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Pegasus B: Inklings
It was too early for the commissary staff to be up mixing batches of artificial eggs, and that was why Jack was prowling the hallways. He didn't want anyone trying to foist hot food off on him while he was looking for a simple bowl of Captain Crunch.
The hallways were still dimly lit, on their pre-dawn settings, when Daniel Jackson crossed his path, like a black cat - or a sunbeam.
"...Dr. Jackson."
Daniel's head whipped around at the sound of Jack's voice. His lips were open, and moist - he was holding a mug of something that steamed - and one lock of hair curved across his forehead.
His feet were bare.
"Yes, Jack?"
The Colonel just stood there. He was too much of an old soldier to give it away, but he was sucker-punched. No one called him Jack. Not here. And not for a long time.
"Just... saying hi." Jack wondered as he shrugged if he'd suddenly turned adolescent again. Maybe his voice would crack in a second.
But a heart he'd forgotten he even had was thumping in his chest.
Daniel looked... bed-rumpled, to tell the truth.
And as Jack got closer, he could smell it. Daniel was covered in sweat... and semen. He smelled tangy and salty and... delicious.
He looked like someone had been biting his lips.
Jesus Fucking Christ sitting on a donkey in the shade.
And Daniel smiled. Just a fleeting, soft smile, as he lowered his lips to the rim of the cup. "Say hi anytime," he said softly, before he sipped.
"I would but I... I never see you." Jack's ears were listening hard. No one was around, not that he could hear, and he could hear a hell of a lot. They were alone... in the semi-dark... and Daniel smelled like a hot slow fuck.
This couldn't be good.
He's just a kid, Jack told himself. He was in shock. He doesn't know what he sounded like when he said that stuff; he barely knew what planet he was on.
"Well, if you'd like to see me, it's easily solved," Daniel said slowly, cocking his head as if Jack had given him an odd little puzzle. "I'm in the library, translating Ancient, every day."
"Do you want to?" Jack blurted it out before he could stop himself.
"Do I want to... what?"
"Be in the library. Every day. You don't have to. I'm sure Dr. Weir would authorize an away mission for you if you want."
Daniel just shook his head. "I have no desire to go back through that gate, Colonel." And as he trailed away with his mug, his leaving more final than a good-bye, Jack heard him mutter, "Maybe ever again."
***
"BLOW IT!" Jack yelled into the mic.
But Sheppard didn't.
What the hell could go wrong? C4, fuses set, Jack had set them himself, and he did not screw up that kind of thing.
Jack popped his head up over the ruins of a stone parapet.
Yep, there was the rest of the seek team, he could see tufts of Sheppard's hair just sticking up over the parapet opposite him, McKay's round idiotic head bobbing around behind the DHD, and Stackhouse running towards the Gate like there were a dozen Wraith behind him --
-- which there were.
"Blow it again, Major!" he shouted.
"Negative, sir!" Sheppard shouted back, watching Stackhouse, not Jack.
Negative? NEGATIVE? What the hell was going on?
Stackhouse crossed some invisible line that apparently only Sheppard could see, and Rodney dialed the last digit as Sheppard finally followed orders and squeezed the trigger.
While the dirt and rocks flew and the Wraith decided what to do about the body parts they'd been separated from, Jack picked up his feet and shot toward the Gate.
McKay was already through; Sheppard reached it just as he did.
"Go!" yelled Jack and shoved him through, not very gently.
Stackhouse was never going to win any Olympic sprinting medals.
Jack waited. Waited. Waited a little bit more.
Finally the kid was there, puffing and brick-red and sweating through his uniform.
Jack didn't even let him get a breath, just shoved him through too, then dove after him, just as the Wraith opened fire.
***
"It's an expensive insurance policy you've established, Colonel, but you've just demonstrated its value." Elizabeth wasn't sure they had enough C4 to do things the Colonel's way; but she was willing to try, given that so far, they'd worked.
"We don't have to do that on every world, Doctor Weir. I think once we establish regular relations we can recover the planted C4, but as an exit strategy... it seems to work. Major."
The one word caught Sheppard as he was about to retreat from the gateroom.
Weir pretended not to hear. "Shall we debrief in an hour or so, Colonel? I'd like to hear more about all the nothing you found."
