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“So, are we drinking or what?” Jack asks, Friday night, two hours after they should’ve all clocked off. No urgent cases open, the office drifting quiet, the hum of the night shift getting settled in covering the phones and the newsfeeds.
“Friday night is date night,” Daniel replies without looking up. “Peg’s got her slightly higher heels on.”
He’s got a slash of green highlighter pen on one cheek, printouts of phone records scattered across his desk. He unwound his tie at about four o’clock, a couple of buttons undone on his shirt, like a push or two could rumple him. Jack looks away almost too fast, turns to where Peggy is, indeed, mostly packed up for the day, tapping one foot, encased in crimson leather and a stiletto point.
“You sure?” he asks her anyway.
“Hmmm.” Peggy taps a finger to her chin in pretend thought. “Spend the evening with my wonderful girlfriend, or watch you two try to acquire hangovers that you can lug around here tomorrow. I must say, gentlemen, the competition is quite stiff.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack says, rolling his eyes. “Do we still get friendship drinking privileges if you and Angie aren’t there?”
Peggy is checking her lipstick by now, regardless of the fact Jack has never seen her make-up as anything other than pristine, no matter what time of day or night it is. “Depends who’s working,” she replies, distracted.
“Hope, Pepper, Bobbi and Daisy,” Daniel provides. Jack raises an eyebrow. “I saw this conversation coming,” Daniel clarifies, “so I texted Angie an hour ago. Don’t look so shocked, we do this every Friday.”
He’s not wrong, though some Fridays Peggy comes with them, the three of them forming a strange little triangle of coworkers who are friends of some degree or another; Rose calls them a clique, though her eyes dance when she does. Some days they all hate each other, snapping and sniping, and other days it’s like their investigations move at the speed of light, reading each other’s half-sentences and silences better than other people manage full conversations. Some days Jack remembers how much he does and doesn’t know about his colleagues, who he spends more time around than anyone else in his life.
“Huh,” Jack says, mostly to himself, as Peggy gets her stuff together and fluffs her hair a little before she pauses at the door.
“Don’t stay up too late, boys,” she says, and then swishes her way out; Jack hears her pause to greet Rose and Violet at the front desk, the three of them giggling over something he’ll never understand.
They sit in silence for a long moment, while Jack considers his options, and then he tips his head toward Daniel, who’s still diligently alternating between tapping his pen against his lower lip and highlighting potentially incriminating phone numbers.
“You gonna do that shit all night?” he asks.
Daniel darts him a look through his eyelashes, that jolt in Jack’s stomach something he’s gotten used to, it’s background noise now, and he says: “maybe.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “I bet you were the sort of kid who asked for extra homework.”
“I’m guessing you never went to class, given your appalling grammar in reports,” Daniel replies easily.
“That’s what I have you and Carter for,” Jack says, waving a hand. “C’mon, I’ll buy the first round and you can tell me about math club and the awkward girl who was hella good at algebra and let you put her hand up her shirt after a mathlete competition.”
Daniel narrows his eyes. “That’s… specific.”
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Jack challenges.
Daniel huffs, but he recaps the pen, so Jack counts it as a victory.
“For the record,” he says, as he grabs his coat, “I have no interest in whichever cheerleader you were dating in high school, or in her older sister.”
Jack smacks his chest. “Dammit, Sousa, I’m wounded.”
It was actually her older brother, but he keeps that fact to himself, saying goodnight to Rose and Violet on the way past. Their eyes are too knowing, and Jack pretends not to understand.
-
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Bobbi says dryly. “And Daniel, hi!”
“Ha,” Jack says flatly, as Bobbi laughs.
“We thought we’d see you tonight,” Hope says, reaching for Jack’s favourite brand of bourbon.
“Angie sent us a lot of emojis which we were pretty sure represented you guys,” Bobbi clarifies. “The usual, Daniel?”
“Thanks,” Daniel says, leaning against the bar. He can get on a barstool if he wants, but he looks a little ungainly doing it, and Jack knows he doesn’t like exposing himself like that in public.
A thought occurs to Jack. “Since Angie only communicates in emojis, how did she tell you who’s working tonight?”
“I speak Angie by now,” Daniel explains, fishing his phone out of his pocket and handing it over to Jack with Angie’s message pulled up on the screen.
“Blonde queen, laptop, stiletto, bee,” Jack reads.
