're about --" He yelps. "Cold!"

"Lube's always cold," Cammie and JD say, in chorus. "And if you didn't think it was earlier," JD adds, "that's because you weren't getting it stuffed up your ass. Surprise."

"And people do this more than once?" Daniel demands, indignantly.

"There are compensations, trust me," JD says, and the sheer filthy promise in his voice makes Daniel's breath catch.

Then JD works a finger inside of him, and abruptly the moment is starkly, freakishly, anything-but-erotic. Or an intellectual bonding experience. Or anything but something Daniel just wants to go slink into a deep dark hole and hide from. He wants to relax, and he can't. He can't even grab control of his own mind and bludgeon it into submission. It isn't even panic. It's worse. Then Cammie hitches herself sideways, over until she's plastered against him, arm thrown across his shoulders, breasts pressing against his side.

"Goddamn good thing he never went to medical school," she whispers. "We'd'a starved."

He turns his head (face to face with her, so that their lips brush). "Out on the street in a cardboard box," he agrees. And he feels his body relax, and JD's finger slip in and out, rocking back and forth. Not even frightening.

By the time JD has worked (delicately and carefully) up to three fingers, Daniel has pretty much figured out that this (like so much of his new life) will be conducted to a musical score of JD and Cammie bickering (sample: "Why'n't you put your whole hand up there while you're at it, Nielson? You could take out his gall bladder, too." "Look, Mitchell, if you want to drive, here, just say the word.")

"Oh my god," Daniel moans, pressing his forehead against the sheets. "I'm going to die a virgin."

And it's actually starting to matter to him now. A combination of twitch and itch and ooh and curiosity and for God's sake would you please drop the other shoe already and oh, yeah: a prostate's for life, not just for Christmas, and apparently prostate exams can be fun. Who knew?

"Sure you are," JD says. "And I'm Marie of Rumania. Mitchell, you can play with Daniel later. Daniel, get up on your hands and knees. Simple and easy. Classics are classics for a reason, you know."

Daniel does as he's told (he's been following orders in this bed for a while, making things good and right for Cammie; learning how to please JD) and JD spreads his thighs wider than he'd set them himself, and then ... JD's pushing into him.

He'd expected it to hurt. He's thinking of deflowered virgins and all the anal sex jokes he's ever heard (where the punchline is always morning-after pain) and of course you can't spend years in a military culture without all those fun stories about lethal enemy sodomy. And of course he wasn't expecting this to end in hemorrhage, and death, but it's a first time, and you pay the piper, right?

But no. Pressure, yes, and fullness, and a momentary fluttering cramp in his abdomen (and JD knows it's there almost before Daniel's aware it's going to start, pressing his hand over Daniel's belly and rubbing in gentle soothing circles until it's gone). Nothing else. The relief is so great that he breathes out, all the way out, relief making him boneless. He lowers himself to his elbows. "You are such a moron," JD says, fondly.

"Can't all be rocket scientists like you," Cammie says tartly, and Daniel would like to say something appropriately witty here, but JD picks that moment to pull back and slide forward and Daniel is too busy trying to decide what the fuck just happened.

Intensity. Strangeness. Not unpleasant. Maybe pleasant. He doesn't fucking know. And Cammie grips his hand, and he holds hers tight, and JD has a hand on his hip, and his other hand stroking down the front of Daniel's thigh (gently, soothingly) and oh god, he's hard. Not JD. That's a given. Him. When JD's hand comes up to cup his dick, it feels like somebody's completed an electrical circuit somewhere. He tries to jerk forward, and back, and he feels the strange tingling sensation you get when all your capillaries engorge at once. (And thank God he does not need to be in the least articulate here: if any articulation is needed, Cammie can do the talking: he's sure she's got at least one working brain cell at the moment.)

Whatever JD gets from Cammie, it means he doesn't stop, and that's just as well, because if he did stop, Daniel would have to arrange to become verbal enough to threaten murder, and not only would that be damned difficult, he's not really in a good tactical position to kill anybody right now. His brain is skittering around half-a-dozen concepts like a squirrel at a Three Card Monte game (Good? Sex? Is this sex? Oh my god. What is this? I'm going to come.) and there isn't room for anything else. With a tiny fraction of his mind he's aware that Cammie's almost as turned-on as he is, and that just makes everything ... more so. He throws back his head, gasping for air.

"Yes, oh God come on fuck me you son of a bitch you caitiff whoreson oh God yes come on come on fuck me --"

JD growls -- guttural inarticulate sound of need and possession and desire - and thrusts, hard enough to jar him forward; Cammie laughs, breathless with passion, and presses her mouth against Daniel's hand.

