Kylie Lee | Slash fan fiction

The beat of the drums thrummed through Cameron Mitchell's body, traveling from his feet up his legs to his groin, then higher, into his stomach, up into his heart. His ears had finally grown accustomed to the relentless sound that had underpinned the last week, his time on PX4-833, which the locals called Ratha. A festival, a dance, a talk, a powwow, a party, an event. It had lasted the week. Tonight was the last night. Everyone would leave tomorrow. But tonight, food, drink, wine, mead, beer, sweets, fruits were all in abundance, and over it all the murmur of voices, sharp sounds of laughter, sudden whoops, children in small packs darting through the crowd, careless of who they pushed against.

"Hey!" he called when one boy chasing another knocked into him, sending his sandwich to the ground, and beside him, Daniel Jackson gave him a quick smile of sympathy, then turned back to his companion to resume their half-shouted conversation. When Daniel moved, he brushed against Cameron. They stood close together so they wouldn't lose one another in the crush of people, like Cameron had lost track of Samantha Carter. Teal'c hadn't come on the mission, and Vala had gone off on an expedition with a small trading party and would be back tomorrow.

Cameron felt heartily sick of trade routes, gate permissions, tariffs. Before he could muster up energy to go in search of more sandwich fixings, a slim woman began singing over the drums, her voice matching the tempo, fitting into the cadence, weaving over the repetitive heaviness like a bright ribbon. If he stood on his tiptoes, he could see her silhouetted by the bonfire. She raised her arms up, reaching to the heavens, perhaps reaching to her god in supplication, and when she turned, he realized that she was heavily pregnant.

The woman next to him—girl, really; she couldn't have been more than sixteen—turned and laughed. She took his hand in hers and placed it on her flat bare belly. It felt shockingly warm, her bare skin somehow obscene against his palm. She spoke just as firecrackers exploded behind him, making him jerk, because for a second, he thought it was weapons fire. When his eyes focused on her again, her pale hair artfully arranged, kohl darkening and lengthening her eyes, her lips wet in the firelight, her meaning was unmistakable. She was too young. She looked like she was dressed up for a masquerade party—masquerading as an adult, maybe.

"I'm flattered, but I don't think so," he told her, knowing she couldn't understand, so he shook his head and took his hand back just as Daniel hooked an arm over his shoulder and leaned his solid bulk in.

"He's with me," Daniel called to the girl, then repeated the words in the language that Cam had dubbed Esperanto because it sounded like he should be able to understand it, but couldn't. Daniel could, of course. She responded with another laugh and a barrage of words, and Daniel said something else, then said to Cam, large, false smile on his face, "Play along, or you and I are going to be at the mercy of her and her young friends for the rest of the evening."

Cam saw it coming, but still he said, "What—" as if to ask, as if to warn him away. Daniel kissed him briefly on the lips, and Cam slid his hand around Daniel so they stood together. His heart hammered, and the wood smoke filled his lungs because he breathed too hard now, gasping for air. The kiss had been perfunctory, the kiss of established lovers, but he could taste the sweet wine Daniel had been sipping.

"That's right, another happy couple." Cam managed his light, carefree voice. "On my planet, we have a word for girls like you, and that word is jailbait." He smiled, knowing she couldn't understand a word she said, and he hoped Daniel wouldn't let go. The girl touched their chests, one hand on each heart, and said something else.

"Ah," Daniel said. Cam couldn't read the tone, but Daniel's smile had frozen. "She wants to join us in our tent tonight."

"Oh, yay," Cam sighed. "Are we the kind of swinging gay couple that does that kind of thing?"

"I don't know," Daniel said. The woman by the bonfire stopped singing then, and everyone around them clapped, but their own tableau didn't move: a girl pretending to be a woman, touching their chests, offering herself to them, and Cam's hand tightened, gripping Daniel's shirt, because this was probably as close as he was going to get. "Are we?"

"What do you mean, are we?" Cam asked, still smiling. His hand clutched, and he knew Daniel could feel it, just as they both could feel the girl's hands. "What kind of thing is that to say? We who?" He was on the verge of panic, because it sounded to him like if he said the word, he, Daniel, and this girl would soon be having group sex in a tent. He needed a second to think. The drums beat down on him, making his blood dance. He should say "yes," because it was a pretext, the girl a conduit between them, the thing that would let him get what he'd wanted for months.