“Bobbi, Daisy, Pepper, Hope,” Daniel translates.
“They don’t have a wasp emoji,” Bobbi explains, muddling a mojito for Daniel.
“It’s an old nickname,” Hope cuts in, “don’t ask.”
Hope is brusque and efficient in a way that’s second only to maybe Pepper, but she seems even more brusque and efficient tonight; Daniel raises an eyebrow.
“I’m having a week,” Hope explains, all but slams down Jack’s drink, and stalks off down the other end of the bar.
“Her ex is in town,” Bobbi says, because the bartenders here are endless gossips, “and her BFF just got out of prison and has moved onto her couch.”
“That is a week,” Jack agrees, sipping his drink, enjoying the warm burn after a long day.
“How’s the husband?” Daniel asks Bobbi, accepting his mojito.
Bobbi’s response is merely a flat blink.
“I haven’t worked out if she’s married today or not,” Daisy cuts in, ducking past Bobbi to grab martini glasses. “It used to be on days with a ‘t’ in them but they changed the rules again.”
“Hunter is fine,” Bobbi says, elbowing Daisy.
“It’s never a good sign when she’s calling him ‘Hunter’,” Daisy says, scrunching up her nose at Bobbi’s scowl and carrying the martini glasses back to where Pepper’s busy with a cocktail shaker.
This is Peggy’s world more than theirs; the bartenders are her girlfriend’s friends and colleagues, not theirs. In many ways, despite her secrets, Peggy’s the most open of all of them. Jack knows far more about her dating successes and failures than he does about Daniel’s, and he knows he never talks more than vaguely about his periodic hook-ups. But they drink here regularly now, with a decent discount thanks to Peggy, and somehow this has become slightly more than just a bar with interchangeable staff and décor he doesn’t notice, like the places Jack meets his college friends, where it’s more important to get blind drunk and maybe to be the last one under the table.
“Want to find a table?” he offers; the bar’s getting busier, it being a Friday night, but there’s room enough for them to find a table that isn’t too near the group with party hats or what looks like a truly awkward night out for maybe estate agents. The Automat isn’t all that well-known, but it’s popular enough that the place is never less than half-full at any given time.
Daniel settles into his seat, shrugging out of his jacket, and Jack sips his drink again, icecubes clinking against the glass, reminding himself as he often has to to keep his eyes to himself.
It could be easier, if Jack were easier on himself, if he hadn’t grown up with a father sliding happily in and out of influential people’s pockets and very clear on what he thought constituted a scandal, if he hadn’t spent his formative years in sports teams and frat houses whose lines looked blurred from time to time but which really weren’t. These days Jack lives for himself and not for other people, and he’s not unhappy or ashamed in the way that he used to be, but neither does he ever feel the need to take himself out in public. Peggy made it clear that she was gay the first day that they were all put together, and Daniel slid the bi card across the table a few months later when they were staying late and no one had slept in about three days and all kinds of personal shit was tumbling out, but Jack’s never admitted anything. He flirts with women because he’s good at it and he hooks up with men when he wants to, quick and impersonal and mostly satisfying, and sometimes smears gender when he’s recounting his weekends off, but nothing anyone can pin to him.
It’s what he’s gotten used to, evading and dancing around the truth, even though it isn’t really necessary anymore.
The attraction to Daniel took its time to build, snuck up on Jack before he could notice what was happening and could put a stop to it, the way he’d avoiding lusting after teammates and frat brothers. Maybe it’s the close proximity to Daniel and Peggy; whatever they keep private or keep public, they spend most of their days together, and Jack dropped his caution without even thinking about it until Daniel smiled at him one day, their latest case solved and the day saved, and Jack smiled back and thought shit shit shit.
Colleagues of any gender are a terrible idea, that’s a basic rule that everyone knows about. Don’t shit where you eat and all that.
They discuss pieces of the case, rude witnesses, Krzminski’s latest hunch that made no sense at all making them both laugh now, out of the office and safely away from it all. The conversation drifts through sports games neither of them have time to watch anymore, Daniel’s latest bets on horseracing, because he’s a gambler but also a ridiculous person, the latest office gossip on who’s sleeping with who, who’s backstabbing who, who’s doing both and hoping to get away with it. They drift through Peggy and Angie, and how happy Peggy’s been lately. Jack thinks he sees something vaguely wistful in Daniel’s expression and doesn’t examine it further, doesn’t want to know if their office really is full of such secretive pining it deserves a shitty book series and a shittier movie.
