Absolute Power

by

Boots

Daniel realised his milkshake was blueberry flavoured. He looked around to see the rest of the cafeteria was drinking the same pale blue concoction out of tall plastic Tupperware glasses. A little Luke Skywalkers' Moisture Farm Beverage humour from the kitchen staff, maybe. It tasted revolting. Despite what it quipped about American wit and its knack for self-parody.

And here comes Captain Stars 'n Stripes himself. Jack waltzed in, a bounce in his steps, a machine gun at his hips and sat his (unnecessarily) camouflaged ass down.

"Daniel, my man." Jack drank from his own milkshake, seemingly enjoying Colour Blue 14 and Flavours 89 and 110.

"Jack, I'm fine," Daniel gestured that Jack could have his as well, Jack obligingly sucked both down. Daniel panicked for a moment, what if Jack decided it'd be good for morale to sneeze milk?

But Jack swallowed hard to free his mouth and asked: "Who says I cared?"

"Sorry to insinuate you're a sensitive commander, sir," Daniel shrugged. "But 'my man'? I don't have to take that sort of language from you."

"All right, I'm a bit worried, I can admit that," Jack shifted his shoulders, one back, one forward.

He has this weird body language, when he's caught out, Jack looked like he's about to break into a bout of retro disco dancing.

"You shot me Jack, five times, wearing a pastel coloured shirt," Daniel opened his hands, a good public speaking skill, present the problem to your audience, lift and hold it up in front of their faces with your empty upturned palms, conjugate. "I'd be weird if I wasn't a bit disturbed by that."

"Daniel," Jack gasped sympathy, long and smoothly toned. Daniel noted to himself that you needed to have Carter's manners to pull that one off. On Jack, it just sounded whiney and a shade amorous.

"I can't help it, it was such an awful shirt."

Jack laughed, but his eyes said 'I'm onto you, I can play this game': "What colour was it?"

"Lilac." Oh yeah, Jack, psychoanalyse that.

"Sorry, is that pink?" Jack tipped his head.

Right, good counter.

"Okay, and I was wearing a pair of white bottoms. Fitting white slacks, off-white top, tucked in," Daniel cringed as he remembered how the fabric cupped his butt, the absolute power must've really gone to his head.

"What were we, gay lovers?" Jack asked loudly, with an incredulous smirk. "Oh god, that must've been a really bad trip. That's what She Feng taught you about the Gou'lad and how their technology destroys the earth?"

"No, we were launching satellites, I threw Carter in jail and you came to assassinate me, I sent Teal'c away, probably had him executed . . . " hastily, Daniel tried to continue, he did not want to go THERE, but it was too late.

"I know, Teal'c was the other man, broke my heart, so I came charging at you with drawn arms," Jack was having a good time. "But Carter's gotta be in this too, okay, SHE was carrying my love child, which you didn't like, that's the reason why you ran off with Teal'c in the first place."

"Jack, I'm only telling this stuff once," Daniel was annoyed, mostly because he sort of wanted to know what happens in Jack's story.

"Fine, stopping, but you know Daniel," Jack patted his hand comfortingly. "We were beautiful together."

There, final indication of Jack's sexuality there, only really straight men can do camp jokes like that. He might as well shout it from the top of the gate, show off.

"Listen," Daniel sighed tiredly. "I had all this Gou'lad knowledge. Their technology, language and reasoning. I knew all this stuff that no else on earth did. And suddenly everyone seemed so inferior, like, trained farm animals. They had so many resourced that they weren't using. I convinced the US military to let me launch a satellite defence system, it was the star wars programme all over again but with meaner Gou'lad blue prints. I got rid of everyone in the SGC, got Teal'c killed in action on a mission, made you retire, convinced everyone Sam was a mad conspiracy theorist driven insane by occupational jealousy. For a year, I walked around looking like an innocent nerd with a niche. Next thing you know, I override the controls for the satellites and vaporised Moscow."

Jack looked at Daniel for a long moment, his eyes sharp and glazed alternately, like he was thinking, calculating.

"You know what Daniel," he got up from his seat. "Those shakes gave me a craving, I think I'm gonna get some blueberry pancakes, you want some?"

"Er," Daniel tensed, Jack, eating from the cafeteria, of his own free will. Danger, danger. Using the term 'craving', triple danger. "Banana thanks. I take it you're not letting me get away with stopping here?"

"Exactly, stay right there." Jack bustled away and scared up some fried flour dough real fast. "Here Daniel, I made sure they gave you EXTRA ice cream."

"I was wrong about you not caring, Jack," Daniel made sure he said it like a threat.

Jack just grinned. It was an annoying trait, cheerfulness in the face of difficulty, even if it made a good attitude for soldiering.

