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Jack fondled his king's bishop, sliding his fingers down over the fat swell of its mitre, running his forefinger idly across the slit. He rolled its collar between thumb and ring finger so that its felted base rotated back and forth and it did the Twist on its polished bloodwood square. His forefinger stayed raised through the dance, then drifted down to land on the little knob at the top of its head and rub in slow circles. Finally he moved his hand down and centered the piece precisely on the square before releasing it, unmoved, to shift his attention to the queen's knight. He stroked its head and down the curve of its neck, then gave it a light tap on the nose and left it where it was, too, to see if his middle fingertip would fit inside the ring of a rook's crenellated battlement. It didn't, but the index finger did.
The pieces remained unmoved. Daniel didn't.
Neither of them being interested in supper or chitchat, they'd sat down to play as soon as he arrived ninety minutes ago, and they were barely five exchanges in. Still in the opening game, which Jack usually played with savage speed; still deploying and developing when they should have been well into the midgame by now. Jack was taking an eternity between moves. Touching first one piece, then another, scanning the board with his sharp eyes, changing his mind, touching another piece.
It seemed to have changed his game, and not for the better; black's position was starting to look dangerously overdeveloped towards the queen's side. Maybe it was a trap, maybe the change in tempo was meant to put Daniel off his game, but if Jack was trying to play smarter by slowing down, it wasn't working as far as Daniel could tell.
All it had succeeded in doing so far was give Daniel a hard-on.
Jack fiddled with things all the time. It was most evident at work, where Daniel's arousal switches were flipped firmly off, and at work it didn't go on long enough to trigger him anyway. Too much tapping or twirling of pens during briefings brought sharp glances from Hammond, too much blithe handling of artifacts brought sharp words from him, and too much playing with condiment containers in the commissary brought weird looks from junior officers. Here, in a private setting, when it was just the two of them, when Jack kept doing it and doing it, Daniel found himself incapable of suppressing his response.
Jack leaned over the board, elbows on his thighs, right hand hovering while he surveyed his pieces as if pondering which one to grope next. Daniel knew that tactile input helped him process. They'd always played informally and never been sticklers about etiquette. The main point of the touch-move rule was to spare the opponent from being distracted, and until now Daniel hadn't found Jack's fidgeting distracting. But at home Jack's fidgety fiddling was usually addressed to his beer bottle or a snack or some other object, rarely the board, and he'd never violated the rules of chess quite like this. Except for his right hand, his body had stayed relaxed and still, and there was no tension or preoccupation in his expression. He didn't seem to be doing it on purpose. He was intent on the game, unself-conscious, and apparently oblivious of Daniel's predicament.
Daniel had been hard for an hour. His balls ached. He thought the seam in his crotch might be permanently imprinted on his scrotum. His erection lay between his thigh and his hip, either cradled or squeezed depending on whether he was exhaling or inhaling. He was fairly sure that it wasn't noticeable, given the way he was leaning, but that would change immediately if he sat back. Ask Jack to go get him a beer so that he could make an escape to the bathroom, and Jack would tell him he knew where the fridge was. Untucking his shirt and letting the tails hang was an uncharacteristic thing for him to do and would only draw Jack's attention. Asking for a throw pillow and then putting it in his lap instead of behind his back would make the situation pathetically obvious.
With anyone else, it wouldn't have mattered. He'd have brazened it out, excused himself and gone to cool off, if necessary made a joke about how stimulating the game was, done what he could to ease the embarrassment of the person he was playing with, felt zero embarrassment personally. But with anyone else, he wouldn't be turned on. And if Jack noticed -- which he, of all people, would -- charming self-mockery wouldn't cut it. Jack knew him too well.
Jack knew everything but this one thing. While he might take it calmly in stride, Daniel could extrapolate a number of painful consequences of letting him find out, and that move, once made, could never be taken back.
To discourage the fiddling, he considered invoking the rules and demanding that Jack announce every adjustment, but if fiddling was helping Jack think, that could make it take twice as long. He considered offering to finish the game by mail to speed things up, but Jack was unpredictable tonight and might respond to sarcasm by dawdling even more. He could suggest a round of speed chess, throw his hands up in frustration and resign the game and leave; he could -- heaven forfend -- ask Jack if something was wrong.