“Angie says these are on her,” Pepper says, sweeping over in impractically high stilettos that even Peggy wouldn’t try to wear, and placing two clear cocktails on the table. There are little purple umbrellas in both, which Jack is pretty sure is a touch Pepper added herself.
“Thanks,” Daniel says, “tell her to stop texting you guys and pay more attention to her girlfriend, we’ve had a long day.”
Pepper laughs and says she will, clearing away their old glasses and turning to go.
“Hang on,” Jack says, a thought occurring to him, “how does Angie represent us in her emoji texts?”
Pepper arches a perfectly-plucked eyebrow. “Don’t you know?”
Jack darts a look to Daniel, who shakes his head, looking blank, and Pepper’s already walking away, shoes clicking loudly on the wooden floor.
“That doesn’t bode well,” Jack murmurs, sipping his cocktail.
When she gets back to the bar, Pepper says something to the others, who all start giggling.
“We should start drinking somewhere else,” Daniel says, but without any real intent without the words.
“You start dating a bartender for us, and I’ll consider it,” Jack responds.
It’s a long moment before Daniel laughs, shaking his head. “I don’t think Howard Stark can pull that off twice, but I guess I can ask.”
Jack imagines that Daniel is excellent at dating people and makes the greatest of boyfriends; the thought makes his stomach twist, and he turns his attention back to his cocktail, easily snapping the umbrella between his fingers.
-
It’s not that late when they finish their free drinks; pushing ten, if that.
“Another round?” Jack offers.
Daniel’s smile is quick and sharp, like his mouth is being awkwardly tugged by someone else’s hands; he shakes his head. “I shouldn’t,” he says.
“We could grab dinner from that place round the corner,” Jack suggests instead.
Daniel gets that smile again. “I can’t,” he replies.
Jack’s not used to being ditched on a night like this; whether he’s with Daniel or Peggy or both of them, they usually tend to stay put until last orders or until the waiters start scowling and foot-tapping. He wonders if Daniel has someone to get home to who he’s been keeping secret after all.
“I can’t,” Daniel says again, and looks like he’s going to say something else, but instead he starts shrugging back into his coat. “Night, Jack.”
Jack watches him out, and when he turns around, all four bartenders are standing beside the table.
“…do other people not want service?” he asks.
“You have to go,” Bobbi says, firm.
“You kicking me out now?” Jack asks. Between Pepper and Hope, he can see at least two people standing at the bar looking pissed and impatient.
“Look,” Daisy huffs, rolling her eyes, “you asked Pepper how Angie represents you guys in her emojis.”
“I’m not the shit with a face, am I?” Jack says, as the thought suddenly occurs to him,
“You were at first,” Hope mutters, as Pepper cuts over her to say: “look”, handing her phone to Jack.
The latest message from Angie is two little boys holding hands, an arrow, two cocktails, and a banknote with wings. It takes Jack a long moment to realise the significance.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he says.
“Go after him, dummy,” Daisy orders, and Hope smacks him around the back of the head.
It’s a little chilly on the street outside and Daniel’s at the kerb waiting for a cab. Jack thinks: I could leave right now and no one would ever know.
He goes to join Daniel instead.
“Heading home too?” Daniel asks. He looks tired under the streetlight, and he’s shifting in that way that means his hip is paining him a little and he doesn’t want to admit to it.
“Maybe I thought we could pick up where we left off,” Jack offers.
Daniel’s face creases. “I told you, I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Jack asks, harder and sharper than he means to.
“I’m not having this conversation,” Daniel tells him, face closing down, eyes turning bright and hard.
Jack gets the feeling that his intention is slipping away from him but he came out here with no plan and no words and he’s never done this before, okay, never needed to.
“Do you even know what this conversation is?” he pushes.
“Do you?” Daniel counters. “Because so far you’ve shown absolutely no sign that you have any fucking idea what I’m talking about.” He laughs, short and bitter and mirthless. “I don’t know why I’m surprised, it’s not like it’s out of character.”
“You can be an asshole sometimes, Sousa,” Jack snaps, stung.
“Case in point,” Daniel responds, waving a hand at him.
“Stop being a dick when I came out here to kiss you,” Jack snarls, the words tumbling out of his mouth with no input from his brain at all, and it’s almost worth it for the look on Daniel’s face.
“What,” he says, all the confrontation dropped from his voice.
