Title: Snip - Attrition-verse
Author: kbk
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, but these versions kinda are.
Notes: Attrition is a tiny SGA fic of mine. This was basically a cookie for my lj friends who put up with me yammering about it.

He kisses slowly down the scar that runs down the front of Daniel's throat, and Daniel's fingers flutter down his back - Jack likes to imagine he's tracing out lyric poetry in Arabic, or some such, but it's probably just random. He regrets never having heard the sounds that Daniel made when he came, never finding out if he really did babble in half-a-dozen languages, never doing this when it could have been something more than a quick fuck between strategising.

His other self was an idiot. He was so busy playing the idiot for everyone that he forgot it was an act. Stupid self-sacrificing shit. And the bastard would still get more respect than he does, because he wouldn't be twenty years younger than the other leaders - Jack still gets odd looks a lot of the time, because he's barely old enough to be a captain, even in this strange army of his. But the other him never had this, never had Daniel shuddering up against the wall, gasping with pleasure, never gave in and kissed that mobile mouth into submission.

It's odd, dissonant, because even while he's pressing against the inevitable slackening of a man well into middle-age and clenching his fingers in graying hair and fixing his teeth into a rope of muscle and listening to gasps and hitching breaths and feeling the touch of gun-calluses worse than his own and oh, jesus, yes. Even then, part of him still thinks of Daniel the way he was in the beginning, those first few years, wide-eyed and trusting and eager and somehow, despite the life he'd had, younger than Jack remembers ever having been. The Daniel he knows, deep down in his gut, isn't bitter. The one he's fucking can't help it.

Another thing that's different - nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn about who's fucking who. Well, nobody in earshot, at least. Maybe it's something about staring death in the face on a regular basis, maybe he's been smarter than usual in selecting his staff, maybe it's just that none of the religious extremists got off Earth before it blew. He smirks into Daniel's throat at that thought - ignoring the gaping horror of that day has become second nature - and gets his hair pulled for it. He answers the quizzical smile with a smug one of his own and one hand down the front of Daniel's standard-issue pants, and this is the best thing he has. The only thing he has for himself. He's just Jack here.

He's Jack everywhere, unless he's "sir yes sir!" and that's weird, because - though he'd never use the term out loud - he's commander-in-chief with men spread across half the galaxy. Technically it's more like the whole galaxy, but Rodney doesn't need or accept supervision, and he's probably got less than a hundred Earthers under him anyway and Jack's never even seen a Wraith so technicalities can go screw themselves.

He's gonna stop thinking and screw Daniel.