If there's one thing Cammie's known for a long time -- as long as she's loved JD, maybe as long as she's known him, maybe from the first moment he shoved his way into her apartment and her life and saved her from spiraling down into depression and despondency -- it's that JD has trust issues.

Big ones. Physical, mental, emotional; it had taken her weeks before he'd stopped shying away from every touch, months before he'd been willing to have a conversation more personal than surface-level inanities or screaming match over the right way to do things. Even after they'd started sharing a bed (her insistence; by then he'd bullied his way into helping her with her PT exercises every morning and her bath every night, and she'd said it was unfair to insist on confining him to the uncomfortable couch out of some sense of false modesty) he'd slept warily, edgy, coming awake at her slightest shift and move.

He's long since relegated her to the status of 'safe' in his mind. Safe in his space, safe in his orbit, safe in his emotions and his heart. He doesn't trust people, but he trusts her. And if that trust is made manifest in a hundred different ways that a stranger wouldn't recognize as trust, well, she does, and that's the important thing. He loves her, but the trust is independent from the love, and the trust is the more earth-shaking and humbling part.

In the darkness, as they undress and climb beneath the covers (strange, maybe, to wrap up around each other every night, naked and touching and intimate in so many ways without desire entering into the equation, but it's their strangeness), she can tell something's bothering him. Read it from his skin, read it from what he's not saying, read it from the way he huffs out his breath and drapes over her, resting his head on her shoulder. She rolls over a little, enough to get a hand free, and rests it on the back of his neck. Enough of a storm going on in there that she can practically feel it through his skull. "Go on, then," she says, quiet and soft encouragement.

"I want --" JD says, tense and controlled. Then stops himself.

She cards her fingers through his hair. "Just gotta say it," she says. She doesn't know what he wants, but whatever it is, she can't imagine not being moved to grant it. She loves him, whole and entire, by whatever set of definitions she can think of to use.

"I can't," he says, edgy and frustrated. With himself, not with her. And she's behind every single one of his walls and defenses, and she knows things about him that no other human, living or dead, ever has, but it doesn't mean it was ever easy.

So she doesn't look him in the eye (learned not to; queers her read on his reactions, sometimes, but there are things he can't say when he knows someone's watching him, things he can only say in the dark and in the middle of the night, and she'll put in the effort to make him feel safe enough to talk). She closes her eyes instead, knowing he'll sense the absence of her gaze, and says, "Then talk around it, and I'll guess."

He buries his face against her skin. Her angel lover, beautiful and unearthly, always so comfortably uncarnal until another presence enters into the equation. She's shared this bed with him for years, now, and she's shared some of his lovers with him and let him share some of hers, and a handful of times he's made love to her or she's made love to him. Both of them always knowing it was nothing more than comfortable friendship, not wanting so much as wanting-to-give. Wanting to meet the other's need, even in the absence of desire (he is aware that she is attractive even though he is not attracted to her; she is aware that he is beautiful even though he doesn't cue her, with words or with body-language, that he is a potential bed-partner).

He's carrying need tonight, and it's deep and wild.

The words, when they come, come in a hot rush. Fast. Fierce. Back-up-start-again, the way he always does. "Derek," he says. His latest in a string of part-time, low-impact lovers, friendly and casual and utterly forgettable. "Tonight. We were -- and he, I -- he wanted to, and I said that I would, because I wanted to, too -- then -- so much, and -- it just got -- I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to just -- let someone who's --"

Spent months, years, building up a translating dictionary, of what elisions stand for what and which circumlocutions signify which meanings. It's not too hard for her to piece it together now. Her baby boy (no baby, no boy, and she never forgets it, but it's easy to slip into the love-words) loves getting fucked, greedy and open and wanting, and he'd had that look in his eye when he'd slipped out the door earlier tonight, and he hadn't had the well-used swagger in his hips when he'd come back home. He doesn't pathologize sex, and he doesn't put it on a pedestal, either, but there are nights (no rhyme, no reason) when something (from his past, from his subconscious) rises up to bite him on the ass and he can't bear the touch of someone who doesn't know.

