“Do you... remember anything?” Jack doesn’t meet his eyes as he asks, he stares at his hands, the table. Teal’c and Carter cleared out long ago, Hammond peeks in occasionally from his office but doesn’t interrupt.

“Remember anything?”

“From me, from being in my body.”

“No.”

--

Alien planets trick you. They look like earth, sometimes they smell like earth, and for a while everything looked like Canada, but they aren’t earth. Daniel can attest to that, with no little amount of conviction. But the looks, the smell, the feel, you can lower your guard, allow things to happen that shouldn’t.

Like this shouldn’t.

He remembers what they were talking about, the joke Jack was telling about the bar and the monkey, as if they all hadn’t heard it enough. Teal’c could probably tell it in his sleep. He remembers Sam correcting the punch line and Jack protesting, when he did something, rubbed something, touched something wrong on the ruin, and the world went white.

He woke in Jack’s clothes, in Jack’s boots, in Jack’s body. The look of shocked surprise on his own face told him Jack was probably in his. “Daniel?” his voice said, and he nodded Jack’s head.

“What the hell did you do?” He couldn’t believe his voice went that high, but it must since Jack could get it there.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll fix it.”

Ten hours and twelve cups of coffee later, he still can’t remember what he did, and he can feel Jack’s body buzzing on the amount of caffeine he’s poured into it. Jack must not drink as much as he normally does.

Soft steps, Carter behind him. She leaned down and he could smell her particular scent of body wash, deodorant, and dirt with Jack’s nose. “Anything?” she asked, sighing when he shook his head. Jack’s head.

“Jack’s sneezing, do you know where you put your antihistamine?”

Daniel rose with Jack’s body, walked back to their campsite with Jack’s legs. Jack’s trick knee was acting up again, testament to the hours spent kneeling in the ruins, trying to figure out what went wrong.

Daniel’s body was sprawled next to the fire, two wads of tissue up his nose. “I can’t breathe,” Jack said, and Daniel’s voice was wheezy and strained.

Daniel knelt as his pack- should he call it Jack’s pack now?- and pulled out his-Jack’s- antihistamines. “Take two, maybe three of these,” he said, passing them over.

Jack swallowed four with Daniel’s tongue, Daniel’s throat, and rolled Daniel’s body up in a sleeping bag before closing Daniel’s eyes and falling asleep.

Carter squeezed his shoulder-Jack’s shoulder- before setting up next to the fire. Teal’c was kel-no-reeming somewhere, Daniel guessed, and Carter had pulled colonel-watch.

Daniel grabbed a flash light and headed back to the ruins.

--

He’d been staring at the same spot of crumbling wall for about an hour when he realized the he remembered Charlie. He’d never met Charlie, Charlie died before he met Jack. He didn’t know when he first realized he knew intimately what Charlie looked like, what he sounded like, and not just from the crystal Charlie in the hospital.

He stared at the wall in front of him and tried to remember other things, other things Jack might know.

Jack knew a lot, it turned out. The position of stars (on earth, anyway), the several hundred different ways to find north when stranded in the wilderness, the several million different ways to get Daniel Jackson to do what Jack wanted, needed him to do. And Jack knew he loved Daniel. Daniel shook Jack’s head. Not just loved, Jack loved Sam and Teal’c and Hammond too. Jack needed him, wanted him, and hard on the heels of that realization came the knowledge that Jack was ashamed.

Daniel closed the mental door on Jack’s memories. Jack loved him, but Jack didn’t want to love him.

--

Eventually, again without knowing exactly how or why or what he pushed, he made the world white again, and woke up in his own body. They dialed earth, sent a report, broke camp and went home. Hammond debriefed them, told Jack and Daniel to get checked out by Janet, and called it a day.

--

Daniel pushes his glasses up his nose, with his own hand and on his own nose. “No,” he says again. He takes a moment to wonder what Jack remembers, if anything. He can’t think of anything he doesn’t want Jack to know. Maybe.

He can tell Jack doesn’t believe him and for just a moment, he’s angry. He isn’t the one harboring a secret, shameful love after all. He isn’t the one lying every day. He pushes back from the table. “I’m going to see Janet,” he says, and leaves the room.

--

Janet sticks him with a few dozen needles, pokes him with a few dozen sticks, asks him a few pointed questions and declares him physically fit and mentally sound. “Get some rest,” she says, she always says, as if the world’s problems could be fixed by a few more hours sleep.

He nods and heads down to his office. He goes two steps into the office before he realizes it’s Jack’s, not his, that his automatic pilot took him here.

“Problem?” Jack says behind him, with Jack’s voice.

“No,” he says, he squeaks. He clears his throat. “Got turned around.”

Jack nods and steps out of his way, Daniel deliberately thinks about every step on the way down to his office, each movement he makes. He closes the door behind him.

--

Jack’s loved him since the beginning, he knows. Almost the beginning. Not the first trip to Abydos, and probably not the second, but definitely by the time they all first switched bodies around, with Ma’Chello. Daniel knows that Jack doesn’t know exactly when it started, just that it was, is. Jack O’Neill loves Daniel Jackson. Daniel is the reason he’s still here, the reason he hasn’t retired, the thing that gets him out of bed in the morning, the thing he thinks about as he goes to bed at night. Daniel is.

Does Daniel love him? He doesn’t know. He’s never thought about it. Jack is Jack, he thinks. Jack is smart and selfish and very often exasperating, but not someone Daniel loves, not beyond the love he feels for Teal’c or Sam. Is he?

Daniel trips over his chair when he realizes that he might be. He might be.

--

The porch light blinds him as Jack opens the door, rumpled and sleepy. “Daniel?” he says, his voice low and rough.

Daniel spent the time spent driving to picture Jack, to picture Jack naked, and he nearly drove off the road. It’s definitely something he wants to see.

“I do remember,” he says. Jack’s eyes close, his face hardened and weary. “Me too,” he says, and he knows he’s telling the truth now, that even if he hadn’t thought of it before, he’s thinking of it now.

“What?”

Daniel steps past the threshold, his body, his own body, presses up against Jack’s. “Me too,” he breathes against Jack’s mouth.

Jack pushes him away, holds him away with his hands, his arms, his eyes wide. “No,” he says, he moans. “We can’t. There are so many reasons we can’t.”

Daniel breaks his hold easily, knows Jack doesn’t want to hold him away. “So many reasons we can,” he says. He can feel the moment Jack gives in, knows Jack is easy and wants it more than he doesn’t want it. Love is greater than shame.

He doesn’t quite remember how they got to the bedroom, how they got undressed, how he ended up sprawled beneath Jack, their naked bodies pressed together. He runs his hands over Jack’s hair, down Jack’s hands, grabs Jack’s thighs and presses them closer together, presses Jack closer to him, their bodies twined and mingling, limbs confused as they spiral away.