The Amadeus Effect

~~~~~
Getting around base was proving to be an interesting challenge. Jack had no qualms about holding hands with Daniel, but he wasn’t naïve enough to believe they could get away with it here on base—even if they did have a legitimate excuse, sanctioned by General Hammond, no less. So instead, they walked shoulder to shoulder as if the hallways were closing in on them. They got a few odd looks, but they probably just chalked it up to SG-1 being their usual oddball selves. Being the SGC’s flagship team had its perks.

Using the washroom also proved to be an awkward experience. Again, not so much for Jack, who was used to living in close quarters with large groups of men. But for Daniel, who had always been shy about such things, the complete lack of privacy was already starting to get to him. Necessity forced them to stand side by side at the urinals, and Jack noticed with some amusement that Daniel kept taking surreptitious glances at him—literally sizing him up. He couldn’t help feeling a touch of pride that he was large enough to make Daniel blanch. Not that he would ever boast—oh, no, boasting was the last resort of the ill-equipped, as his father was fond of saying. Besides, it was clear that Daniel was freaked out enough already.

Oddly enough, Jack found that he wasn’t as freaked as he should have been at the idea of doing the nasty with Daniel. God knew he’d done far worse things for far less noble reasons in his lifetime. This was nothing. He figured that with just the right amount of alcohol and a strong mental image of Mary Steenburgen, he could get the job done.

Dinner passed mostly in silence with Jack occasionally attempting to draw Daniel into conversation with little success. They sat across from each other because Daniel claimed it would look odd for them to be sitting next to each other when they were the only ones at the table. Jack said he was being paranoid, but secretly he agreed. The less fuel they fed to the rumour-fire the better. So over dinner they’d had to make do with playing ‘footsie’ under the table whenever Daniel needed the contact—which was almost constant now.

By the end of the meal, Daniel had done more plate redecorating than actual eating, and Jack decided that he’d best rip that old band-aid off soon, or his archaeologist would waste away to nothing.

“After you,” said Jack, politely holding the door to their VIP suite open. Daniel slipped past him without even raising his eyes from the floor.

Jack sighed and shook his head as he followed the younger man into their shared quarters. A cot had been set up next to the standard-issue full-size bed native to military VIP suites and cheap-ass motel rooms everywhere. Of course, the bed was there for appearances only, and Jack silently thanked Fraiser for thinking to have it installed.

What worried him was the relieved look on Daniel’s face when he saw that there was a second bed. Surely he had to know that it was for show, Jack wondered. There was no way Daniel would survive the night that far away from him. Jack decided that now was the perfect time to get it over with—to put poor Daniel out of his misery.

“So…” said Jack, rocking up and down on the balls of his feet, his hands rubbing together enthusiastically.

“So?” Daniel asked miserably.

His years as a father had taught Jack that the true art of ripping a band-aid off was in creating a good distraction. “I’m bored with chess,” he said.

“Yeah,” Daniel replied.

“And card games,” Jack added.

“Mm,” Daniel agreed morosely. “We could always drag out the Monopoly board—Ow!” The ‘Ow’ was in response to being pounded across the back of his head with a pillow. “Jack!”

Daniel turned around only to receive a faceful of military-issue foam pillow. He grabbed onto it, yanking it out of Jack’s hands, but Jack was ready with a second pillow and used it without mercy.

“Jack, stop,” Daniel said, chuckling despite himself. This was the side of Jack he secretly loved—this was the sort of thing he’d missed growing up without an older brother. “Jack!” This time Daniel retaliated, getting in a good full-face swat before Jack could raise his defences.

It was totally silly, but Daniel had to admit that it was fun, and for a while he allowed himself to forget everything and let out some steam with a good pummelling of Jack’s head and shoulders. He was laughing—actually laughing—when Jack knocked him backwards onto the bed. He’d dropped his pillow and was busily defending his face from an onslaught of pillow strikes when he felt Jack’s hand working the fly of his pants.

“Jack!” he wheezed, still breathless from their play-fighting.

Jack’s hands abandoned the pillow altogether and were now both engaged in the task of divesting Daniel of his pants. “Jack!” Daniel gasped, squirming under his friend’s weight.

“Shh! It’s okay, Danny—just go with it,” said Jack, still focused on his goal. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped, his eyes widening as Jack’s intentions sank in. “Jack, stop! Stop!” Daniel begged, his voice thready and faltering as he kicked and shoved and bucked his way out of Jack’s grasp. “I said STOP!” he yelled frantically, pressing up against the headboard with his knees drawn up to his chin. His heart was thundering so fast in his chest that he honestly feared it might give out.

Jack backed away like he’d been scalded. Sure, he’d expected a little reluctance on Danny’s part, but the sheer terror in Daniel’s eyes—not to mention the near-hyperventilation—scared him a little.

“Danny? It’s okay,” said Jack soothingly. “Calm down.” He waited until it looked as though his friend had pulled himself back from the brink of an all-out panic attack before daring to get any closer. “Is this about the whole…guy on guy thing?” he asked uncomfortably. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m doing my own fair share of freaking on that one—but you gotta know I would never hurt you, right?”

Daniel shook his head, lifting watery, red-rimmed eyes to meet Jack’s. “It’s not that,” he mumbled.

“No? Then what—is this about Shau’ri?” Jack asked. “I think under the circumstances, she’ll understand.”

Daniel shook his head again. “No, it’s not that, either,” he managed to say.

“Okaaay…care to tell me what…”

“No lies,” Daniel blurted.

“Huh? What?”

Daniel swallowed hard, composing himself as best he could before fixing Jack with a steady gaze. “You remember that night on PIX 260? Remember the game we played with SG-2—‘No Secrets, No Lies’?” Jack nodded blankly, having no clue where this was headed. “Ten, Jack.”

“Ten what?”

“The answer to Griff’s question,” Daniel explained. “I was ten years old the first time I…uh…”