“I said,” Jack repeats, though his heart is thudding in his chest and he isn’t drunk so why the hell is he still powering ahead with this, “that I came out here to kiss you.”
Daniel blinks; one, two, three times. “But you didn’t,” he manages.
“Well,” Jack says, shrugging, shoving his hands in his pockets, something like embarrassment creeping in at the corners, “you were being an ass.”
Daniel shakes his head, something like a smile flickering over his mouth. “Jesus,” he murmurs, before he’s the one who closes the space between them, cupping Jack’s face in his hands and kissing him.
Jack’s hands fall automatically to Daniel’s waist, holding him steady, pulling him closer, anchoring himself, he can’t even tell, leaning into the kiss, tasting the tang of alcohol and sugar in Daniel’s mouth.
“Way to hijack my plan,” he murmurs in between kisses, biting Daniel’s lower lip, and then, as reality hits him: “are you drunk?”
“No drunker than you,” Daniel replies, but he pulls away, eyes searching for something in Jack’s face. Jack wants to pull him back; he’s not done kissing him yet, hasn’t got his fill if this is all about to fall to pieces.
Jack licks his lips, watches Daniel’s eyes following the movement avidly. “Do we need to have a conversation?” he asks.
Daniel looks a little pained, and then shakes his head. “Fuck it,” he says, and kisses Jack again.
-
Daniel’s apartment is smaller than Jack was expecting, military-neat and tidy. He leaves the lights off as he leads Jack inside, so Jack only sees pieces of everything lit by streetlights outside, striping across a couch and a TV and shelves of books and DVDs, photographs he can’t make out. He’ll be interested later, he thinks, wants to linger and rifle and maybe tease, but right now he can’t take his hands off Daniel, pulling their mouths apart only so he can spread wet, hungry kisses down the length of Daniel’s throat. He fumbles with the buttons of Daniel’s shirt in the dark so he can nip at his skin, lick every exposed place. He wants to bite down, wants to suck dirty lines of hickeys into Daniel’s neck, but Daniel must read this about him, because he pushes him off, mumbling: “don’t you fucking dare”, and joining their mouths together again.
Later, Jack thinks, and scares himself with wanting.
He manages to drag Daniel’s shirt off, flinging it away into the darkness, and Daniel returns the favour; Jack hears the sound of his shirt hitting the couch, toes off his shoes and kicks them away until they hit what might be a coffee table. Daniel’s hands are everywhere, in his hair, skidding down his back, cupping his ass and dragging their hips together, where Jack can feel that Daniel is hard and wanting for him. He debates dropping to his knees, here, in the dark living room, peeling Daniel’s slacks apart and blowing him greedily and fast, persuading Daniel to fuck his mouth like he’s been thinking about when jerking off for months, but he wants more than that, wants Daniel naked and able to see him and everywhere.
They stumble through into Daniel’s bedroom, knocking something Jack hopes wasn’t too fragile over, and Daniel still doesn’t hit a light switch, leaving them in even more darkness, the blinds closed in here. Jack is pretty sure they’re going to need some light imminently, and as soon as Daniel stops worrying his mouth along his jaw, mumbling something about Jack’s stubble that he can’t make out but which makes his stomach turn over, he’s going to mention it.
There’s a mattress somewhere, a ridiculously good one, and Jack bangs his knee on the bedframe while his hands clench in the newly-discovered sheets, Daniel’s firm sure hands pulling him down on top of him, all warmth and skin. Jack can’t resist rutting against him, clumsy, the angle all wrong, but it’s good enough to make him groan into Daniel’s hair, disoriented and needy. Daniel makes a soft sound in response, hands sliding down Jack’s back to drop to his pants, to fight with the buttons and zipper, and it’s literally only then that Jack realises what Daniel is doing.
“Fuck that,” he says aloud, pushing himself upright and fumbling around until he finds something that feels like a lamp, snapping it on.
The light changes things; Daniel’s expression is startled, and Jack suddenly feels ridiculous, half-dressed, straddling Daniel’s thighs in his bed, panting like he’s just run a marathon. Daniel’s hair is a mess and his neck is red from bites and stubble-burn and his mouth is swollen and looks so fucking kissed that Jack mostly just wants to lean down and kiss him again, but, wait, more important things.
“Change your mind?” Daniel asks, and there’s an edge in his voice.