Or he could keep sitting here, with Jack, in Jack's house, which of all the options available to him in his off hours was the only one that made him genuinely happy, and deal. The arousal itself was nice. A little intense, a little throbbing for comfort in company, and he wouldn't feel right about sitting here relishing it, secretly getting his jollies watching Jack fondle chessmen, but the ache was sweet and he liked watching Jack touch things, and if his own pants weren't trying to castrate him he really wouldn't mind the slow pace all that much. He could let the heat in his groin simmer, well below his top-level awareness, bear down and focus on his game and let it ease off on its own, and when the evening had ended and he'd driven back to his apartment, he'd have a rocking orgasm awaiting him in the privacy of his bed, whether he indulged himself with mind's-eye replays of Jack's fondling hands, or not.
But Jack was still contemplating, and Daniel's pants were killing him, and Jack wouldn't blink an eye at him giving his boys a little breathing room, so he hiked up off the seat of the armchair and reached to tug the inseam of his Dockers towards his knees.
Without taking his eyes off the board, without appearing to look at him at all, Jack said, "You're supposed to say 'j'adoube' before you do that."
Daniel froze for one blink of the eyes, then eased his butt back into the chair. The startling bloom of French vowels and consonants in the Midwestern English, the perfect prosody of the soft phrase, gently stirred the fine hairs in his cochlea, drifted through his vestibular cortex, feathered down his brainstem and spine to stroke between his legs. A cascade of comprehension rushed down behind it; the realization that Jack's dismissive mention of a little schoolroom French was a gross understatement, a typical self-deprecation that he should have seen through long ago, was only the first trickle. Of course Jack knew the rules. Jack thrived in a choking miasma of rules, absorbed them effortlessly, retained them permanently. Of course Jack knew the effect his fiddliness had on him. Jack excelled at speed chess and his slow playing had nothing to do with this game and everything to do with a game Daniel hadn't known they were playing. Everything Jack had been doing had been in lieu of making a move, from messing with the artifacts in his lab to inviting him over for protracted chess games that six times in ten ended in a draw to adjusting his pieces so relentlessly and egregiously that Daniel should have protested a dozen times over.
Daniel looked at him for a long time, absolutely deadpan, and then replied, "Only if it's my move. Not supposed to touch at all otherwise."
Without a flicker of hesitation, Jack slid his king's bishop across to queen's knight four and said, "It's your move."
Unless Jack had something up his sleeve that Daniel couldn't see, Daniel would have him in check in three more exchanges, mated in five.
White always moved first, and Jack had always insisted that Daniel play white.
Daniel pushed slowly out of his chair, watching Jack's gaze rise to follow his movement, then drop to take in the state of him, then rise again. Moving his arm as slowly as he'd raised his body, Daniel reached into his pants. "J'adoube," he announced, and slid his hand under the elastic of his briefs. His own Québécois accent echoed back to him, tangled with the echo of Jack's flawless Parisian, slithered down his dick in a synesthetic tingle as he touched it. The curl of his own fingers was a delicious sensation after the hour's throbbing discomfort, as soothing as it was stimulating, mixing with the glorious relief of pressure on his balls. Looking down at himself, he pulled his erection over to an angle that would better display it, then flattened his hand and drew it back up in a long, sultry caress that sent a current of pleasure along the shaft. When his fingertips dragged over his glans, the current spiked and his hips gave a stuttering, uncontrollable twitch. Before he'd quite lost contact, he did it again, rubbing down and lightly circling the sweetest spot, barely keeping his response soundless as his hips stuttered again. Then he pulled his hand the rest of the way out and raised his gaze.
Jack was still bent toward the board, forearms on his thighs, hands draped between them. His gaze stayed fixed for a moment on Daniel's crotch, then rose slowly to meet Daniel's as his torso came upright and his hands settled, relaxed and loose, on his knees. His eyes were unreadably dark, but his legs were open, and the soft folds to the left of the fly in his worn old denims had acquired a prominent addition.
Daniel turned and walked across the living room, up the stairs, down the hall past the front door and the kitchen entryway, around the corner, and into Jack's bedroom.