"Baby," she says, boundless compassion. He makes a tiny noise, frustration and irritation all wrapped up in relief. He hates it when she calls him that, but there are times when she can't not.

She rolls him over (gritting her teeth against the twinge in her hip, in her thigh, but they both ignore it for as long as they need to, when they need to, and now's a time) until he's lying on his back, her settled between his legs and draped over his chest. Needs to feel the weight, at a time like this. Needs (wants) to be held down, to be held safe, safely. She knows she's the only man or woman born who could do it right now without triggering him further, triggering those instincts he doesn't want anymore and doesn't want to have had in the first place.

It's a tragedy to have needs and wants that you can't satisfy, and it's a sin to know you could salve that need in another and not do it, out of fear of being awkward later. They're past awkward, the two of them. Have been for a while. And she's not what he wants, not entirely, not that way, but there's layers and layers of want in everyone, and love and sex and desire sometimes have nothing to do with each other.

So she bites his collarbone, right over the stories he's taught her how to read, and she says, "You tell me when to stop."

Another wordless noise, this one more relief than not. He closes his eyes. Tips his face all the way back, so if they slip open, he'll be looking at ceiling and not at her. No insult, not the way it might be from another. He isn't revolted by her touch; Jack O'Neill has slept with women, lived with and loved them. But he doesn't do it anymore, and it isn't out of disgust. His desires just lie elsewhere.

Hers, too. She's always loved sex, but these days partnered sex is complex and complicated, just to begin with, and good for at least another day of hurting after unless her partner is careful beyond all words. And he's beautiful, and she loves him, but she isn't attracted to people who aren't attracted to her (gay men, straight women), and while she doesn't feel like a pervert -- didn't even when his body looked eighteen; she's always been able to see through the skin he's wearing to the man behind it -- there's always been something ever-so-slightly wrong about his body language. Not enough to creep her out. Just enough to quiet whatever part of her hindbrain that governs attraction.

When they do this -- and they have, and they will again, and it's not always about his need; sometimes it's hers, sometimes it's shared -- neither one of them will hold it against the other: different images behind closed eyes, different names shaped by silent lips. Not pretense. Just safety.

She shifts her weight so she isn't pinching anything (his or hers), and licks at his skin. He's a puzzle to be solved, at a time like this: what can she do, to bring him comfort? Guessing wildly, half the time, but his body's not shy about telling her how to touch it, and right now it's saying please-want-yes. So she slides down his body, settling herself to be comfortable for the long haul, and she says (pitching her voice low, not a pretense at masculine, clearly herself but different), "You wanna reach me the lube, baby love?"

"Don't call me that," he says, but it's no more than a token protest, and he rolls over to rummage in the bedside table.

On his stomach when he rolls back, dragging the pilow down under his hips, which is communication as plain as if he'd spoken out loud -- maybe plainer. She picks up the bottle of lube and uncaps it, feeling it slide thick and cold over her fingertips. Curls up on her side, propping herself up on an elbow, over the back of his left thigh. Between his legs, perpendicular to his body, and he huffs and brings the other knee up so his right leg isn't draped over her uncomfortably. He wedges his ankle between her knees. She squeezes them, tightly, so he can feel her presence: a wordless I've got you.

The lube's cold -- lube's always cold -- and he hisses as she runs her slick fingers over the space behind his balls, follows the line up. "Fuck," he says -- punctuation, plea, order. She sets her teeth in her lip in concentration and slides a single finger inside him. He groans. His hips come back to meet her, even as his tension starts to melt away. Being touched, being tended, and she kisses the back of his thigh and adds another finger.

