couch philosophy

The person next to him had been tossing and turning for at least half an hour now and it was starting to become annoying. Jack turned onto his side, pulling the blanket up to his chin, ignoring the shifting body next to his.

Shift, shift. Toss. Turn. On and on it went. Jack tried not to grunt when he felt a knee in the back. Toss. Turn. Sigh. Cough. Scratch. It finally got too much when the constant shifting became accompanied by under the breath muttering.

"Okay! I bite. What?" Jack said as he sat up.

Daniel suddenly ceased all movement and Jack could vaguely make a pair of eyes staring towards him.

"Nothing. Why?" Daniel asked.

Jack sighed and turned on the lamp. He looked down at Daniel, hair messy, eyes squinting against the light as he lay there in black sweat pants and a worn out gray T-shirt, his half of the covers pushed aside.

"Look," Jack started, his hand out in defense. "I don't want to sound cranky, but you're driving me nuts here."

Daniel closed his eyes and sighed before looking up at Jack in defeat. "I can't sleep."

"Really? I couldn't tell from the bruise on my back," Jack said dryly.

Daniel sat up slowly and scratched his chin. "Sorry."

"Wanna talk about it?" Jack asked.

Daniel shook his head. "There's no it to talk about. I just can't sleep. Look, I'm going to go and get a drink. Go back to sleep."

Jack grabbed Daniel's arm before he could get up. "You sure everything's okay?"

Daniel smiled and nodded, not looking particularly troubled. He started to move away.

"Hey," Jack said and Daniel turned around. Jack pressed a kiss to his lips. "I'm gonna get my my beauty sleep. I've got a thing tomorrow with the potato people."

Daniel smiled, putting his glasses on and leaving the bedroom. Jack sighed and lay back down, pulling the covers around his shoulders and moving over to the left of the bed; a side of the bed that Daniel had stolen from him.

Jack closed his eyes. Right, he was going to sleep now. Now.

Now.

Okay, maybe later.

He had to get into the zone. The zoning out zone. His was in Minnesota and he was fishing. It was nice and quiet, with only the sounds of nature.

Actually, Jack thought, it was about time he paid the old cabin a visit and fixed that leaky, broken roof. Daniel hadn't found it funny at all when they last stayed there and part of it fell on them in the middle of the night, while they were breaking in the bed. Daniel had needed stitches in the back of his head and flushed red every time he had to lie about the cause of the wound.

That was a nice night, Jack thought. Well, up until the roof incident. Right up until that incident, actually.

This was no good. Thinking about sex with Daniel in his cabin did not make him sleepy at all. Quite the opposite actually. Jack turned over and tried to clear his thoughts by counting fish.

Yes, fish, jumping across a dock. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Ninety-six. Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred symbiotes splashing into a pond.

Jack sighed and turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling, home to night time demons. Looking elsewhere, he found the bedroom looked much cleaner in the dark.

After a while, Jack let his eyes drift shut, but something was quietly tickling his ear. A faint sound. A buzzing. Jack's eyes snapped open as he could faintly make out the switching of TV channels downstairs.

Jack finally got up and made his way downstairs. The living room was dark, the only light coming from the TV screen.

Jack walked in to find Daniel sitting on the couch, eyes fixed on the screen.

"I thought you were getting a drink," Jack said, sitting down next to Daniel.

"I did," Daniel answered absently. "I thought you were getting your beauty sleep."

"Well, there can be too much of a good thing, I guess. What are you watching?" Jack asked, noticing Daniel's extreme concentration.

Daniel's brow was furrowing as he watched, like something didn't make sense, yet fascinated him anyway. "That knife can cut through shoes."

Jack watched as the man on the TV proceeded to cut through a shoe and other other household objects. "Why the hell would anyone want to cut through a shoe?"

Daniel shrugged. "Well, maybe some people's cooking is a little... leathery."

Jack frowned. "Maybe we should get a set. Look, you get free pens with it."

"And a flashlight." Daniel pointed to the grinning man on the television as he held up the free gift.