He didn't hear Jack follow, but he hesitated by the bed, torn between continuing on into the master bathroom to shower and just stripping here and lying down -- the shower would provide both excuse and delay, and allow Jack to decline nonverbally by simply not being there when he came out, but it could parse as a cold shower and send a mixed signal, whereas reclining nude and hard in or on the bed would be unmistakably clear -- and by the time he'd decided to defer the decision by stripping down first, the bedroom door was closing with the soft sound of the privacy lock turning in the knob.
"Don't undress," Jack said softly. "Let me do that."
Daniel turned. With the door closed and the blinds drawn, the room was very dark. He could still see the dark shape of Jack coming up to him -- light was seeping in under the door from the hall, leaking in around the edges of the blinds, and his eyes were adjusting -- but if he couldn't have seen it he'd have felt it. Jack's mass had a field around it, a palpable aura of strength and charisma and presence. When Jack's fiddly fingers took gentle, steady hold of the first closed button on his shirt, all the air went out of him, as if he'd been elbowed in the gut.
Slowly, Jack slipped the button, then ran his fingers down to find the next one, knuckles lightly braced on Daniel's chest, and slipped that one too. The shirt was some kind of easy-care cotton -- chambray, he remembered the catalogue saying. He didn't remember fabric ever feeling so thin.
"You don't want to see?" he asked softly, as the third button yielded to Jack's touch.
"I can see enough," Jack said. "Pretty much have you memorized anyway."
Jack was a gentleman's gentleman in shower and locker room, never looking even when he looked, so accustomed to nudity that you could have a conversation while doing jumping jacks in front of him stark naked and he'd talk to you for all the world as if you were fully dressed. Daniel never gave it much thought when Jack did it with men, expected nothing different when Jack did it with him, was only impressed when he saw Jack do exactly the same thing with women after the base showers were consolidated. He'd missed the smoke signals Jack had been sending up not only because of his assumptions but because in every situation he'd ever had for context Jack sent no signals at all.
Of course Jack had seen. He'd just never appeared to be looking, even when he was.
What Jack wanted now was to touch, not to look.
"Did you know I was hard? Sitting there?" Daniel asked.
"Hoped you were," Jack said. "Wasn't sure. Hoped the line about announcing the adjustment would pass as a joke if I read it wrong."
"You've been trying to get me hard that way for a long time."
"No," Jack said, quiet and low. "I've just been asking you to make the first move."
The fourth and fifth buttons had given way, and Jack's hands moved to the buckle of his belt. Tugged the bight through the loops, freed it from the tongue, eased it open. A belt being undone was one of the sexiest things Daniel knew -- the promise and deliberate intent when you undid your own, the control and intimacy when someone undid it for you, the announcement in the buckle's clink, the wanton invitation of the leather ends hanging open. When Jack's fingers slipped under his waistband to twist the button of his fly through its hole, his belly contracted in a small spasm of arousal, and when Jack took hold of the zipper's tab and slid it down, he almost moaned aloud at the slow care in it, the vibrations running into his groin from the releasing teeth.
"Daniel," Jack whispered, a low expulsion of air, tension and desire, the first indication he'd given of how much this turned him on, how much control was costing him.
"Keep going," Daniel said softly. Jack had paused, one hand still on his waistband, holding the pants up. "Let them fall."
Jack let go, and they sagged away to his ankles with weight of belt and wallet and keys. He didn't try to pull his feet free. He lifted his forearms, one and then the other, for Jack to undo the buttons at his wrists, then stood quietly while Jack peeled the shirt back, and moved his arms so that it when it cleared his shoulders it fell away behind him.
Jack hesitated almost imperceptibly, then slid his fingers under the elastic of Daniel's briefs. The touch of his knuckles on bare flesh made Daniel's hips stutter again, not startlement but arousal reflex. Jack's hands were only inches from his penis.
"OK?" Jack said.
"I was thinking of showering again," Daniel said, then almost winced at the combination of non sequitur and insecurity, but didn't because it wasn't really either. It was the stark evidence that this was happening, that they were doing this, and the lightning forks of extrapolation to what that meant; Jack's hands in his shorts were only a few exchanges away from him lying ass-up on the bed wishing he'd prepared for this and wanting it too much to do anything about that now.
