Two Men That Light and Shadow Made

by raedbard

SLASH: Remade by experience into something he doesn't remember, postdescension Daniel seeks out a version of Jack who's static and a little bit broken, and waiting to be picked up.

Title: Two Men That Light and Shadow Made
Author: Raedbard
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Rating: PG-13, R?
Characters: Jack. Daniel. Jack and Daniel. JackslashDaniel. squee
Timeline: Post-'Abyss' and post-'Fallen/Homecoming'
Summary: Remade by experience into something he doesn't remember, post-descension Daniel seeks out a version of Jack who's static and a little bit broken, and waiting to be picked up.

TWO MEN THAT LIGHT AND SHADOW MADE

There is no hope in forgetful descension, but he tries to find it in his efforts to remake this man he cannot remember, tricking the light into reflecting back that image of himself.

Daniel walks around the base at night, barefoot and shivering from toes to thighs, his hands made thin in the cold. He never meets anyone he remembers, although that's not saying much of course. He sees only the guards, silent and stone-faced yet not unkind. If he smiles first they always acknowledge him, though in a way which makes this iteration of the man called Daniel Jackson wonder what mixed feelings there had been in that base towards his old self.

Though he has started to remember, in fragments and slivers and tastes on his tongue, he does not recognise; he knows that he cannot slip back into being as that other man. Death sharpened him and now he understands his world differently; without qualification on a bigger stage with fewer players. Need lessened, days seem shorter, words are shifting their semantics and his muscles are begging for use. He goes out to find and claim, no permission need be sought. The power in touch and feeling is threatening to explode out from him, so long kept back and confined to watching and he could never be content at just that, not in either self.

He cannot cry out to the bright light of morning, cannot even see its progression in the sky for all the weight of the dark place, pressing down on his eyes.

Jack had, in the time after, spent a lot of time fishing. As soon as he had a grudging word of release from the doctor's lips and saw the answering nod from the General, he was gone and into the open air. They had followed with a few messages and awkward phonecalls to make sure he remembered that one good rule: take as long as you need. And he had. He could not stand to be in the base, after, beneath its floors and the dark earth. Walls had been too close at any distance and elevators a minor hell, smelling of copper and, deeper down, of the ozone which comes off the Stargate. And he could not stand the people and their tender glances and longed for clear air and still water in a pond without fish.

He had stopped even the shallow pretence of actually fishing on the second day of his leave. The swish-plunk of line and hook into the body of the water had sounded, to his recovering ears, too much like the swift release of knife from fingers and the whisper of acid searing flesh. He had preferred instead to watch the flies and water boatmen go about their too short lives, wishing he could accept his own brief allotment of re-gifted time with such vigour. And sometimes, though not very often, he had thought about Daniel.

There are difficult questions after Daniel comes back, and it is these that allow Jack, in annoyance-tinged slips into forgetfulness, to believe that his friend has come home. These same words, glib and masculine in their gift for circumlocution, give Daniel flashes into memories shared and show him, in contrasts, what he is, or was.

"How long were we friends?"

"Coupla years now, seven, eight? Not so hot on the math here."

"Friends?"

"Yes, Daniel. Just close, weird friends with practically nothing in common."

Daniel chuckles, "But it works."

"I guess. When you manage to not royally piss me off."

"And I did that a lot?"

Jack's face stays immobile, his eyes dark, "Yeah, quite a lot."

"Made you angry? Asked you a lot of leading questions?"

"Getting to a point here, Daniel?"

Daniel shrugs, the beginnings of a smirk curling his mouth at its edges. "Nah, not really."

One night in his walking, Daniel sees someone he does recognise. Jack's shoulders, which lead his easy and almost cartoon gait, disappear around a corner just in front of him, down into one of the base's indistinguishable corridors. Daniel frowns, just slightly - enough to crease the new-old skin of his forehead - and follows, so that he might watch.

He has noticed, though he never goes in for more than a cup of coffee, that even at midnight the commissary keeps a skeleton staff, ready to dole out limited portions of the uninspiring military food which Daniel, his taste recall as yet imperfect, hopes is not all he has eaten for the last six years. He smiles when he sees Jack turn and slip through the canteen's double doors and wonders how many of the kitchen's prodigious stock of donuts will be missing when he's done. But tonight, donuts or no, is as good a time as any to do a little hunting and his body, sleek and wanting, urges him on.

"Hey, Jack. You spare one of those?" Daniel asks, by way of greeting, picking the uppermost donut (one of five) off the plate in front of his friend.

"Hey!"

"Oh c'mon - it's a donut mountain."

"Well, make your own. What're you doing up anyway?"

"Habit. You?"

"Bored. Needed the sugar rush."

Daniel smiles, "Figures."

"So, you do this often - wandering around the base barefoot, yes I noticed, at midnight? Got something you wanna tell me?"