"Put some flesh onto those buttocks," Jack winked. "So I can grab . . . "

Daniel's head shot up.

"Sorry," Jack shrugged. "I'm not homophobic, honestly. It's just nice to get a reaction to one of my jokes once in a while."

"Even a negative one?" Daniel attempted his most contemptuous chin lift. "Frankly, I find it offensive and confronting."

"What, you feeling threatened, DANIEL?" Jack's brows knotted, his upper lip peeled back. "Harassed, even. Wanna file a suit?"

"Okay, this is all going wrong," Daniel set his cutlery down carefully. "I have plenty of reports to write, so maybe you can get all this from reading one of them all the way though for once."

"No," Jack stared blankly at Daniel's belt buckle.

Daniel shook his head and decided to leave anyway, it was just getting too scary.

"Daniel, I BROUGHT YOU FOOD," Jack said.

Daniel leaned down and looked at the colonel's face. It was displaying a surprisingly comprehensive collection of guilty eyebrows, sorry mouth, sullen nose and gorgeous apologetic eyes.

"I kept going Jack," Daniel sunk back into his seat, his chest hurt, he didn't want Jack to know what happened, in his dream. Because it felt real, because if you could chose what happened in your sleep, it was, essentially, the same as living it. That's what life was, an experience which you create out of your personal choices. And Daniel had chosen to keep Jack alive. "After I blasted Moscow and took over earth."

Jack searched his face, Daniel trembled inside himself. "You told Hammond about your dream, vision, whatever, right up you blew up Moscow. But in actuality you slept on for a few more minutes after you dreamed all that. What did you see Daniel?"

"The time lapse doubled," Daniel told Jack. "The first was one year, between my designing the Gou'lad satellite defence systems and launching it. The next was two years, then four, then eight and sixteen, faster and faster. In the end, it was millennial. But you . . ."

Jack looked placid, sitting back with a full stomach, like he was gonna be okay with whatever Daniel told him. Daniel argued with himself that in any case he could conclude with the line 'And then I woke up, what a wacky dream eh Jack?'. So he took a deep breath, and told him.

"You shot at me, but I was behind an energy shield. I said 'Didn't you think it funny you got through security with a loaded gun?' and you replied, quite ironically 'It WAS a little odd'. Then I said 'You were never very smart." And you nodded 'yeah.'"

Daniel swallowed hard, here comes the tricky part.

"I sat in my chair, it was a really fantastic chair with control panels and red buttons that held the world in my power. And I looked over at you, sitting there on the ground, after you'd fired the shots, after you betrayed me. I thought, that's a bit dumb of you to try something so futile as a buddy-assassination. Then it dawned on me, you expected to fail. You knew you'd never stop me. To come on the day of the launch, you were surrendering yourself to me. You couldn't fight me, so you decided to try it anyway in the most hopeless way possible, just to get near me, to get so completely under my control that you wouldn't have to think anymore, you could run out of choices and do whatever I made you do."

"Absolute power," Jack whispered.

"Yeah," Daniel answered, raspy. "I checked out your chest, back, arms and legs as I impressed my rule upon Asia, the Pacific, America, Europe and Africa. Gold lights popped up on digital world maps to indicate submission from the continents. As you sat there, looking exasperated and wide mouthed. Speechless."

"Out of character," Jack said. "I thought I would have used the last bullet on myself or something. That'd be more tragic, wouldn't it?"

Daniel smiled the sweetest, saddest little smile. "But you didn't, Jack."

"Not even a fit where you foam at the mouth and call me a monster. You just looked like it was YOUR heart I'd removed with a scalpel and bare hands. So we reached an understanding. When the day was over, you followed me to my bedroom."

Jack's silence was full of 'And?"

"Argh, you don't need me to draw a picture," Daniel waved his fork.

Jack blinked, uncooperatively.

"I was the Gou'lad satrap-king and you were my trophy consort!" Daniel flicked crepes all around. "We made BDSM love in my room, time flash two years. I had you decked out in gold bracelets, gold penis jewellery and slave marked like Teal'c once I allied with the Gou'lads, time flash four years. We both wore those damned armour, we looked like gods, earth was the newest Gou'lad colony, time flash eight years. Still young, you became my right hand man, the most ruthless god ever, time flash. Flash, flash, the earth depleted, a wasteland. You and I still together and you hate me as much as ever."

"I turned all the love that made you unable to kill me and come to me, into the deepest, most twisted hatred. Time lost meaning, all the flashes were when we were in bed. I hurt you, I thrust into you, Jack, I need you for years and years and years."

"But you woke up, Daniel," Jack didn't sound enraged at all, but Daniel thought he should be. "It had to end?"

Daniel risked to meet Jack's eye, it was important he get this bit across. "Oh no Jack, no. I remember it got too much, the images so fast. My eyes are open."