"Daniel." Jack left his hands where they were, didn't reach to stroke or touch; shifted closer, but didn't lean in to kiss. "I did. I always do. Hope springs eternal. This doesn't have to go that way, but if it does, that's how I'd like it to go. I'm clean and I'm loose. That's not pressure. I'm just saying."
"Oh, god," Daniel murmured. Jack with the shower attachment, the warm water, just in case, be prepared ... His aching hard-on was drumhead-taut, his balls were heavy and full and tight. He laughed, a short huff, release valve. "As if I'd last for that, at this point." Then, stricken by the afterimage of Jack preparing every time he was due to drop by, every time, I always do, "Jack, I'm so sorry. I didn't ... hear you. About moving first. I wasn't listening."
"I wasn't askin' that loud."
"You turned up the volume tonight."
"Figured if you didn't hear that, it was the wrong question." Jack pulled gently on the elastic. "So, OK?"
Daniel still hadn't answered that question. "Everything's OK. There is nothing that isn't OK. I've never been into pain or watersports or facials but I don't think the, the previous rules apply here, I think I'd do anything for you, anything with you ... "
Jack went to one knee to pull his underwear down, and Daniel cut off with an indrawn breath as his dick came free and Jack's breath washed over it. He was paralyzed by the closeness of Jack's face, Jack's mouth; caught by the significance of the position, which had only partly to do with Jack's bad knee and worse knee and the inadequate cushioning of the area rug; struck by the expansion of awareness, the sense of comprehension, of a closed symbology opening into meaning. He'd taken care to be considerate of Jack's discomfort with talking. But Jack had been talking to him all along. Communicating in languages he'd never imagined, on levels he'd been oblivious of.
"Don't start reading into everything," Jack said with quiet amusement, leaning over and down as if there weren't a tumescent penis bobbing right next to his head. "Sometimes it's a marriage proposal, sometimes it's just a guy untying your shoes."
"You know, I can never tell," Daniel said, smiling, and then one foot was being lifted free of bundled shoe and pantleg, and he shifted his weight to it, the area rug scratchy through his sock, to lift the other foot free of the stuff Jack was holding, and then he was standing in his stocking feet and giving Jack a hand up.
Jack took a step back and openly checked him out. Daniel could see him pretty well now, pupils thoroughly dark-adapted, which meant that Jack could see him too, but the deep shadows of the room gave the lingering appraisal an extra smoky seductiveness. Then Jack was stripping his pullover and undershirt off in one swipe, toeing his old running shoes off at the same time. "You mind if we don't draw this part out?" he said. "I'm thinkin' we've both had about all the tease we can take."
Daniel wasn't sure whether Jack meant the undressing part or something more, but he shook his head, mesmerized by the athletic fluidity of Jack's movements as he threw his clothes off. A belt unbuckled in efficient haste was the sexiest belt-unbuckling of all; one hand popping a button while the other jerked a zipper down wasn't far behind. As Jack push-stepped out of jeans and boxer briefs, Daniel was stepping forward, and they met in a jumble of their pants and Daniel's shoes, groaning in unison as their bare bodies met full-on.
The shock of flesh was intense. In a blazing moment of hyperreality Daniel thought he could feel every hair on Jack's chest and belly and groin and thighs and arms, every symbol in his tags, every mole, every scar, every friction ridge on every finger, as if the patterns of Jack's body were flash-burning into his, as if he'd carry the story of this moment in his skin forever. He grabbed Jack's ass, Jack grabbed his hair; their cocks pushed between their legs, jammed into their crotches, dragging past their balls, both of them closing their thighs to trap them there, get more heat and tightness; their hips thrust together and ground, bone to bone. From almost no touching at all to all the touching they could do in half a second and still accelerating -- Jack's hands groping over his head and neck and shoulders and back up to fist in his hair, his hands groping and kneading Jack's ass and hips and thighs, sliding up the muscled planes of his back to squeeze shoulder blades and palm armpits, swirl thumbs in the silky dampness of hair. Their mouths were a breath apart, groaned open, begging but not yielding. The touch under his arms made Jack's torso try to curl into itself, his abs contracting while his hips kicked forward and up, and Daniel let out a breathless laughing sound and rubbed, with groin and belly and thumbs, and saw an exasperated laughter in Jack's eyes as he growled in response and rubbed back hard.