He doesn't know what he says. He can hear his own voice; he can hear JD's; he can't process the language. Only (then, soon, close, here) when he wants to arch up and push back he can't, because JD is pressed against his back, hot sweat-slick powerful weight. So he sinks back again (JD plastered to his back, thrusting, breathing unimaginable filth in his ear; threats and vulgarities and vile promises) as the aftershocks of orgasm are wrung from him. (He's never moving again; he's sleeping, right here, on his knees, and not moving and for god's sake when he got up this morning he was straight. He's almost sure he was. Kind of.) He wants to touch JD, can't in this position, but JD's arms are around him and when JD comes Daniel feels it from the backs of his knees to the nape of his neck and then JD is a dead weight, panting.

He slinks down until he's lying flat, JD's skin still spread all over him. Cammie's hand is sweeping down Daniel's arm, back up again, slow and lazy and comforting, and having her here -- having her touching him, having her present -- is a comfort, and a blessing, and oh dear God where did all of this come from (the back of his head, he knows, where all his important decisions get made without him even being aware of it).

"Now, see," Cammie drawls, lazy and slow, her voice containing arousal without urgency, "that wasn't a bad job there, Nielson. Maybe we'll keep you."

"Fuck you, Mitchell," JD says -- Daniel is tempted to mouth it along with him -- as he rests his forehead between Daniel's shoulderblades, spent. "Maybe we'll decide if we're going to keep you."

"Can't get rid of me now," she sing-songs, "I own half the company," and Daniel can feel JD's laughter rumbling (transmitted through touch) even as the bed shifts and dips. A second later, there's the familiar halting shuffle of Cammie making her way across the room.

"She's getting a washcloth. Nice part of having an extra pair of hands at this point," JD says, in his ear, calm and reassuring and how many times have the two of them done this, anyway? He knows about the times with him, but -- He puts it aside. JD puts a hand on his hip, eases out slow and careful, follows it with a kiss pressed against his shoulder. "You okay in there? Got your English back yet?"

"Mmm," Daniel says.

"Take that as a no," JD says, and it's more than a touch smug.

Cammie is back in a minute or two, and there's some process in the back of his head keeping track of all the activity above him -- her tucking herself back in next to him, snuggled up close; JD rubbing a warm cloth over his skin and then sprawling out on the other side -- but it's too much trouble for him to really process or think about it. Lots to think about. Not now. Now is for basking.

"So pretty," Cammie says, softly, running her hand along his spine. "Baby mine. Love you. You just curl up and take a nap; we'll wake you for dinner."

"What's this 'we', white girl?" JD mutters, in Daniel's other ear -- punchline to an old joke, older than Daniel is, even, and long familiar.

"A'ight," Cammie says, "I, I'll wake you up, love you too, jackass, now hush."

"Hushing," JD says, but it's soft and blurry (and Daniel can't tell if it's his ears or JD's voice). "Love you too, bitch."

And with that, Daniel sleeps.

He wakes again to soft voices. Bodies shifting, on the bed beside him. He summits consciousness slowly; his body is telling him that today has been a day of so many firsts, several of which have left him sore. Not painfully so; more of a low ache. A reminder. Bridges crossed. Battles won.

It's pleasant. Warm -- someone pulled the covers around him while he was sleeping; probably Cammie, since JD generally sleeps bare to air and forgets that others don't -- and drowsy, and the people around him are safe and cherished (beloved), and he feels no pressing urge to open his eyes.

Then he climbs another layer, and he realizes he knows the noises he's hearing. Cammie's breathing, ragged and unvoiced, the hitch and catch of her climb to orgasm. JD's voice, not whispering, but nothing more than a bare low rumble; if he were any further away, Daniel wouldn't be able to hear it at all.

He can feel the mattress moving next to him, rhythmically. He opens his eyes. It's dim, but not dark (there's still a bit of light creeping through the windows; the floorboard lighting is at quarter-strength). Daniel is lying on his side. Cammie and JD are next to him. She's lying on her back, and JD is spread out over her, skin pressing skin, legs tangled together. Her head is thrown back; his face is pressed against her throat. Her hands are moving restlessly up and down his back.

JD is making love to her. They're making love to each other. Slow and careful, but not gentle; Daniel can see the ripple of muscles beneath JD's skin, the force with which he is moving against her. In her. As Daniel watches, listens, Cammie whimpers (and he knows that noise: right there and more please and a little bit of yes I know I'll pay for it later). "Shh," JD says, ragged and reassuring, and shifts his weight so he can reach that quarter-inch deeper.

She whimpers again. (Please, yes, harder.) JD slides his hands beneath her back, wrapping his arms around her more tightly; his hands curl up and over the backs of her shoulders. "Shh," he says again, leaning more of his weight on his forearms. Cammie has her legs wrapped around his, the heels of her feet planted on the bed where they wrap around JD's calves. She lets her face turn to the side (away from Daniel; fuzzily, still confused and half-awake, he wishes she'd turned towards him; he'd like to see her face). JD breathes out, sharply, and rests his lips against her shoulder.

