Daniel left the meeting without saying anything. He did that a lot these days.

It still surprised Jack, but it didn't surprise anyone else. Of course, they didn't call him Daniel. They called him Dr. Jackson.

No one called him Daniel any more. Except Jack.

Jack was also surprised when the aide came scurrying in to tell him that Dr. Jackson wanted to see him at his house at 9:30 p.m. Jack hadn't been in the mansion-sized place for over a month.

The aide clearly didn't think for a second that Jack might not obey the summons.

---

Daniel swept into the room, thinking about calling for his bathrobe. His last meeting had just ended and he wanted some sleep for a couple of hours before he got up and did some of his real work, in the hours before the staff descended on him again.

He'd forgotten he'd asked Jack to be there.

Perhaps some part in the back of his brain had thought that maybe Jack would be different, that maybe Jack wouldn't come when he called like a trained dog.

But no, Jack was there, waiting in the library. Someone had let him in. Daniel must have left instructions to that effect.

Some days he forgot whom he told to do what, until they didn't do it. And then he fired them.

"Jack," he said pleasantly. He was glad, after all, that Jack had come. Now he could scratch an itch and clear Jack off the radar for a while. Killing two birds with one stone, in effect.

More efficient.

"Daniel," Jack said evenly. He was sitting in a club chair, posture showing he'd thought about getting up when Dr. Jackson entered the room, but he hadn't after all.

Daniel liked that.

Jack was the only one who didn't even try to show him deference.

But then again, Jack had come when he was called.

Daniel liked that, too.

"I've figured out what's going wrong with the second stage deployment meetings," he said without further preamble even as he went to stand beside Jack - over Jack, really. Very purposefully standing over him. Then he bent forward a little at the waist, looming.

If Jack felt threatened he didn't show it except by a certain alertness around the eyes.

But he stood up. He moved as if to stand against the wall, hands nonchalantly in his pockets, artificially at ease.

But Daniel didn't want him to do that.

Daniel's smile flickered as he put out a hand and slid his fingers through the hair at the back of Jack's head. That made Jack's eyes widen, made his muscles tense, but otherwise he didn't move. He stood still while Daniel's hand cupped the back of his head.

Which was the moment when Daniel realized how easy this was going to be.

Which took away some of the excitement for him. Only some.

"Oh yeah?" Jack said, keeping his own tone light. "What's wrong with the meetings then?"

"You're in them."

Daniel tightened his hold, suddenly grasping a handful of Jack's hair and slowly but not gently pulling his head back.

There was nothing more submissive than a bared throat, Daniel thought absently to himself as he watched the cords in Jack's neck stretch, the muscles move. He lost himself in the moment enough to forget to be slow, just because he wanted to see Jack's chin stretched toward the ceiling, and apparently the little jerk he gave to Jack's hair set off something automatic, because Jack's hand came up to grasp his wrist.

But whatever response Jack was preprogrammed to make to being put in that position, he didn't make it. The muscles in his hand tensed and flexed and Daniel's did too; silently they pushed and pulled without either one of them moving a millimeter. Jack's head was pulled far enough back that he had to look slightly sideways to look into Daniel's eyes.

Dark eyes met bright blue eyes, held. And instead of pulling Daniel's hand away, Jack swallowed.

It was a lovely throat, Daniel thought as he leaned in to bite it.

Jack had the uncomfortable sensation - extremely uncomfortable sensation - that he was being manhandled by a vampire. But Daniel wasn't a vampire, he reminded himself, perhaps to distract himself from the slick teeth dragging along his skin. He was Dr. Jackson, savior of Earth, director of a thousand things since he'd gotten the Shifu's knowledge in his head, but he wasn't anything but human. Really.

Jack was pretty sure.

But the teeth that bit down at the base of his neck still made him nervous.

Maybe that was just because his old friend Daniel was biting his neck.

It was a very peculiar situation in which to find himself.

He considered extricating himself. But something - he didn't stop to ask himself for further details - something held him still.

Besides just Daniel's hands.