They were right next to the bed, in falling range of the bed, and they weren't going to make it to the bed.
Daniel squeezed his thighs tighter, thinking he should pull back, pull out, move his dick up out of the way, close his legs completely around Jack's dick to make it really tight, let Jack brace out and support them both and get the leverage to really thrust, maybe find some lube, nightstand wasn't that far, three steps -- but he couldn't let go, he couldn't wrench himself back, they were like iron and lodestone, and it was too good like this, the mash of cocks and testicles, the hot press of skin and muscle, the sticky friction, and he couldn't wait, and he had to have Jack's mouth.
Jack groaned again, louder, overwhelmed by eye contact and the tease of their lips and the grind of their bodies, and twisted his head to get his mouth on Daniel's throat. Almost sucking, almost biting, just holding himself back from marking, he moaned, "Wanted you to fuck me, meant you to lube me up and fuck me over the end of the bed -- " Pulling Daniel's head back, he mouthed up his windpipe and along the soft depression under his jaw and said into the tender spot just behind it, "Meant to start slow, light touching, tongues, meant to lick you all over, sixty-nine you, suck you dry ... "
Oh my fucking god, Daniel thought, writhing under the unbearable stimulation of Jack's mouth and Jack's words. He's a talker during sex. He groaned desperately, torn between the hunger to push back and take Jack's mouth and brutally plunder it and taste that voice and a yearning to melt in ecstatic submission to the iron strength of Jack's body.
"Next time," Jack was saying, into his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, as if he were pleading for something rather than promising, "it'll last next time, I promise, it'll last all night, it'll last forever ... "
Jack's tender, gravelly voice was too much, the clenching grip of fists and muscle was too intense, the hot intercrural space was too sweet, too good, too sticky and sweaty and thrusting, but it wasn't enough, it was so close but not enough, if Jack would just give him his mouth, his tongue -- "Gotta come," he gasped, gripping Jack's ass, grinding, pulling; blindly, desperately seeking Jack's elusive lips. "Gotta come, Jack ... now, god, for fuck's sake, kiss me, now ... "
"Wait." Jack's hands dropped away from his head and caught his hips up hard and stilled him. "Wait," Jack said, a torturous brush of lips over his, breathing into his stunned, pleading moan. "Trust me," Jack said, pulling his hips back, pressing Daniel's away, disengaging the lock of their groins. "Daniel," Jack said, and lifted a hand to Daniel's chin, gently pressed.
Swaying, arms loose at his sides, in a blur of suspended climax, Daniel opened his eyes, and saw Jack smile at him.
"J'adoube," Jack said, and dropped the hand from his chin, and reached down between them, and lifted his own cock to fit it between their abs as he pressed back in and closed his thighs around Daniel's. His other hand slipped in to tuck Daniel's cock up close against his balls before he squeezed his adductors tight, and then both arms went around Daniel's waist, both hands splayed warm and firm on Daniel's back. As he pulled Daniel into him, he touched his lips gently to Daniel's, and pushed into Daniel's mouth.
Daniel melted around Jack's tongue, melted into the wet heat of Jack's mouth, melted around the press of Jack's cock into his belly. All the strength in his body went into his hips and thighs and lower back, all the urgent surging need to push, to fuck, to come. Sucking on Jack's tongue, moaning around it, he thrust between Jack's legs, fucking his thighs, fucking his balls, fucking Jack, kissing Jack -- and came in a pulsing, gushing flood, hips jerking, thighs shaking, hands groping up along Jack's arms and neck to find his face.
Daniel, Jack moaned in a blur of sound into Daniel's mouth, fingers curling into fists in the valley of Daniel's spine, and pulsed between them, strong rhythmic spurts of fluid punctuated by his harsh, syncopated grunts.
"Jack," Daniel murmured clearly into his lips, drawing back enough to let him breathe, cupping his face, kissing it. Rough stubble on his lips, salt sweat on his tongue, aching sweetness in his heart -- he felt unable to stop kissing now that he'd finally started. But no amount or quality of kissing would be sufficient to express what he felt right now.