But before he could say it, Daniel spoke. "I study things like this," Daniel reminded him. "I didn't mean to freak you out. Anyway." He turned and spoke to the girl, who gave an exaggerated sigh and lifted her hands away. A new musician had taken the impromptu stage, this one playing a kind of flute, thin, high, and mournful. "And one last demonstration," Daniel said. He touched Cam's face tenderly, smiled, and Cam resisted the urge to say something like "Come here often, big boy?" or "We've got to stop meeting like this," or something silly and light—something he should have said to defuse it all. Instead, he smiled back, letting the self that hid behind his eyes peer out, the self that was afraid to let Daniel see too much. He couldn't relax his hand, and he knew Daniel must be aware of it, and of Cam's panic.

Daniel didn't kiss him again. The brief touch, the smile, and it lingered long enough for Cam to lay his own hand against Daniel's face, cupping the side of it, letting his fingers slide into Daniel's hair. His thumb caressed Daniel's face gently, intimately. Daniel's eyes met his, and he smiled. Cam didn't want to step away, but he did, finally releasing Daniel's shirt.

"Show's over," he said. He gave a half-bow to the girl, who threw up her hands, whirled away, and stomped off in a laughing fit of pique, joining a gaggle of girls, equally scantily clad, equally young, equally beautiful, equally available. He didn't want any of them.

"Cam—" Daniel said, his glasses flashing in the firelight. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize—well, I did, but I—"

"Realize what, Jackson?" Cam raised his eyebrows in exaggerated query. "Just playing along."

Daniel held his gaze. "I don't think so."

"You're supposed to play along too," Cam pointed out. "I think you know the rules." He'd broken them, after all.

"It's not a game," Daniel said. "I—I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry."

"Okay." Cam pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. "I'm going to the food tent for another sandwich. I won't be coming back to the tent tonight. I'll find somewhere else to sleep."

Daniel didn't follow him, but Cam thought he could feel Daniel's gaze bore into his back. He found himself matching his stride to the drums as he headed for the tent with the platters of roasted meat. He'd helped them dig the roasting pit two days ago, because he wasn't doing much else on this mission, leader of the team or no. He'd hauled rocks, too.

His hands trembled, and he thrust them into his pockets, then took them out again, because now Daniel Jackson knew how much Cam wanted him, and Cam hadn't wanted him to ever, ever know that.

"Sam!" he called when he saw Samantha Carter's bright hair. She wore her nondescript BDUs, although one of the native women had tried to dress her up. Sam had finally consented to let them apply makeup, so her eyes were dramatically rimmed and her lips were red. "Hey, Sam!" He jogged to catch up with her. "Having fun?" he asked. He was still breathless. His hand still remembered the texture of Daniel's face, his hair.

"Good food," Sam temporized. "You?"

Cam strove for rueful. "I just had to fight off a sixteen-year-old. And when I say sixteen, I'm being generous."

"Oh," Sam said, clearly understanding exactly what he was driving at.

"Thing is, she knows where my tent is," Cam lied, "so I was wondering if I could bunk in your tent tonight."

Sam frowned. "What about Daniel?"

"What about him?"

"Do you two want to switch tents with me, or is it just you, or what?"

"We can share, can't we?" Cam asked. "I'm a perfect gentleman. Obviously," he added.

Sam folded her arms. "So you're leaving poor Daniel to his fate," she theorized.

"That's it exactly. His fate. He knows precisely how to send away a sixteen-year-old girl."

"You could just move your tent," Sam suggested.

"Wouldn't help. Our tents are...distinctive. I think it's the high-tech materials and the round shape. Dead giveaway. So if the girl comes to your tent, hoping to find me—" Cam trailed off, letting the meaning hang there.

"Then she thinks you and I are together and she goes away," Sam finished. "Isn't this a lot of trouble for a minor annoyance?"

"Very funny. Ha ha. Minor annoyance. Look, will you let me sleep in your tent tonight or not?"

"Fine. Yes." Sam threw up her hands.

"Good idea." Cam clapped her on the shoulder. "Thanks, Sam. I owe you one. We can stay up all night, tell ghost stories, do each other's hair—"

"Shut up," Sam said, and turned and stomped away.

Cam coughed when a stray breeze sent a puff of wood smoke right into his face. Its heavy scent warred with the smell of roasting meat, and suddenly he wasn't hungry any more. He saw his sixteen-year-old friend, surrounded by others her equal in beauty, throw back her head and laugh, and before she could see him, he slipped into the narrow alley between the large open-fronted tents full of food and drink, and picked his way back to the campsite. He'd get a couple things from his tent, including his sleeping bag, and head over to Sam's tent.

He didn't use a flashlight until he reached the tent he shared with Daniel. There was no way he could share with Daniel tonight—not until he could get his head around Daniel's little game. Had he been played? He'd known somehow, sensed the flash of heat from Cam's body, calling to Daniel, searing desire. He flicked his flashlight on and stuck it in his mouth as he packed his duffle. A fresh set of underwear, his shaving kit, his toothbrush, some bottled water. Just the essentials. He rolled up his sleeping bag with the precision of long practice. Daniel's side of the tent was a disaster as usual, things thrown helter-skelter. He didn't look at it.