Odd, doing this. Her baby's a power bottom -- wants it, loves it, doesn't shy away from it. It only takes minutes before he's working himself back against her fingers, fucking himself as she fucks him, hard and slow and rough. His face is turned towards her, his cheek pressed against the pillow. As she watches, the upset on it evens out, piece by quiet piece, replaced by a growing build-up of pleasure.

It's not about the getting-fucked; if that's what he wanted, there are his-and-hers sex toys scattered in the drawers, and they're not shy of using them. She's seen him get fucked by men before, watched his face and his body through all permutations of pleasure, held him in her arms as he leaned back against her chest and given himself over to a man they'd brought home to share. It just settles him, having her touching him, having her present (in the room, in the house) when he's like this. Not always (or she presumes, else they'd be out spending more time looking for men who won't find their little arrangement odd; they're hard to find, especially here in Colorado Springs); not even often (most of the time when they pick someone up and bring him back home with them, it's in the service of mutual wickedness and lusty appetite). But the nights when he wanders into the bad places.

She can piece together this one. Gone out with his mind and his dick set on a nice long happy night, gotten partway to that goal and realized something -- unknown, unknowable -- had tripped his tripwires, made his excuses and gotten on home, but his glands hadn't gotten the memo and now he's just cranky. It's not that he's looking for sex to heal him; he's not that naive (some of his damage is unmendable and he's made plenty of inroads on the rest, hacking the inside of his brain with the same zealotry he hacks on whatever code they're building). He's just turned on and pissed off in equal measure, and she can help with the one and that'll help with the other.

Sex is almost always better with a partner. And even if that partner is somebody he's not necessarily attracted to, well, trust trumps attraction in JD's book any day.

So she frowns in concentration, and murmurs soft words (gonna make this good for you, baby, gonna fuck you good, just like you want it, you just let me fuck you) and rocks with him, thrusting three fingers in and out, enough force (he likes it rough) to make her biceps start burning. He claws at the sheets. Snarls, but it's not frustration, not anymore. Now it's just want, and she knows want.

She pushes herself up onto her arm, changing position to sit up fully (wince but -- just barely -- not a whimper, and she keeps them both from him, or else he'll feel guilty, and this is so not the time for another one of their arguments about what she should-and-shouldn't be doing) without breaking the rhythm she's found. "Come on, baby," she urges, nudging at the back of his thigh with her other hand. "Up on your knees for me --"

He's too far into enjoying himself to even form coherent sentences. (Smug sense of satisfaction: she might not be getting any real erotic zing out of what they're doing, but she is enjoying it too, and part of it is the knowledge that she can fucking wreck him -- in all the right ways -- when she wants to, just like he can do for her, and it's a weird life, but it's theirs.) He just pushes himself up on his knees, his face still buried in the pillow, his thighs spread wide before her. The arch of his back is lovely.

She rubs her left hand over the curve of his ass, partly to soothe and partly to dampen it with some of the lube they've got everywhere so she doesn't have to find where in the damn covers she left the fucking bottle. Then she gets herself up on her knees (ow, ow, ow, but he's worth it, he's worth it) and slides her fingers home, deep inside him, her thumb tucked down beneath his balls, pressing her hips up against the back of her hand so he can feel the force of her weight. Cramped and awkward, but it works. With her other hand, she reaches around his hip, palming his dick, stroking him tight and fast as she crooks the fingers of her other hand and rubs.

Only takes a minute; she's got the angle and she's got the rhythm, and it doesn't take long before he's shouting into the pillow and then sliding down boneless.

She slides her hand out from beneath him (noticing as she does that the fucker grabbed her pillow to put under his hips, and they are so trading before sleep time) and sinks back down onto her rear end instead of her knees, left hand stroking over his back, his ass, while she leaves the other where it is, motionless. "Yeah," he finally says, voice scratchy from the yelling but with the irritation gone. "You're good."

Good to move again, he means, and she bends to kiss his tailbone as he bears down and she slides her fingers out. "Right back, baby, don't you move," she says.

