Daniel awakens slowly, his eyes squinting as the morning light streams through the window above the bed.

Not his bed.

He turns onto his back, stretching his sleep-weary muscles of their stiffness but hits something warm and soft that groans in exhausted protest. Striking blue eyes meet an embracing brown, and a silence falls for a long moment.

"Sorry," Daniel finally breathes, giving the other man a weak smile before sitting up and pushing himself to the edge of the bed, where he finds his jeans and blue T-shirt.

The one that Jack bought for him.

The one that the colonel had thought brought out his eyes.

"Don't be," Jack sighs, sinking lower into his nearly flat pillow and watching as the younger man gets himself dressed. "You're always gone when I wake up in the morning."

"Yea," Daniel whispers with a nod, not daring to look at him. His hands begin to shake, and he is forced to shove them into his pockets while he stands under the scrutinizing glare of his secret lover.

"I figured you wouldn't want to see me in the morning," the archaeologist explains, causing Jack to sit up, his form surrounded by the thin, white sheet lining his bed.

"Why would you figure that?" he asks quietly, cocking his head curiously.

"Don't ask, don't tell," Daniel shrugs, still unable to look the colonel in the eye. "It's better that way. You can forget . . . if I'm gone."

"What makes you think I want to forget?"

Jack smoothly and effortlessly lifts himself off of the bed and walks temptingly around it towards the younger man.

"Why wouldn't you?" Daniel counters, allowing a fleeting glance towards the brown orbs that had hooked him the first time they had met.

Those soft, chocolate eyes. They hold so much in them that the colonel cannot show to the outside world. Fear. Pain. Guilt. Hollowness.

Daniel knows those eyes so well, now. So well, in fact, that it scares him.

What happens when those eyes that hide so much, suddenly, become dull? When they do not see Daniel in the way that they do now?

When they no longer look at him with such a deep sense of love that the young archaeologist has never before in his life felt from anyone?

"What will happen?"

"What?" Jack asks, confused by the sudden question.

Daniel jumps, unaware that he had spoken the question aloud but unable to drop it now that Jack had heard his inner thoughts.

"What happens when this is over? When you find someone new? When I'm no longer of worth to you?"

"Daniel, what the hell are you talking about?" Jack gently latches his hands onto Daniel's shoulders, staring deeply into the confused, blue eyes that lead directly to the archaeologist's soul.

He loves those eyes with all his heart. If only Daniel could see that.

"I leave in the morning because you never ask me to stay," the younger man says almost dazedly, as if thinking something entirely different. "You never say a word to me outside of this bedroom about it, and I go, thinking that this is all that we are . . . A bed and a night together."

Jack's face takes a look of genuine hurt.

"How can you say that, Danny?"

"Don't call me that, Jack," Daniel whispers, his voice trembling as tears spring to his eyes. "Please, don't call me that."

The colonel's eyebrows knit together as he contemplates what could possibly have started this abnormal conversation, and then a realization hits him tenfold in the face.

"Stay," he says softly, causing the archaeologist to stop breathing for a moment.

"Wh-What?" Daniel stutters breathlessly, thinking that he clearly must be hearing things.

"Stay, Danny," Jack repeats firmly. "I want you to stay. I want you here with me. No one else . . . I want you."

Daniel stands perfectly still for a long while, so still that Jack has to shake him to regain his attention.

"I . . . I don't understand," he says softly, once his voice returns to his throat.

Jack gives one of his famous Irish grins, and gently slides his fingers under Daniel's shirt, massaging the soft skin underneath.

"You, me, and bed, Danny," he chuckles, pushing the shirt over the younger man's head and pulling him close so that they are body to body, skin to skin. "What's not to understand?"

Daniel stares curiously into those deep, brown eyes that seem to change every now and again. When they had met, they had seemed so cold, so lost and lonely.

The emotion emitting from them now is neither lonesome nor lost. It is not pain. It is not guilt. It is not fear. It is not any of these things.

It is trust. It is loyalty.

It is love.

And for the first time since they had met, Daniel smiles one of his own famous grins, one that has not been seen for quite some time. One that Jack likes very much.

"I'd like that," the archaeologist nods slightly, looking away from Jack's gaze as his cheeks turn a soft pink. "I'd like that very much."

Jack takes Daniel's chin between his forefinger and his thumb, tilting it upward until they are eye-to-eye once again.

"So would I," he whispers, pulling the younger man into a gentle, soothing kiss before leading him back to bed.

AN: Questions? Comments? Vague disregard to any or all words written and established in the mind of one who has no sanity?

Haza! I liked the poem so much that I decided to turn it into a story. Bwa Ha Ha! The cleverness of me! . . . No, not really. I hope you liked!