"Uh, Daniel?" Jack rasped out.

"Yes, Jack?" Daniel asked calmly, even as he pushed and turned Jack's head away to give himself access to the space behind Jack's ear.

"Uh... whatcha doin'?"

"Scratching an itch."

Daniel wrapped his other hand in the collar of Jack's shirt and started backing him toward a wall. He loved the look on Jack's face: puzzled, wary, and somewhere in the back of the eyes, somewhere where it wouldn't show unless you knew Jack very, very well, a little touch of fear.

Daniel knew Jack very, very well.

"Uh..." Jack felt the wall hit his shoulders before his ass, which was how he knew he was straining away from Daniel. But Daniel pressed forward, just as inexorably, just as slowly, trapping Jack between the wall and his own body.

The feel of Dr. Jackson's hard body against his, encased in one of those silk sweaters and a pair of the linen pants he liked, radiating massive amounts of heat, pushed the situation over the edge into the surreal for Jack. He wouldn't have been surprised if small pink elephants had started dancing around his feet.

Instead, Daniel put his hands on either side of his open collar and pulled.

It wasn't a button front shirt.

But it was open most of the way down the front now.

And oddly enough, now Jack was getting hard. Too.

"Uh," said Jack again as Daniel's hands slid inside the torn front of his shirt, "Would this be your itch or mine?"

Daniel went back to licking Jack's throat right after he said, "Why would I be interested in any itch of yours?"

People had been telling Jack that Daniel was different now. Teal'c had said it before he died. Carter had said it, with a crink in her brow, as though she were thinking real hard, before Daniel had sent her on that liaison project to Russia.

Jack was just now thinking they might be right.

Except that it was very hard to think.

Daniel's hands pushed through his chest hair, Daniel's fingers slid over his nipples, around his nipples before grasping them between finger and thumb and twisting them effortlessly.

Daniel seems to know what he's doing, Jack thought as the shock arced through him.

Of course, he told himself. Daniel knows everything now.

Then he had to stop thinking so much while Daniel's lips and Daniel's hands tuned him like a radio.

And when he was adjusted properly, Jack thought foggily, Daniel stopped.

"Unzip me," Daniel said, sliding the bulge in his pants along Jack's hip. Daniel's voice was a little breathier now but still so even, so commanding, so careless, in a way.

Jack did.

But he stopped there, wishing he could stop there, making Daniel say, "Go ahead. You know you want to."

So, closing his eyes, as if he couldn't bear to see himself doing what he was told, Jack slid his hand into Daniel's silk boxers and pulled out the smooth hard part of Daniel that until two minutes ago he never would have thought he'd touch.

"Nice, Jack," Daniel hissed as Jack's hand slid around him. "I didn't think you'd know how to do this."

And his breath caught in his throat as Jack's hand slid up, then back down, and up again, his palm sliding over the tip.

"You'll get a better angle if you..."

And Daniel accompanied his words with a slight push on Jack's shoulder. Down.

It was the quick way Jack sank to the floor that humiliated him most. Daniel could see it in his face.

He wanted to keep watching Jack's face, watching what he was feeling, but his head fell back, as he gave in to enjoying the sensation. He couldn't see Jack's eyes, anyway. And Jack's eyes were the best part.

When Jack made a noise, a noise like "Mmnh," Daniel looked down again. To see that Jack had unzipped his own pants, had his own dick grasped awkwardly in his left hand, and was pumping away.

"I didn't say you could do that." Daniel's voice was silky steel.

Jack stopped moving for a second, stopped moving altogether.

He didn't look up.

If he did, if he saw Daniel looking down at him with anything like the arrogance that had just frosted the tone of his voice, he'd do something violent.

And that would end very badly for both of them.

He just knew it.

"Never mind," said Daniel. "Go ahead."

The blood was pounding in Jack's head, pounding in his hands - both of them. He could taste a metallic tinge of anger on the back of his tongue. He realized suddenly he was at least as furious as he was aroused. And that was a fuck of a lot.

This wasn't right.