"There used to be a point to it, now it's just habit. That, and I've read all my books, so..."

Jack rolls his eyes, "Of course."

"Well I had kinda seen them all before."

"You really need to get out more, Daniel."

Daniel shrugs and raises both his hands to gesture at the room around them, "Hey, small steps."

"Not this small."

"Bigger steps?"

"Uh huh."

"Direction?" he asks, smiling without even a pretence at innocence.

"I don't know, Daniel, I'm not a one man geek-rehabilitation programme!"

"Trying to change me?"

"No. I can't change you, waste of time. Learnt that in the first five minutes."

"I don't think I'm him you know."

"Huh?"

"Daniel. At least, not the one from before."

"Sure you are - Daniel Jackson, clear as day."

"No, I don't think so. I don't remember how I changed, and maybe that how it's so clear, but I'm not that guy you knew."

Jack stares at him for a second, impassive. Then, "Well, you sound just like him."

Daniel laughs, making deep the lines around his eyes. "Maybe. I guess we'll see."

"I guess."

Daniel smiles, holding Jack's dark, confused gaze for a long moment. "Walk?"

"Walk."

They move close, one in barefoot blue, the other booted green, both mute for the moment. They are not thinking about each other but of sickening drops into cruel gravity: one into a dark place flooded with golden light and the other into blank fields filled with a naked cold. It is Daniel's door they've reached when they both look up.

Daniel opens his door and strolls in without a glance behind him, appreciating the change from cold floor tile to rough carpet. When he does turn, leisurely, he sees Jack stuck in the doorway, his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets.

"Are you coming in?"

"Don't know."

"Well, you're letting in a draught."

"Oh, for cryin' out loud."

Daniel smiles, "Now that I do remember."

"I'm glad!"

"Shut the door Jack, out or in."

"Okay, Jackson. I'm in."

Now Daniel really smiles, broad. The halflight picks out creases and facets, shining reflections of roundness in cheek and chin and the curve of his glasses. Jack knows his own face never opens so boldly nor promises so much, so he stretches out a hand and uses gestures he knows how to speak with.

Silent, a hunter lays claim to the prize the prey offered. Jack tilts his head up and away, exposing his neck to Daniel's tongue and throwing up his gaze to the dark ceiling. He closes his eyes and fills up the darkness with textures and sounds: Daniel's short soft hair between his fingers and the tiny moan of wet enjoyment that hums against the base of his throat, and then he is lost...

There is a shock which shatters through Daniel's gut when the little answering whimpers sound out from Jack's mouth. His fingers reach and pull that face down to his own and, open, he fills his mouth with Jack's sounds. There's an ohgoddaniel which he can just make out, slick and elided, escaping from between his lips, lost to the ceiling. He doesn't quite know what he's doing yet, but trusts that it will keep pouring out, guided by instinct and the heavy smell of lust.

Denying his mouth for just a few seconds, finally clued-in to just how oral he really is, Daniel thrusts his fingers down and behind Jack's zipper, forcing it down with his wrists and scraping at warm bony chest through thin t-shirt with his fingernails. He's pushing now - towards the bed and resolution, a previously unrecognised desire pulling him on. Daniel's too impatient to worry too much that Jack's been thrown off-balance now and has clenched his fingers in the bedclothes for purchase, Daniel's really too busy with rolling up Jack's t-shirt and tasting the flesh underneath. His world is all in tan and grey now, and softening skin and insistent heat.

But Jack's fingers stop him, sudden and hard, pressing at either side of his head, making him look up. Through un-focussing eyes he sees Jack grit his teeth and pull him over onto the bed he was drifting away from.

"What?" he manages, enunciating poorly.

"Don't I get any say here?"

"No."

"Daniel, if we're going to...fuck, or whatever, we're gonna do it properly."

Daniel raises an eyebrow, "You have big ideas on what 'properly' entails here?"

"Well you could at least let me, y'know...join in too. I feel like a girl, here."

"Wasn't stopping you," Daniel says.

"Yeah, Hurricane Jackson, stop me and get some."

"Could you just get on with it?"

"Hey, you're young - we'll manage. Get over here."

Light dissolves into shadows and glances, twists of the head to mean there and yes and now. Daniel finds time to note amid the narrowing of his senses that Jack is, as expected, tactile rather than oral, fingers lingering and poking and climbing down. He finds himself stripped with military speed then lingered over, savoured in the half light. Jack is heavy for such a light-seeming man so Daniel nudges him onto his side, then surges up against him, with one hand urging the other's thin thighs apart. Then down, deep and into darkness and heat.

They're mouth to mouth as they come, again absorbing each other's sounds and trapping them close between the friction of two frenetic bodies. And in release and mess and exhaustion, the shadows draw Daniel's grin and Jack's, open and light and free, and new.