TITLE: Never Going to Go
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: July 17, 2004
SUMMARY: There are many ways to speak.
NOTES: Takes place within the Atlantis premiere. A snippet of something fostered by others' somethings.
DISCLAIMER: Read




"You didn't really want to go."

Daniel looks up from his second boot with a frown, distracted but not confused. "Maybe I did. Maybe I still do."

"Okay." Jack kneels and reaches out to close his fingers around Daniel's, trapping the stubborn knot. When Daniel raises a questioning eyebrow, Jack turns their hands, twisting their fingers and tugging, and the lace slides free, allowing Jack to move them to together pull it loose along the length of Daniel's foot. "'Want' was the wrong word," he says. Daniel forces himself back to the words, away from the vulnerability brought on by the simple task their entwined fingers are performing, and swallows the need to contradict. "But you weren't serious about going." Jack sounds positive of that. He finally releases Daniel and takes a good two-handed grip on the leather.

Taking a new deep breath, eyes narrowed, Daniel watches silently as Jack braces his knee against the bed and draws the boot off. Then he raises his chin and his own hands to emphasize the breadth of the possibilities. "Think about it, about what I could learn just being there, what I could understand that others wouldn't, because she--"

Jack drops the boot and levers himself up to sit on the bed and pull Daniel around toward him, the sheets rucking up as Daniel is almost forced up on his knees over him. His palms are warm bracketing Daniel's jaw, familiar calluses faintly tickling the sensitive edges of Daniel's ears. "Let's try this again. You weren't going."

Holding himself still between Jack's hands isn't difficult, not with that look darkening Jack's eyes: serious and just hard enough to be a dare for Daniel to say otherwise. "I know," Daniel says, brushing a hand across Jack's forehead, reassured again by the lack of any new creases put there by the last few weeks. "So do you."

"Yeah."

Jack's face doesn't soften with his slow smile, not this one, the one that only curves his lips at the very last moment. Daniel still has to respond to it; he always has. But...

"They'd better find that power source soon," he says against Jack's mouth, where he finds the surprising taste of toothpaste, a layer of fresh mint on Jack's tongue smoothing over the harsh coffee they'd downed after watching wave after wave go through the gate.

One of Jack's hands slides up through Daniel's hair, rubbing into the crown of his head before Jack tugs them apart just far enough for air and the deep, rough order, "Play with the toys you've got."

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