“Had sex?” Jack supplied, doing his best to mask his surprise.

Daniel nodded, his hands gripping his knees so hard that his knuckles looked like they were on the verge of popping out of his skin. “My foster-mother came home from work early one day and walked in on me when I was…you know…experimenting. She said that if I was old enough to do that, then I was old enough to start earning my keep, and she, uh…”

“Jesus, Daniel!” said Jack with a kind of hybrid sympathetic shock.

“Yeah,” Daniel replied shakily. “Two years later a social worker finally clued in and had me sent to another foster home, but…”

“God, Danny—I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well, no one does…did,” Daniel amended with a sick smile. “Jack…I’ve never…,” Daniel had to stop to swallow down the heavy lump in his throat. “I’ve never…been with anyone. Not voluntarily.”

“But…Shau’ri?” asked Jack softly, afraid he might accidentally say the wrong thing.

Daniel smiled a genuine, if somewhat sad, smile. “We were married before I knew what happened, remember? I couldn’t leave her—not without dishonouring her—so I stayed. And I loved her, I really did, but we never actually consummated the marriage.”

“So you’ve really never…?” Jack asked, his eyebrows rising in disbelief.

“I had a girlfriend once in college,” Daniel said. “She left me when she realised that I wasn’t just behaving like a gentleman.” Daniel could tell by Jack’s taut silence that he was uncomfortable with this, but Daniel had to get it all out. Jack had to know just how hard this whole situation was for him. “To be honest, I can’t even think of women that way. But I always had my books, and then I had the Stargate and you guys, and it didn’t matter so much. And things were actually starting to get better, there, until Hathor showed up.”

Jack winced. “You remember that?” he asked. Jack had remembered every sordid moment of his encounter with Hathor, but since none of the other guys had admitted to remembering anything he’d just assumed he was the only one who did.

“Oh yeah, I remember,” said Daniel. “I wish I didn’t,” he added with an involuntary shudder. He raised his solemn blue eyes and looked directly at Jack. “You’re my friend—the best friend I’ve ever had, Jack. No one has ever…no one has meant as much to me since my parents died. And I just can’t…God! I can’t do this! I can’t go through that again—not with you!”

The panic had crept back into Daniel’s eyes, and now Jack truly understood—Daniel considered this to be yet another rape. Jack reflected on how his ‘let’s get it over with’ approach must have looked from Daniel’s perspective and he cringed inside.

“Daniel, listen to me,” he said. “It isn’t like that. It won’t be like that, I promise.”

A stray tear spilled down Daniel’s cheek and he hastily wiped it away. “I’m scared, Jack,” he half-whispered, unable to stop his voice from shaking.

“I know,” Jack answered. He closed the gap between them and pulled Daniel into his arms, hoping it was the right move. Daniel fought him at first, but as Jack was just about to pull back, he suddenly latched onto him, clutching him as tightly as he could. Jack hugged him back almost as tightly, burying his face in the other man’s longer hair.

It took a while, but eventually Daniel calmed down enough to release Jack from his death grip. He straightened Jack’s shirt where he’d bunched it up in his fists and chanced a brief glance at his friend. “Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be,” Jack replied, straightening Daniel out in return. “Is that why you offered to leave and go to Abydos?”

Daniel glanced away, even as he nodded.

“So you’d rather go mad with pain and kill yourself than sleep with me?” Jack teased.

Daniel’s horrified eyes snapped up and locked onto Jack’s. “God, no! Jack, that’s not what I meant at all! I didn’t want you to have to…you shouldn’t have to have that on your conscience. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Jack sighed—Daniel just didn’t get it. “So it would be more fair for me to have your suffering and death on my conscience? Ah-ah!” he said, forestalling the argument he saw percolating behind Daniel’s eyes. “Like it or not, I’d feel responsible—you know that.”

Daniel stewed a moment in frustration before grudgingly agreeing. “I guess.”

“Good. So we agree then? No more talk of fleeing to distant parts of the galaxy?” Daniel nodded glumly. “And we both agree that we have no other choice but to do this?” Jack asked.

Daniel didn’t answer, preferring to look at his own hands instead of at Jack. But Jack wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy, and he snuck a finger under his friend’s chin, tipping his head up so they were eye to eye.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re gonna do it right, Danny,” Jack said quietly. “We’ll go slow, ease into it, and I promise we won’t do anything until you’re ready.”

Daniel nodded hesitantly; he felt he had to protest, even though Jack was doing everything he could to make this easier on him. “What about SG-1?”

“Carter and Teal’c can join another team for now, or Hammond can assign temporary replacements for us,” Jack answered smoothly.

“Then what about you, Jack?” Daniel asked, desperate to find some flaw in Jack’s argument. “I can’t ask you to give up ‘gate travel while you’re waiting for me to…to… What if I can’t? What if it takes me too long? You could lose your job.”

“First of all, both our jobs are safe—Hammond will see to that. And second of all, I absolutely refuse to make this any harder on you than it already is. If it takes a year until you’re okay with it, then it takes a year—I’m in it for the long haul.”

Daniel blinked rapidly to dispel the sudden misting-over of his eyes. He could feel himself starting to relax, his hands slowly losing their grip on his knees, his muscles releasing their tension. He realised that he trusted Jack implicitly—he trusted him with his life, why should this be any different. Now if it had been Teal’c—or worse, Sam—he’d probably have fallen apart by now.

“You okay?” asked Jack.

“I’m getting there,” Daniel answered truthfully.

“Well I don’t know about you, but I’m drained. Bedtime?”

“Mm,” Daniel agreed.

“First dibs on the bathroom,” said Jack as he slipped off the bed.

“Jack!”

“What?”

“Wait up,” said Daniel, and with an embarrassed blush he got off the bed and took hold of Jack’s hand.

“This could be fun,” Jack said.

Daniel groaned, but felt more at ease—somehow, if Jack could still make jokes he knew everything would be okay. Jack’s quirky sense of humour had seen him through many seemingly impossible situations. It’s what would keep him sane through this one.