"Yes they are, Daniel," Jack mourned at the pain he saw there.

"But I still see them, like another life I'm living simultaneous to this one, only it's so fast, so gross, it's not something I see anymore, it's a sharp PINGING at the back of my head. Like a high frequency wave. God Jack, She Feng never took the knowledge back, I don't think he trust humans to learn their lessons in one go. He wants me constantly knowing for a fact that anyone of us can degenerate, we have the greatest capacity for evil, if we'd only acknowledge it."

"Daniel!" Jack came around the table and placed both hands on his temple. "You mean you're still hurt? Okay, let's go, see Janet."

"No!" Daniel tried to pull Jack's hands away, but they braced around his forehead, thumbs brushing soothingly over his eyebrows, eight long fingers anchored in his hair and sending pleasant electrical buzzing though his scalp, down his spine, to his dick.

"Aw for gods sakes!" Jack suddenly hugged Daniel's head.

In the middle of the cafeteria, full with the afternoon shift crowd, Jack pressed Daniel's face into his hot chest, suffocating the scientist, Jack's hands patting his neck and back sloppily, ceaselessly.

Daniel drowned for a minute then began to struggle, his arms twitched, waved, flailed, finally grasping onto Jack's trim waist and pushed him away.

"Sorry, sorry!" Jack placated by stepping back from Daniel, who looked furious, distraught, vulnerable. Not at all like the resourceful, emotional tight-ass Jack was used to.

"Jack, if you really are sorry, could you," Daniel's face was mute, he readjusted his glasses and pushed away his plate. Meal over. Get lost. "Please go. I'm not in the mood anymore."

Jack pulled at his olive green shirt, tidying himself, recreating the distance between them, army guy and geek, superior officer and civilian, straight gun toting man and impressive brain boy. God, they were so different and far apart, it was depressing. There was no winning against odds like that.

"Fine," Jack turned and left.

But when he got two tables away, he u-turned and came back. For ridiculous unarticulated reasons, Daniel's heart raced as Jack closed in, using the direct fastest route.

"Jack," he murmured as Jack got close and personal with him again.

"Daniel," Jack hissed, hot faced.

"Do you think I could borrow your buy-card?" Jack said. "Mine ran out of credit and it seems I can't actually pay for this meal, right now. Please?"

Weakly, Daniel waved his hand. "Don't worry, I've got it."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

Daniel slumped into his seat. He ran his hands through his cropped hair, but that was a bad move, a reminder of the feel of Jack's hands a moment ago. Suddenly, waves of disappointment caught up with him. And Daniel was hit by the recognition that whilst confiding in Jack was hard, he had somehow, unconsciously, thought something would come of it.

After all, he did just tell Jack, in another life, he chose Jack and loved him, profoundly, in however a megalomaniacal way. They were LOVERS, and that poor Jack love him, Daniel the monster.

But nothing happened.

As he walked a corridor that would take him back to his lab, Daniel thought about what was averted. It made him want to throw himself into a wall and have a breakdown. A childish fit where he could bang feet and head into hard surfaces and scream for Jack, demand for Jack, blackmail, sabotage, MAKE Jack Daniel's.

Instead, Daniel lowered his head and made his step all the more regular. Efficiently he headed for the safety of the lab and artefacts and normalcy. Another mission will come along, some other crisis and this'll be forgotten. Daniel should be grateful Jack hadn't reacted any other way . . . hadn't . . .

A hand snatched his shirt collar and pulled him into an alcove in the endless maze of walkways. A hard, sturdy body pressed Daniel's back into the wall. Jack's hipbone locked into his, a sharp twinge like a spear in his side.

"Bastard," Jack spat, spots of enraged colour in his high cheekbones.

"Rolled me over and fucked me," Jack said, his lips hot glossy and blood pumped. "In your dreams."

Daniel was hard and afraid and angry, his right fist lashed out and connected with Jack's jaw, even as Jack's mouth mushed his and slyly stole out his tongue.

The punch did not dislodge Jack at all. He sucked and kissed and swallowed Daniel. His hips shifted and now instead of protruding hipbones, Daniel could feel the hardness in Jack's crotch, and Daniel revelled, in finding absolute power.

"Harem of one, ONE, do you understand?" Jack muttered senselessly, grinding his cock into Daniel's obscenely. "Keep me with you, and you can stick your Gou'lad in my asshole all you want Daniel Jackson. I gotta the hotest, wetest, tightest place for the snake."

Daniel dug his knuckles between Jack's clothes covered buttocks, toothing cruelly on Jack's shoulder. "And, and in consideration?"

"Rule me, and be ruled in return," Jack said, in a rare moment of poetry, whilst Daniel judged it a good time to come.