"Sure. Love to. We'll be there. Major." And this time the one word meant "Precede me into the conference room." Sheppard could tell.
He turned as he entered, and saw Rodney watching them over Colonel O'Neill's shoulder just as the door swung shut.
"Explain that 'negative', Major. Was there a problem with the equipment?"
"No sir. Stackhouse wasn't close enough to the gate yet, sir."
"Not your decision, Major. Mine."
"I've seen him run in PT. I knew he wasn't going to make it if I didn't give him more time."
Jack stepped closer. John Sheppard was not a big man. He stood at attention and looked up at the Colonel, whose eyes were dark, flat, and very close as Jack said, "Not. Your. Decision. Mine."
"I was the one holding the C4 switch, sir. The last opportunity to decide was mine."
"So you decided to ignore an order."
"I guess so, sir."
Jack's eyes glittered as he looked John up and down with disgust. "So you're saying you're not much of a soldier."
John's eyes widened, but only slightly. "I wouldn't say that. Sir."
Jack folded his arms across his chest, studied the Major for a while, as if he were trying to read him, like one of Jackson's alien rocks.
"Major, did you see that Wraith probe?"
John blinked. Fast. "The what, sir?"
"Round. Floating thing. About four meters off the ground."
"I didn't see anything like that, sir."
"I did. I decided to blow the C4 and try and get it rather than let it follow us through the gate." He held his hands about a foot apart. "Alien technology about this big - what d'you figure something that size could do, Major?"
John held himself at attention, smelling a court-martial in his future. "Could be a bomb, sir."
"Right. Maybe even powerful enough to blow up Atlantis. We don't know. How could we tell? Would you like to die in a bomb blast, Major? Or would you rather die with a Wraith sucking out your life? Because the other thing something that size could do would be to broadcast our location. And for that, all it had to do was follow us through the Gate."
"I think both of those options would suck pretty badly, sir."
John expected O'Neill to say "So do I," but that was not the response he got.
"Sheppard."
John broke attention, looked at O'Neill.
"You're a pilot, Sheppard. Not much for combat. I don't need to read your record to know that. I can tell it by looking at you. But you're my second in command out here. If I buy the farm, this whole base is looking to you to take care of them. You might have to make the tough decisions - like whether to sacrifice one life for many. That's the way it works. If you can't handle it, I have to figure that out now and remove you from the chain of command. You gave me a reason today to do that. Don't give me another one. Because I don't want to do that."
O'Neill sighed, raised his own hand to rub the back of his neck.
"We're short on good people out here, Sheppard. Hell, we're short on people. I'm asking you to be the Major Sheppard I need you to be, not the guy you'd be in other circumstances. Got it?"
John's mouth gaped. Colonels didn't ask. They told. That was one of the reasons he didn't like Colonels.
But O'Neill was right. His options were few. In effect, what he meant was that if he couldn't count on John, he was screwed. And he was right.
"Sir... I'm sorry, sir." And John meant it.
"Don't be sorry. Because if you disobey a direct order again, I'm not gonna take the time to court-martial you. I'm just gonna shoot you. We're too far from home for cowboy crap. And a lot of us could die out here. Not one person's gonna die because you didn't listen to me. Got it?"
"Yes sir." Seared on his brain.
John snapped to attention again and Jack just let him stand there, soaking it in, before he sighed. "Okay. Dismissed."
John's exit was pretty good, for a major, and Jack let his mind tick over the afternoon as he left.
He had seen what he figured was a wraith probe - about half a klick away. He had no idea how fast the thing might have traveled or even what it was for. That wasn't why he'd told Sheppard to blow the C4.
But Sheppard's opinion on that mattered less than zero. If Jack couldn't count on him, he was worse than useless, he was a danger.
As he followed Sheppard out he caught sight of that damn McKay, lurking in the shadows, no doubt waiting to find out if Sheppard had gotten his ass chewed.
And Sheppard's step bounced a little as he approached the scientist, and Jack couldn't see Sheppard's face, but he could see McKay, and McKay fairly... glowed.
Jack frowned.
Glowed?
What the hell for?
And that bounce in the step of the Major...
Jesus, was everyone on this base gayer than Christmas?