But he couldn't stop himself from turning his head just the inch or two to look. Daniel's beautiful hardness sliding through his hand, the soft curls brushing against his wrist, the smooth flexing muscles of his belly just beyond. It was gorgeous to look at.

Jack licked his lips.

It couldn't have been more than five minutes since Daniel had walked into the room. Maybe seven or eight tops. How had this happened? What was happening?

Jack looked again, thought it again, licked his lips again.

Daniel stilled.

"Do you know how?" he asked.

And closing his eyes, refusing to look up, refusing to even wonder how Daniel had known what he was thinking, how easily he'd given himself away, Jack shook his head, infinitesimally, to one side then the other.

"Better not bother to try then," Daniel said dismissively, rolled his shoulders and went back to thrusting into Jack's hand.

"Besides, I'm close."

Hearing him say that made Jack's skin just that much hotter too.

For a second there was only the scrape and slap of flesh heard in the room, then Daniel murmured,

"Just a little tighter, Colonel."

And when Jack followed his orders Daniel grimaced, gasped, and thrust hard into Jack's hand as his come streaked down Jack's body.

The sound he made, the pulse in his hand pushed Jack over the edge and he groaned, adding new stripes to the pattern of the oriental rug.

Daniel backed up a step, walked to his desk, started flipping through some folders there. He tucked himself back in his pants but didn't even bother to zip up.

"See, Jack, people aren't so hard to handle," he said. "You just figure out what they want and give it to them when it suits *your* agenda to do it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just efficient."

Jack, breathing hard, slumped against the wall, stared at Daniel in disbelief.

"So thanks," Daniel said absently as he looked through the papers contained in one of the folders. He grabbed a pen, made a note as he said, "I usually have to get one of the secretaries to do that."

Jack's knees clicked ominously as he levered himself upright. His face was flushed, his hands sticky, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who had killed an awful lot of people in combat.

"What did you want, Daniel?" he said quietly.

"I told you. I figured out what's wrong with the second stage deployment meetings. It's that you're in them. You don't have to come." He glanced down at the rug, and a smile flickered across his face like a shadow when he looked back up at Jack. "Any more."

Jack's right hand was flexing, open and closed. Not the way you held a lover. The way you held a gun. Daniel saw it out of the corner of his eye, ignored it. He would have had to have misjudged Jack severely for Jack to pull a weapon on him now.

He never misjudged that badly.

And he was right. In the next second, Jack was gone. Out of the room, and probably out of the house.

Check, Dr. Jackson thought to himself as he strolled off towards his bedroom. If that didn't keep Jack out of his hair and away from this project for a while, his name wasn't Daniel Jackson.

And he'd have the lab guys come in and document the evidence, in case Jack caused too much trouble. Poor Colonel O'Neill going off the deep end, he could see himself saying. Breaking in to my house, jerking off in my library...

Plus, a decent orgasm, he thought to himself with part of his brain even as another part was parsing engineering diagrams for rocket launching platforms.

***

"Daniel, wake up," Jack said, flicking the archaeologist in the ear.

"Hunh," said Daniel, his head coming up off the uncomfortable pillow formed by his arms.

He looked around blearily. His office. His translation notes.

His commanding officer.

"You okay?" Jack looked concerned. Daniel's eyes were red and his face was creased from his sleeves. The former was normal - allergies - but the latter indicated he'd been sleeping some time, and Daniel really didn't usually do that. Not at his desk.

Daniel felt like shit. These post-Shifu-dream dreams still hit him every once in a while. He couldn't remember what happened in them, but he kept waking up desperately, desperately unhappy.

And hard as hell.

"Yeah, I think so," said Daniel, finding his glasses and sliding them onto his face.

"Well up and at 'em, buddy. We've got a debriefing in twenty."

"Jack," said Daniel as the colonel turned toward the door. "You still like me, don't you?"

Jack turned half back, looking puzzled even as he awarded Daniel one of his patented half-smiles. "What's not to like, Daniel?" he said before he headed back on out the door.