Jack sighed and pushed Daniel's hand down. "Why are we up at three in the morning?"

"We need the Ginsu ten piece knife set?"

"Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing," Daniel said, reaching for the remote, only to have it snatched away.

"Come on, I know something's bugging you."

"It's not a big something."

"But it's a something, right?"

"Maybe a small something," Daniel conceded.

Jack frowned. "Are you pregnant?"

"Not without a miracle," Daniel answered dryly.

"Well, we've covered it's not a big something or a miraculous birth. Now spill. I can only be sensitive for so long."

Daniel looked at Jack with what Jack recognized as his 'thinking too much' face.

"Do things ever seem too perfect to you?"

"We're up at three in the morning, thinking about buying Ginsu knives. What do you think?"

"I'm being serious," Daniel said, leaning back against the cushions. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm waiting for the catch. Like I'm going to wake up and none of this will be real."

Jack frowned. "What brought this on?"

"Nothing. It's just there at the back of my head some nights. I start out trying to remember what happened while I was ascended and I always end up remembering everything before that. How everything felt like it was closing in on me, like I was disappearing into this big, black hole."

Jack nodded, listening intently.

"Then, one day, I wake up, alone, without a home, name... clothes."

"Embarrassing?"

"A little."

"I'd expect so."

"I spent a long time convincing myself that I belonged on that planet, but at the back of my head, I kept waiting for something. Then you turn up and bring me home and I start remembering, only the memories aren't the same. They don't hurt like they used to," Daniel said with a frown.

"That's a good thing, right?"

Daniel gave a small, absent minded nod. "It's great. It's like someone turned the lights on."

"But?"

"But... I keep waiting to wake up in the infirmary. Sometimes, I remember, dying..." Daniel said quietly, like whatever he was watching on the TV screen wasn't the same thing Jack was seeing.

Jack opened his mouth to say something comforting, but for some odd reason his heart seemed to thump a little harder and he found himself wondering if this was all dream.

Maybe Daniel was still dead, ascended, whatever. Maybe he was still gone and Jack was lying in bed dreaming of a perfect reality, like he used to. Maybe he was still dreaming.

Maybe he was still in that cell and any minute now, the guards would come and take him to be tortured again. He'd give it up. He'd tell everything next time. The next time they'd take him there, he would break. He knew it.

Jack grabbed Daniel by the front of his T-shirt, pulling him hard.

Daniel was only allowed to be startled for a second before Jack kissed him and pushed him down on the couch. One hand still fisted in Daniel's T-Shirt, Jack carried on kissing from mouth to jaw to neck, nipping, tasting, breathing in Daniel's scent.

Daniel's hands had found their way into Jack's sweats, his fingers clutching at Jack's behind, urging him closer.

Jack's breath caught as he felt Daniel, hard and insistent against his own erection.

Using a hand to prop himself up, even though it was fast sinking towards the crack between the couch cushions, Jack used his other hand to pull down Daniel's sweat pants. Daniel frantically pulled on Jack's sweats and boxers.

Skin on skin, they moved against each other, with urgency, thrusting carelessly and breathing hard in each other's ears. Jack closed his eyes, arching his neck back, vaguely aware of Daniel clinging to him as they fought to be closer, skin on skin never really close enough. Daniel grunted, his fingers digging into the skin of Jack's ass, pulling him close enough to eradicate any space between them, so they moved together.

Both hands braced on the couch, Jack moved fast, finding Daniel's gasping mouth and tasting him.

It was too much and never enough. He wanted it to keep going and for it to be over already. He wanted everything to fucking explode already. He was saying words, but he had no idea what, gasping them in Daniel's ears as his face burned. Some sort of mantra, over and over and over. Not even real words.

And perfection. Somewhere a porn star had just gotten his wings.

Jack reached down between them and grabbed a hold of Daniel, still hard and still moving against him. Daniel made sounds that made Jack wish he could go at it all over again, but he settled for kissing Daniel, his hand pumping fast until Daniel stilled momentarily, too focused to even kiss back, his mouth just open for Jack to pillage.

