Work Text:
Daniel plugs the drain, rolls up his sleeves, sloshes warm water and dishwashing liquid into the sauce pot and the pasta pot and colander, and sets the pots back on the cold stove to soak while he moves plates and utensil-filled salad bowls into the sink. The dishes are his end of the deal: when they're at his place they eat takeout straight from the containers; when they're at Jack's, Jack cooks and he does the washing-up. While he works, the way somebody else might whistle or sing along with the radio, Daniel details the myriad flaws of a Discovery Channel show he watched last night in some kind of masochistic fit.
Jack doesn't have a dishwasher in his modest kitchen, which is odd given that he's always got some kind of home-improvement project in the works and as a general contractor's son who helped out with the family business when he was a kid he's fully capable of installing one himself, never mind how they've all automated their lives as much as possible -- lawn services, cleaning services, direct deposit, automatic debit, everything set up so that quotidian maintenance isn't neglected during eighty-hour work weeks and protracted absences.
Daniel pours an artistic swirl of Dawn over the top plate and washes the wineglasses under the running tap to work up a sudsy bath for the dishes. He's still griping about the show, but what he's thinking about is self-cleaning ovens, frost-free freezers, timed lawn sprinklers. The griping's automated too. He doesn't expect much from TV, he doesn't really care about the show, but when he's at Jack's, when it's just them unwinding with a blessedly ordinary evening, he can relax and let his thoughts and his mouth run on autopilot, say whatever comes into his head, no worries, no self-consciousness, no overthinking. He's glad Jack doesn't have a dishwasher. He likes the comfort of the routine task of soaping and rinsing. He'd clean Jack's oven if it ever needed it. He'd water the lawn. Defrost the freezer. Those are things you do when you're home, and he's home here.
He's working up to an enjoyably scathing condemnation of unqualified celebrities playing at archaeology when it occurs to him that Jack hasn't put coffee on yet. It's part of Jack's part of the deal, but he's probably caught up in whatever old movie he's found for them to watch, or he's stewing about Teal'c, kicking himself for failing to get him out of the mountain for the evening. Daniel's worried about Teal'c too, but Teal'c made his preference for grieving Shaun'auc in private clear, and dragging him out would make Jack feel better at Teal'c's expense. Daniel will tell him that, if he brings it up.
Coffee first. Daniel lays the sponge in its little cradle, rinses his hands along with the second wineglass, and sets the glass beside its mate in the drainer with one hand while he turns the water off with the other. In the quiet, he can hear a TV commercial from the far room. He can also hear Jack's footsteps in the hall, so he reaches for the sponge again instead of the dishtowel, and starts on the plates. The water's warm and sudsy, the stoneware a pleasantly curved weight, the tomato sauce already dissolving in the detergent, his work half done, and Jack's coming out to make coffee, holding up his end of the deal.
Jack steps up and slides arms around him from behind. Slow and easy, his body molds itself to Daniel's, chest to spine, groin to rump. His hands shape themselves to Daniel's ribs and abs through a ruck of shirt, and his forearms contract gently around Daniel's middle. For a couple of seconds it doesn't even register; they're home, it's Friday, dinner's done, Jack's dropping off an affectionate squeeze on his way to the coffeemaker. Then it sinks in, that Jack has never done this before, that they don't do this -- that Jack is actually doing this. He's supposed to be shocked, but he's not shocked; he's stilled by how perfectly normal it feels, Jack's front against his back, Jack's hands on his belly, Jack's face in his hair.
Jack's lips touching the bare skin behind his ear.
In a dimension deep within the one they physically inhabit, this is how it's always been, this is how they've always lived, what they've always done; without ever thinking about it, Daniel has always known what Jack's body is telling him now for the first time, depended on it -- taken as given that this is how they are, what they are. It's a shared existence in a sun-drenched shadow universe, a peaceful life of domestic contentment that runs on a parallel but separate track. He's felt it sometimes, wholly unconsciously, in the breath of a replete, happy sigh, the curve of a shy, shared smile. He's glimpsed it sometimes, without direct awareness, in brief washes of deja vu, at the corners of vision, in sweet brushes of almost-memory that never come clear. It can't come clear. It has no substance. It doesn't manifest in an apprehensible way. The intimate press of Jack's body, easygoing, familiar, natural, is reality turned inside-out.
Daniel hangs suspended in the suffusing convergence of dimensions. When they separate again, the realm where their true selves' projections dwell will continue no matter what he does now, or doesn't do; if he doesn't lean back into the sweaty solidity of Jack's embrace, if he doesn't push his ass into the inviting swell at Jack's groin and take Jack's hand in his sudsy hands and move it down to cup his firming cock, their parallel lives will go on undisturbed. They'll cook and laugh and watch old movies, eat and drink and make love, sleep safe in the knowledge that they'll wake again to the simple, unending contentment of each other's company. It's what they are; it's who they are; it's self-maintaining and continuous and eternal, wherever they go and whatever they do in this harsh, hard reality.
Jack's heartbeat thuds against his back. In the summer-hot, cooking-hot, arousal-hot kitchen, the fridge condenser grinds heroically, then cuts out. The only sound and movement left in the room are tiny soap bubbles popping and crackling in the sink and along Daniel's arms.
The moment stretches on, and Jack doesn't laugh it off, doesn't blame the wine, doesn't push back and ruffle Daniel's hair to downplay the embrace into a garrulous friendship display. He keeps standing there, keeps holding, as if he could stand and hold forever.
He whispers Daniel's name.
It's Friday, and they're home, and Daniel's free to say whatever comes into his head. No overthinking. No self-consciousness. No worries.
He says, "Yes," and the dimensions slide effortlessly together and meld into one.