McKay's stupid crooked mouth gave a crooked smile as Sheppard approached, and Jack felt the lead weight in his chest flare up like fire.
McKay was supposed to be looking out for Daniel. Jackson. Dr. Jackson.
What the hell was he doing glowing at Jack's second in command?
"Problem, Colonel?"
Weir had popped up, the way she had, and seemed to find something interesting about the sight of Jack scowling at the back of Sheppard's head.
"No, ma'am. A slight... discipline problem. Taken care of." Taking CARE of. McKay was supposed to be taking care of Daniel. And given the way Daniel had smelled that night Jack had run across him in the hall, Jack had no illusions about the way McKay was taking care of him.
He had not taken Daniel up on the invitation to visit him in the library.
Daniel had not taken him up on the invitation to request an away mission. He knew that because he reviewed all the team's logs and approved all the teams. Sheppard's team, usually himself, McKay, Stackhouse and Pedini from anthro, had only been out on half a dozen missions, and he himself was running through a roster of people, trying them out for his team, trying to figure out who should go where.
Sheppard's little stunt today meant that he needed to be watched a little while longer. But ultimately Jack needed him to be able to head his own group without getting the base blown up.
Why didn't Daniel want to go through the Stargate again?
Or was he just avoiding Jack?
McKay, across the room, made that silly not-laughing noise he made sometimes, and Jack could feel his fists curling up. Asshole. He was supposed to be looking after Daniel. Not distracting his second in command and probably inciting him to ignore orders.
Who was looking after Daniel now?
Weir disappeared again. Crossing the room, Jack had no time for subtlety. "You're all the way dismissed, Major."
Giving him a hairy eyeball, John said nothing, just retreated. Immediately.
McKay looked pissed. Then, as Jack got closer, he looked nervous.
Possibly scared.
"Doctor McKay. Don't take today's events as a reason to act all civilian and start ignoring orders. I can't court-martial you. But I can take you off the teams if necessary."
"I didn't want to BE on the teams. I'd much rather be safe at --"
"But Major Sheppard thought otherwise. And you agreed with him that a scientist in the field would help us locate ZPMs." He watched Rodney try to figure out whether to be defensive or offensive. "Didn't you?" he prompted, almost sweetly.
"Well, yes, of course."
"Then make yourself useful. In the field. If you can. Since you apparently can't here."
And Jack stalked away, leaving Rodney wondering what the hell had crawled up the old man's ass, and exactly how many times he was supposed to put up with being talked to like that, and where had John gone?
"Pssst. McKay."
Rodney spun around, and there was John, hiding - did majors hide? - behind a pillar.
He decided to ignore how that made his heart beat faster. Seeing John always did that.
McKay's gay porn movie had only lasted one night. One magical sweet sweat-soaked night. Of course, it hadn't been that long ago. But McKay couldn't help wondering if John would ever be interested in a repeat.
A trio. If that's what John wanted. Though Daniel was sleeping alone in his own quarters more these last few days, looking a little more like himself, or able to better hide it if he wasn't.
Or a duet.
If John was interested.
How was he supposed to tell?
John had started it in the first place. Hadn't he?
Oh yes, he had. By crawling into Daniel's lap.
Rodney's heart plummeted into his boots.
Maybe it had just been an accident that Rodney had gotten to go along for the ride. Daniel's generosity. And John's.
"What the hell was he yelling at YOU about?" hissed John as McKay approached him.
"It's so hard to tell. I don't really speak soldierese. Anyway, I was waiting around to tell you that Carson's ready to try the gene therapy. He wants one more sample of your blood."
"Geez, that guy's already got, like, a freezerful of my precious bodily fluids."
John grinned while McKay tried hard to ignore his heart doing somersaults.
"Well, go donate some more, we all know how much you like that," Rodney said dismissively, though he immediately followed it up with, "I'll go with you."
"Yeah? When you gonna try the gene therapy thing?"
"Carson should have it ready within the hour."
"Hey, I'll stick around."
"There won't be anything to see. I certainly HOPE there won't be anything to see. I should ask Carson and make sure that there won't be anything to see."
"Rodney." John smiled, that quirked smile that Rodney... liked. "There'll be you to see."
Rodney was still trying to think of a smart comeback to that as they left together.