~~~~~

To Jack’s amazement, Daniel didn’t make a fuss about sharing a bed. It was a testament to the amount of faith the younger man had in him, and he knew it was a lot to live up to.

Halfway through the night Jack awoke to the sound of muffled whimpering and rolled over to see Daniel twitching and fussing in his sleep. Jack reached over, but instead of settling his hand on Daniel’s arm as he’d intended, he tentatively brushed his fingers over the sleeping man’s cheek and jaw line. He could feel the prickly new growth of stubble under his fingertips and he allowed himself to wonder what it might feel like beneath his lips. To his surprise, he didn’t find the idea in the least bit distasteful. No—‘curious’ was a better word to describe his reaction.

As Daniel relaxed under the ministrations of his stroking fingers, Jack found himself questioning his own sexuality for the first time since high school. He felt he should be more disturbed by his current situation with Daniel than he was. It shouldn’t be so easy to accept that he was essentially about to embark on a homosexual relationship with his best friend—even if it was only a temporary arrangement. He should feel repulsed, or at the very least, uneasy.

But this was Daniel.

Daniel was Daniel—he wasn’t the same as other guys. Daniel was…beautiful. Inside and out, there was no better word to describe him. Maybe, Jack rationalised, that was why it wasn’t so hard to imagine what it would be like to run his fingers through his hair or kiss those lips.

Now, if it had been Teal’c—or worse, Ferretti…Jack shuddered at the thought. Nope—Jack could honestly say that he wasn’t interested in men in general. Daniel was special, that was all there was to it, and Jack would do everything in his power to make this as bearable as possible for his special young friend.

In his sleep, Daniel rolled onto his back, his arm flopping bonelessly against Jack’s ribs. Jack smiled and wrapped his own arm around Daniel’s. Deep in the pit of his stomach he felt the first stirrings of desire, and he let it wash over him. Yeah. He could do this—and he wouldn’t need a mental image of Mary Steenburgen, either.