After a while, Jack kissed back. Gentle kisses, lips to cheek, lips to lips; they brushed and nuzzled, exchanging low, quiet noises, shifting a little where they stood as hard things softened and slipped down to hang limp, and shaking limbs quieted and relaxed. They were dripping, slowly, onto whatever was underneath them, and after another little while Jack took a shaky swivel step away, balancing himself with a hand on Daniel, to look down.
"Oh, yeah," he said with a low chuckle, as the light khaki of Daniel's Dockers resolved from the muddled lump of clothes they'd rucked up between them. "That's gonna stain."
Keeping hands on Jack in turn, Daniel moved close enough to the nightstand to snag the Kleenex box, and started doling out wads of tissue. "I think they were doomed from the start," he said. "I nearly came in them when you said 'I adjust' in French." He smiled, and added, "The first time."
Daniel swiped at his abs and dabbed as much as he could from the hair at his groin, then helped Jack finish wiping up, since he'd gotten a double dousing. Jack flung the bedcovers back enough for them to get in, and they slid right into a comfortable embrace, as though they'd slept wrapped up together all their lives. For a few minutes they lay quietly, and Daniel savored the shared warmth, the sweet press of bare skin, the delicious ripple of muscle and bone underneath it whenever Jack shifted a little, or breathed.
Then, when it seemed that Jack wouldn't sleep, but was content to lie here stroking him, he said, "Schoolroom French my ass."
Jack laughed. "Last I heard, the U.S. Air Force Academy was a school, and I can personally vouch for the fact that it has rooms."
"Not many people acquire genuine fluency in a classroom. You pronounce it like a fluent speaker. Former, if not current."
"You can tell that from two syllables?"
"Linguist here."
"When I say I had a drill sergeant for a French teacher, I mean that literally. I can barely choke out a full sentence anymore, but fuck if I can't pronounce it right."
"You could get by. If you had to. In Africa. Europe."
"Sure. If I had to." His voice dropped, and he went abruptly shy, eyes softening. "Rather listen to you, though."
Daniel leaned in as if to impart a secret and said, "Je t'adore," low and husky, against his ear. Keeping it simple but not really expecting Jack to catch most of it, putting his heart and soul into every truthful phrase but really just playing with the seductively sexy speech sounds: "Je t'aime à la folie, j'entends ta voix dans tous les bruits du monde, je t'aime de tout mon coeur, je t'aime à tout jamais, je t'aime pour toujours ... "
Jack pulled back to grin at him in delight. "Tish, that's mush!"
Daniel blinked, then felt heat rise to his face. "You understood it."
Jack cocked his head. "You embarrassed now?"
"No, I'm ... really turned on by that."
"A linguist right down to your libido." With a gleam in his eye, Jack nuzzled in to Daniel's ear in turn, giving a shove with his cheekbone when Daniel reflexively hunched into his shoulder as if resisting being tickled. "Crash course in gutter slang," he said, just as low and husky as Daniel, "and you'll have me whispering all the sweet nothings your heart desires. With my flawless diction."
"Ohhh," Daniel moaned, "my heart is not the relevant organ here ... "
Jack moved smoothly from ear to mouth to deliver a sampler of his other lingual talents that promised a limitless future of kisses, from the exquisitely tender to the possessively demanding and everything in between. When he drew back again, his eyes were warm and happy, and he laid a fond hand on the side of Daniel's face, drinking in the sight of him. On the buoyant waves of Jack's affection, a giddy joy bubbled up in him, a quivering laughter trying to push out as a broad, goofy grin. In a last-ditch effort to be sensible, be realistic, not be swept away on effervescent happiness, Daniel said, "You know it's not gonna be easy. This could make a lot of things very complicated," but he was smiling when he said it, almost laughing, and as the words came out he was already letting them go for good. He gave up on worries, gave up on calculating strategies and futures, gave up on trying to think five moves ahead, and settled completely into the bed, into the pillow, into Jack.
"Couple of adjustments," Jack said, watching his thumb stroke the corner of Daniel's mouth, brush gently around his smile. "Nothin' we can't handle."
"Will you announce them first?"
"Won't need to," Jack said, and pulled him in tight, tousling his hair, rocking him back and forth, a rolling, wrestling expression of exuberance that made Daniel's heart sing. "I'm not lettin' go of this piece."