"Couldn't if I tried," he says, and she laughs softly and limps into the bathroom to wash her hands and grab a wet cloth for him.

He's moved just enough to shove his feet under the knot of covers kicked down to the foot of the bed; he doesn't move again when she climbs back in next to him, slow and careful, but he's watching her with slitted eyes. "Idiot," he opines. Meaning her, meaning for pushing herself when she was already hurting (he'd watched her like a hawk throughout the day; she'd had to practically kick him out for his meet-up with Derek, telling him she'd be fine on her own).

"Your idiot," she counters, stroking the washcloth over his skin, mopping up the sweat and the lube. "Roll yourself on over, Nielson."

Back to the familiar patterns of banter and nomenclature. He heaves a sigh (grand and theatrical) and flops over, extracting the pillow out from underneath him. "My idiot," he agrees, and takes the washcloth from her so he can clean the bits she couldn't reach while he was still lying on them. (On them on her pillow.) Then he sits up and drops it on the nightstand (never on the floor; things do not get put on the bedroom floor, not even for a few minutes, because the wrong footing at the wrong time and it's bang right down on her ass). "C'more, idiot," he says, and she squirms herself around until she can put her arms around him and rest her head on his shoulder.

"What hurts worst?" he finally says, and it's not what hurts (something always hurts, even on the good days), but what am I going to rub for you.

"Hip," she says. "Thigh."

Kisses the hollow of his throat, and he makes a noise (grumpy and irritated and loving) and pulls back. "You know the drill," he says.

She does; she settles herself down, lying on her side (and on his pillow; he makes a face as she makes the swap, apparently having been hoping she wouldn't notice) with her bad side up. He spoons up behind her, puts his hand (warm like fever, but that's just the way his skin runs) on the worst of the damage in her thigh. Presses his fingertips into the muscles, slow and gentle, coaxing them to ease.

"Thank you," he says, in her ear. Her influence, she knows; she'd taught him it was all right to say it.

With another man, it'd be her turn now whether she wanted it to be or not. She's put on more than a few Oscar-worthy performances after getting ambushed by chivalry when all she'd wanted to do was give a simple blowjob. Never with him, and not because he doesn't want to give her pleasure too (he does, and has, when it's what she wants of him) but because he's capable of grasping a fundamental of female biology that eludes most men: sometimes, she is just not in the goddamn mood to get off. He nestles up against her instead, his hand sweeping over her curve of thigh and hip, and yeah, sometimes a good massage is better than sex, because you don't have to move a muscle.

She's tired enough that it could be her who just got fucked through the mattress, and she can feel the sleep starting to settle in over her. But there's something she has to say first. "Love you," she murmurs.

"Love you too," he says (full of wonder, full of what-the-fuck). He picks up the covers with his toes, pulls them halfway up over them (showoff), pulls them the rest of the way in a more conventional fashion. She makes a sleepy noise of protest as he stops rubbing, but it only takes him a second to get the covers arranged to his satisfaction (covering her, mostly off of him) and return to his task.

This close, he's still quivering, vibrating with his own personal demons; once roused, they're difficult to soothe. She never tries. This isn't about that; she wouldn't be able to save him, even if saving was what he needed. It's not. All he needs is trust and comfort and being loved, and she's got that covered. He's hers, and she's his, and it's all good.

His hand slows. Stops. And he always knows what she's thinking, and he always knows when she's about to pitch over the edge into sleep, because he's letting her go; the pain soothed just enough, the sleep winning. He presses a kiss into her hair. "See you in the morning," he says, soft and quiet. And he'll be awake for a while longer, she knows that much, but not the whole night, and he'll stay right here until he does fall asleep instead of getting up and pacing or throwing things or going out for a run that takes him four hours and twenty miles from home.

Enough. Has been. Will be. For them both.

She falls asleep, listening to his breath in her ear, and in the morning, she feels fine.

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