Jack pushes a hand through his own hair, feeling where it’s a wreck from Daniel’s hands, and says: “I fucking know you have one leg, Daniel, I’ve actually seen your prosthetic on a number of occasions, remember?”
Daniel flushes, this time not from desire, and shifts them both so he can sit up, Jack still in his lap. “I’m aware,” he bites off, and Jack knows he’s embarrassed. “It’s just- it’s not sexy, you know, stumps and scarring.”
Jack can tell Daniel wants him to move, put some distance between them, but he won’t. He sighs, presses his hands to his face, and says: “why do you think I’m here, Daniel?”
“You’re the one who didn’t want to talk about it,” Daniel responds, and Jack can watch him growing more defensive by the second. He knows Daniel’s had a rough few years since losing his leg in active service, adjusting to life afterwards, but fuck, he wants to hurt everything and everyone that’s made Daniel look like that, half-angry, half-ashamed, arms folded across his chest, encased between Jack’s thighs but a hundred miles away at the same time.
“So, what, you thought I just wanted some kind of fumbling handjob in the dark and then you’d kick me out?”
Daniel’s face says it all.
“Fucking hell,” Jack says on an exhale, and actually does move now, climbing awkwardly out of Daniel’s lap to sit beside him.
“I guess we should’ve talked, huh,” Daniel says, flat and tired-sounding.
“I’m starting to think I wouldn’t have enjoyed the conversation,” Jack replies.
Daniel laughs, soft, brittle. “Look,” he says, “it’s not… we’re making it sound complicated, but it isn’t. I get it, by the way: your ultra-masculine upbringing did a number on you, and you’re shit with intimacy, and I get that we spend most of our lives in each other’s space and we’re both attracted to guys so getting this out of our systems was probably inevitable, and I figured I’d spare us both the messy parts so that you wouldn’t have to look at me in the morning with, you know, all that in your eyes.”
It’s Jack’s turn to laugh, raw and messy and strangled. “Oh, fuck you, Daniel,” he sighs, without any real venom.
Daniel says nothing; the silence stretches, brutal and viscous. “You should go,” he says, eventually.
Jack keeps his gaze on the ceiling. “If I go now, we’ll never be able to work together again.”
“People do this,” Daniel says, his voice still devoid of any real emotion. “These things happen, and sometimes they don’t work.”
Jack feels something snap and he pushes himself off the bed, rebuttoning his pants, pushing hands through the ruin of his hair, pretty sure he can find his clothes and be out of here in about a minute and a half.
“Jack-” Daniel says, trailing off as Jack stomps back into the living room, turning the light on, bitterly tracking down his shirt and shoes and coat, shrugging back into them, and he wants to bang the front door and never look back but something tugs and he can’t.
Daniel is still sitting on the bed in the same position Jack left him in, looking a little lost.
“Tonight meant something to me, you know?” he snaps, wanting to ball up all this hurt and frustration in his chest and hurl it at Daniel so it won’t be his to hold anymore. “Tonight wasn’t a hook-up, it wasn’t a fucking experiment, and I don’t give a fucking damn which limbs you do or don’t have and what state they’re in because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”
He slams Daniel’s bedroom door with satisfaction and fury and leaves, slamming the front door behind him too. His hands are shaking and he wants to punch something, maybe himself, and he hits the elevator button hard enough to make his fingers hurt.
It doesn’t take long for Daniel’s apartment door to bang open, and Jack turns away from the elevator.
“If you take the stairs now, you’re more of an asshole than I ever thought you were,” Daniel tells him, voice quiet but echoing in the hall.
Jack wants to, he wants to, but he knows Daniel struggles with stairs and there’s no way he could follow him, and somehow despite it all he can’t do it.
“Can’t this night be over?” Jack asks.
“You did just drop the l-bomb and then hissy fit your way out,” Daniel says. He’s still half-naked in the hallway; one foot bare and the other an approximate metal shape that echoes weirdly on the tiles.
“It wasn’t a hissy fit,” Jack replies; the elevator dings and he should get into it and he doesn’t.
“You see why I thought you weren’t emotionally capable of this?” Daniel says, a smile tugging at his mouth; it’s gentle, no malice.
“Well,” Jack counters, “neither are you.”
“No,” Daniel agrees, “no, I’m not.” He rubs hands up his bare arms. “Are you going to come back inside so I can try and tell you I care about you in an equally socially awkward way?”