His eyes had gotten used to light, so he used the flashlight as he made his way to Sam's tent, pitched quite a way away. The campsite had gotten big over the last few days, and he had some trouble keeping his bearings. Finally he flicked the light off and stood there, duffle at his feet, sleeping bag under one arm, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the light thrown only by the moon and stars. Lack of light pollution meant that the pinpoint lights blazed overhead, more stars visible than he would have thought possible on a planet. He could hear faint snatches of music, and closer by, sounds of love coming from a nearby tent. He thought of the sixteen-year-old girl. It suddenly struck him that Sam might have wanted to take someone, a man, to her tent tonight. He didn't know about that side of her. Their friendship, close as it was, did not involve talking about lovers, or doing each other's hair, or staying up late telling ghost stories.

He thought of Daniel as he listened to the unseen couple, remembering the quick press of lips that said we are a couple. He hadn't dreamed that could ever actually happen. And then it had been presented as a kind of joke, let's send the little girl away, only it wasn't.

It wasn't.

After a few long minutes, still aware of the relentless beat of the drums, he resumed his walk to Sam's tent, its round shape distinct now that he could see beyond the light cast by his tiny torch. He unzipped the opening, ducked in, and closed it behind him.

"Oh, man," he said involuntarily when he immediately tripped over something. Out came his flashlight, and a quick play about the tent revealed that Vala had left quite a few of her belongings behind. It looked like Sam had a messy roommate too. A disconcertingly large wooden trunk hung open, clothes spilling out. Cam didn't remember Vala lugging that with her. Fanciful and improbable women's undergarments hung from a makeshift line strung from one side of the tent to the other, presumably to dry. Cosmetics, food—including a box of Cap'n Crunch, with Crunch Berries, for god's sake—clothing, shoes, blankets, a bolt of fabric, balls of yarn—

"I don't even want to know," Cam said aloud. He also didn't want to know why Vala had missed the party. It was most unlike her. No doubt one of the men who had invited her on the expedition had managed to capture her interest. But of course it was well known that she made play after play for Daniel, who somehow steadfastly refused to give in to her—maybe because she was like a sixteen-year-old girl, all show and fun, and you'd wake up the next day, and look down at her, and you'd regret what you'd done, because Vala would skip away without a backward glance. She couldn't love you. It wasn't in her nature. You'd give yourself, and she'd laugh and take what she wanted, and then she'd leave.

Daniel wasn't like that.

Neither was Cam.

He spent twenty minutes putting everything he thought was Vala's into the big wooden trunk, eating handfuls of Cap'n Crunch, even though the sugary cereal made the inside of his mouth feel odd. He took down the clothesline without bothering to remove the now-dry items, and he balled it up and flung it into the trunk. He lay his own sleeping bag over Vala's—a little extra padding never went amiss—and then visited the lavatories on the edge of the campsite. While he was there, he brushed his teeth with the bottled water he'd brought along, ridding his mouth of the taste of the strange Crunch Berries. When he got back to the tent, ready to change and slide into his sleeping bag, he noticed that Sam's sleeping bag was gone. He couldn't tell whether any of her things were gone because she'd stowed them all away to begin with, but her small backpack was missing as well. It looked like Sam had been by to visit while he'd been gone, and they wouldn't be staying up all night talking after all. The thought relieved him. He didn't want to talk about what had happened with Daniel, but he didn't want to think about anything else.

It only took him a few minutes to get ready for bed. When he slid into his sleeping bag, he suddenly felt exhausted. He didn't want to think—about seeing Daniel tomorrow, about what he'd say, about the construction of normality he'd have to make up, about military rules, about any of it.

When a voice whispered "hey," he came instantly awake, soldier's reflexes engaging. It was still night. He could hear the distant sounds of the party. Not much time had passed, then—perhaps a few hours

"I thought you took your stuff," he told Sam.

"What?" the voice said, confused.

The pause lengthened. Then: "Sorry, I thought you were Sam."

"Well, I'm not," Daniel said.

"I know that now." Cam kept his voice very calm. "I was trying to avoid you."

"Yeah, that's why I offered to switch with Sam," Daniel agreed. He'd stripped down to his boxers and socks. His pale skin shone slightly in the dimness. "I thought we needed to talk."

"Well, we don't." Cam pulled his sleeping bag up over his shoulder. "Did you zip the door shut? It's cold in here."

"Oh. Sorry. No."

Cam squeezed his eyes shut and listened as Daniel zipped up the doorway.

"Cam."