There is no end to variety in the way two willing and creative people can make love (Daniel knows; some ways he and Cammie have tried alone, and some they've tried with JD there to be pillow and assistant, and some they'll never be able to at all). This is the most familiar. Kinsey called it the missionary position, a broad lumping-together of a hundred different variants, and it may be the punchline to a thousand crude jokes, but it's buried so deeply in human sexual conditioning. He hadn't expected to ever see this. He's seen the two of them touch each other (hands and mouths and fingers and lips), but never with such intent. It's beautiful.

It's astonishing.

Because of course Jack had made love to women (his wife, certainly; others almost definitely along the way; women Daniel may have known, may have known of, perhaps), but Daniel had thought JD had left it behind him. (With all the other pieces of Jack's life JD found too restrictive, all the other bindings JD had been created to escape.) And yet, this loving being played out before him is no lie, no pretense. JD gathers Cammie close, rocks against her, and she gasps and clutches at his shoulders. It could be benevolence, some gift to fill a need (physical, emotional) of Cammie's, leaving JD untouched and unmoved. It isn't. JD hasn't gone away somewhere inside his head, and he isn't conjuring images and memories of other bodies to enable his performance. He's watching Cammie's face now, and the expression on his own is written wide with love.

"God," Cammie gasps, shuddering with pleasure, a gentle swell of orgasm that ripples through her body like she can't tell where the line between coming and not-coming is. She turns her head back to JD, and he dips his head to kiss her. Light, and gentle; comfort and reassurance and care. She shivers again, and he gathers her even more closely as he makes love to her mouth, to her body, to her.

Seeing it, Daniel thinks (still half-asleep, still drowsing) that he will spend the rest of his life trying to fully understand, to negotiate the valleys and bridges between sexual desire, sexual preference, self-identity, and love. Because the two people he lives with (the two people he loves) have separated them and united them and separated them again, until firm distinctions grow fuzzy and fuzzy distinctions grow firm, and they've changed themselves and changed each other and changed him. (And is it so odd, that JD could override his sexual preference out of a desire to meet the needs of someone he loves, and mean it? Hasn't Daniel done the same?)

And so, as Cammie and JD move together, Daniel rolls closer, sliding his hand up JD's back (slick with sweat, and Daniel can feel the incredible tension there, the incredible control over muscle and weight and force) until he can grip Cammie's hand. She takes his, in iron grip (knew he was there; knew he was awake; they both did, but he doesn't know at what point they realized). "Baby," she says, one long shuddering moan, and he doesn't know which one of them she means, and he doesn't care.

JD turns his head. In the twilight haze of the room, his eyes are two dark pinpricks as he meets Daniel's gaze. JD breathes out, runs his hand down Cammie's side, slides it under her hip (gently, so gently), and rolls them both over.

Away from Daniel (the lines of Cammie's back, facing him now, are beautiful), but not apart from him. Cammie's fingers, twined with his, pull him along, and he presses up behind her. Kisses the curve of her shoulder, buries his nose in the hair at the nape of her neck. She shivers, and he can feel her coming again, the swell of her rear pushing back against him, the tiny shocks of JD's hip-thrusts turned into kinetic energy that is transformed by Cammie's flesh into waves that crash against Daniel. He finds the rhythm, rocks with them (almost as though he is making love to JD, JD is making love to him, through the agency and conduit of Cammie between; almost as though he is making love to Cammie despite his body being spent, by holding her fast against JD's strokes). "God," Cammie says, again, and this time it's prayer and plea and sob all at once.

Daniel squeezes Cammie's hand, once, and lets go. Runs his palm across JD's back again, over the knobs of vertebrae and ribs and muscle, past the point where JD's skin ends and the swell of Cammie's breast begins. Over Cammie's side, and down her back (over the scar tissue lurking there, ridged and awful and awe-full). He cups her rear, savors the shape of it in his hand, and then moves his hand lower. Lets his fingers form a V around JD's cock, feeling it slide back and forth against his touch. Cammie is so wet. JD makes a noise of desire, of yearning. Daniel closes his fingers a little more tightly, and JD's breath breaks on a gasp.

No words. They're past the need for them now. Daniel twists his wrist, snakes his fingers around, and it's awkward and cramped and more erotic than anything he could have ever imagined as he fits the curve between thumb and forefinger against the motion of JD's cock, rubs the pads of his fingers along Cammie's clit. And she bucks and shivers, and he gives voice to something that starts as an exhale and ends on a moan, and Daniel closes his eyes and kisses Cammie's skin and thinks that this is what he's been waiting for; this is where he belongs.

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