He could step backwards into the elevator and they can both pretend that tonight never ever happened and Peggy would know something but even she wouldn’t figure out the truth. Things could go back to how they were; awkward, but not impossibly so.
But Jack would always know what it felt like to kiss Daniel, and that probably wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t get any better.
“Yeah,” he says, stepping away from the elevator, “I guess I am.”
-
“My neighbours are going to start a petition to evict me,” Daniel pants, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, pupils dilated to pinpricks.
“Bet you’re normally the quiet guy,” Jack responds, equally breathless.
Daniel’s hands are tight on Jack’s hips, there might even be bruises later, and Jack’s got his hands braced on the wall over Daniel’s head, knees skidding against the sheets, fucking himself on Daniel’s cock hard and fast enough that it’ll hurt in the morning and maybe the day after, if he’s lucky.
The headboard bangs against the wall again, and Daniel reaches up a hand to hook behind Jack’s neck and pull him into a messy, uncoordinated kiss, more breathing and teeth than anything more substantial. It was a little awkward at first, Jack figuring out where to put his weight, where to brace and to lean, not wanting to hurt Daniel’s hip or try and gain support from a limb that isn’t there, but Daniel sucks cock like a dream, humming around Jack’s with three fingers slid wickedly inside him, and they’re both wound up enough that they’re managing to slide straight over anything that could really hold them up.
Jack jerks his hips, wondering if he can move any faster, he’s so close and Daniel feels so good, strong hands roaming his body, cock just a little thicker than Jack was expecting and fuck, yes, that’s the angle, and he slams himself back, the sound he makes swallowed up by Daniel’s mouth.
“Are you always this loud?” Daniel asks, trying for conversational, but he’s losing control as quickly as Jack is, flushed and bruised and sweating, looking a complete wreck and amazing.
“You complaining?” Jack demands, and Daniel’s response is to brace one of his hands to the mattress and fuck upwards, hard and fast and so good Jack lets out some kind of ragged shout that, yeah, will probably piss off Daniel’s neighbours. He doesn’t care even a little bit.
They don’t manage to talk anymore, which is probably just as well given how well that’s gone lately; there’s the frantic smack of skin on skin, the squeak of Daniel’s mattress and the banging of the headboard off the wall, their harsh breathing, and the sounds Jack doesn’t even want to try and hide as they manage a messy, perfect rhythm, Jack doing most of the work, Daniel periodically jerking his hips to drive his cock deeper, and Jack thinks this might be what losing his mind feels like, it’s so good. Daniel wraps one hand around his cock, squeezing just this side of too hard, and breathes: “c’mon, Jack, come for me,” and Jack can’t resist, doesn’t even bother trying, just fucks up into Daniel’s hand and back onto his cock and comes abruptly on a string of expletives and maybe Daniel’s name, head rocking back and then tipping forward onto Daniel’s shoulder where he pants and whimpers and bites into the skin, oversensitive but determined to keep moving until Daniel comes too.
“Shhhh,” Daniel murmurs, mouth moving against Jack’s ear, “I’ve got you,” and he grabs one of Jack’s ass cheeks and changes the angle slightly and fucks into him one last time before he comes, biting hard into Jack’s shoulder, and Jack’s barely conscious but he fucking hopes the mark stays and stays and stays.
It’s difficult parting, Jack’s thighs are cramping and he can’t imagine how Daniel’s hip is feeling, and Daniel grabs the condom while Jack slides off him, panting and grimacing and regretting every second that makes him emptier. There’s a trashcan not too far away and wipes in the nightstand but Jack still feels sticky and sweaty and gruesome and the room smells like sex and the whole thing is kind of amazing.
Daniel snaps off the light and they both rearrange the sheets, curling up underneath them.
“…are you a cuddler?” Daniel asks into the darkness, and he sounds quietly amused.
“…no,” Jack responds, and it’s moments after that that Daniel manhandles him over onto his side of the bed, curling himself around him, and Jack pretends to hate it for all of about five seconds before the afterglow hits him and he allows himself to relax, sore and sated and, under all that, relieved as all hell. Daniel is warm and broad and strong, and it’s kind of nice just to relax against him, let sleep pull at his eyelids.
He opens his mouth, closes it again, hesitates.
“Get some sleep,” Daniel advises, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, “I’m sure we can fuck it all up again in the morning.”
Jack finds himself smiling into the dark. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, okay, that sounds great to me.”