It didn't surprise him. They were going to talk whether Cam wanted to or not. "Jackson, I really don't want to talk about it," Cam said desperately. "It's okay. It's all good. It never happened. It's fine. I would really appreciate your cooperation here."

"In pretending nothing happened."

"Right. In pretending nothing happened."

"Okay." More rustling. Then Daniel burst out, as Cam knew he would: "I shouldn't have done that. I don't know why I did."

"Jackson, shut up." He kept his voice as measured and emotionless as he could.

"I thought maybe you—you did," Daniel rushed on, eliding what exactly Cam had done. "I kind of thought that you did. But I didn't know for sure, and every time I looked, you backed off, you shut down."

"Jackson." Cam injected a note of warning in his voice. The drums kept his mind steady. He could capture their beat, feel the sound, tune himself to it, implacable and unyielding. Against his better judgment, he found himself continuing, when he'd sworn to himself to say nothing, to feign sleep, to withdraw—anything to make Daniel shut up. "I lead the team you serve on. I'm in the military, for god's sake. What I think or feel doesn't matter. At all."

Daniel shook his sleeping bag out next to Cam's. "Now, see, I happen to think it does." He unzipped the bag, sat on it, and wiggled inside. He reached for the airline-style neck pillow he packed when he went camping, settled himself in, and set his hands on his chest, fingers interlaced. He was mere inches away from Cam.

"Tell me why you did it," Cam ordered, before Daniel could ask him how he felt, because that was next. He could feel it in his bones, the bones that carried his flesh and shook with the percussion of the drums.

Daniel's head turned to his, a pale oval, features indistinguishable. "To make you react. To see."

"And did you see?" Cam demanded. "Did you?"

"You know I did," Daniel murmured.

"I don't know anything." Cam pillowed his head on an arm as he rolled toward Daniel—Daniel, so close—eye to eye, demanding truth. "Would you seriously have taken that girl back to our tent? The three of us?"

"Yes," Daniel said, without hesitation. "To be with you."

The answer was so bald, so unexpected, that Cam was literally unable to speak.

"I already told you how I feel," Daniel said, and now he rolled on his side, so they were face to face. He reached out and touched Cam's face before he knew that Daniel was going to move, and he froze. Daniel leaned in, and there it was again: that dry, brief kiss, the one that showed the girl that they were longtime lovers, with no need for showy display. Daniel pulled away and put his head back down, eyes glittering slightly in the dark as he gazed at Cam, waiting for something.

"I can't," Cam ground out. "You know I can't."

"You can," Daniel whispered. "Please." He unerringly found Cam's hand, and he set it on his chest, where the girl's hand had pressed, branding them both, linking them together with her own playful desire. "Please. I have wanted it. As much as you. More than you. Night after night. Please." He set his own hand on Cam's chest, and Cam felt Daniel's heat sear through his body, setting it afire.

He didn't pull away when Daniel leaned in again. His hand remembered the shape of Daniel's head, he found, the texture of his hair, and the scent of wood smoke and meat had long given way to Daniel's scent. When Daniel finally, finally pressed his mouth against Cam's, when he kissed him with lips and tongue and heart, Cam had to shut his eyes. He couldn't answer with words, so he let his body answer instead.

Daniel still tasted like sweet wine, like something intoxicating. He couldn't speak, so he let his body become an instrument under Daniel's hands. The drums still sounded, but now their sound merged with the thrum of blood in his veins, with Daniel's gasp for air when they'd struggled free of the sleeping bags and clothing and Cam could take Daniel in his hands. Hard, and velvet, and soft, and all of it made him dizzy, like the smell of wood smoke, and startled, like the sound of firecrackers, making his heart jump.

He felt Daniel's hot hardness against his hip, his belly, and wherever he touched, Daniel responded with desperate intensity. Chest, hips, shoulder blade, collar bone, all of it accessible and warm under his lips, all of it for him, all of it given freely, until touch accrued and exploded and Daniel's voice raised in ecstasy, wild and finally, finally incoherent. He'd taken the very words from Daniel, just as Daniel took him from himself.

He gave himself up to the relentless beat of the drums, letting his bones absorb the sound until he could open his mouth when he came, Daniel's mouth on him, sounding like a drum, finally one with the music.

They set their hands over the heart of the other, feeling the pulse, the steady beat as it slowed, ecstasy returning to normality, but nothing was the same, nothing at all. Daniel did not try to speak, and Cam knew that again, he'd revealed all, said everything, opened himself up, all without saying a word.

The drums would continue to sound, the pulse would continue to beat. Today would blend into tomorrow, and the percussive music would still sound, mouth against mouth, over and over again, the drums thrumming like breath, like heartbeat, desire underlying it, and all of it, all of it, was Daniel.