In some respects, Jack thought, it was a funny situation. His one hand was still obscenely sticky and holding onto Daniel and his other hand was now way past the cushions and in the couch itself.

Something of the insect variety seemed to crawl over Jack's hand and he quickly pulled it out from the couch crevice.

"Okay, this time we totally need to burn the couch," Jack said.

Daniel laughed as Jack shifted, wiping his sticky hand on the sweat pants and boxers pooled just under his ass.

"Not that I'm grateful and pleasantly surprised, Jack, but what the hell was that?"

Jack pretended to think about it, his heart still hammering away in his ears. "Well, in my day, they called it sex. Probably because my people are a simple people."

Daniel was smiling and Jack suddenly found the idea of afterglow very amusing.

"You're looking a little ascended there," Jack said with smug satisfaction.

Daniel ignored the comment and kissed Jack instead. "So seriously, what the hell was that?"

"I was answering your question. That real enough for you?"

Daniel nodded. "Yes. Very real. And sticky."

"Well, I do aim to please," Jack said with a ridiculously serious expression. "See, the problem with you academic types is, you figure just because the question doesn't make sense, the answer can't either."

"Actually, there's a lot about that whole sentence that doesn't make sense," Daniel said flatly.

"Daniel? We went from talking about Ginsu knives to having sex on my couch. What does making sense have to do with anything?"

Daniel frowned. "Right. Of course."

"And even if this all a dream, it's a pretty nice one. Consider it your happy place."

"A dream could never be this surreal."

"Exactly. Now, we're going to get up, if that's possible, we're going to go upstairs and go to sleep. Then tomorrow we can burn the couch before we go to work."

"Actually, I was hoping to get the day off tomorrow," Daniel said.

"What's the occasion?"

"I'm sleeping with the boss and I was hoping that a few sexual favors could sway him to treat me more favorably," Daniel said with a raise of the eyebrows.

Jack thought about it. "I'll be needing a list of those sexual favors."

Jack gave Daniel a quick, short kiss on the lips and pulled away, grimacing at the mess they had made. He let his sweat pants and boxers fall to the floor, stepping out of them and taking off his T-shirt, using it to clean himself off. Daniel watched with an amused smile.

"What?" Jack asked, gathering up his clothes.

"Just capturing this beautiful image for posterity."

"Posterity my ass," Jack mumbled as he walked out of the living room.

Jack threw the clothes in the bathroom hamper and cleaned off a little more thoroughly.

Against his will, he thought about it all. It did feel too perfect at times. The way things seem to fit together so neatly. The way his and Daniel's lives had just slotted back together after he returned from the ascended. Too good. Too odd. Weird. So weird that they were doing this. One minute it had been complete discretion and now it was dinner at eight and sleepovers.

Jack shook his head, not prepared to start over-analyzing in the early hours of the morning. That was Daniel's job.

And so what if it was weird? An empty bed was worse than weird. Waking up with someone you wanted next to you was perfection. Of course you were going to doubt it every now and then.

Jack climbed into bed, already warm with Daniel's presence. Jack sat and watched Daniel, lying on his side and partially hidden under the covers. He leaned across and looked at Daniel's face, peaceful and eyes closed. Fast asleep. Out like a light. Typical.

Jack blew out a breath and lay down, sleep having flown away. That left the ceiling to be stared at, where all the night demons hid, the boogey men that Jack's brain had collected over the years. He watched Ba'al's face float down, side to side like a feather, smiling his malevolent smile.

When you awake, you will tell me everything.

Daniel shifted in his sleep, turning over towards Jack, his hand falling next to Jack's. Jack sought out Daniel's fingers, closing his own around them.

This was real. The stains on the couch were proof of how real. Daniel's naked skin next to his was real. Daniel's hand in his was real.

Daniel snoring was real.

Jack frowned up at the phantom and Ba'al's face looked disgusted before it disappeared back into the ceiling.

Turning his head, Jack looked at Daniel, his face visible under a sliver of moonlight as he slept peacefully, his snoring keeping demons at bay.

Yep, Jack thought, pretty real.

- the end -