Gigi Sinclair

"Remind me again why you're making me do this?" I knew I sounded petulant, and I didn't care. I could have been at home, with a big, "Archaeologists do it very carefully" mug of Ethiopian coffee and a journal article on Nefertiti. Instead, I was in the geographic middle of nowhere, my ass on the rear bumper of Jack's four by four and my foot between his legs.

My skate-encased foot, unfortunately.

"I told you." Jack pulled the lace tight, and I lost all feeling below my right kneecap. "It's disgraceful that a man of your age doesn't know how to skate."

"Sorry, Jack. My childhood was more Charles Dickens than Currier and Ives."

"Smart ass." He dropped my right foot and picked up the left.

Yes, I certainly was. And imagine my glee when Jack told me he'd found a pair of nearly new CCM hockey skates in just my size at the Colorado Springs Sports Swap.

"But don't you worry, Space Monkey. I've cracked harder nuts than you."

"You don't say." I tried not to connect the concept of Jack with the concept of nuts, especially hard ones.

"Who'd you think taught Teal'c to do those figure eights? And if Carter would lay off the Hershey bars, she could give Michelle Kwan a run for her money, trust me."

I coughed into my Moroccan leather driving gloves. They, and my gray duffel coat with the wooden toggles, were the closest available Daniel equivalent to Jack's Avalanche jersey and hockey gloves.

"Come on." He hoisted me up and dragged me through the snowdrifts to the tiny patch of bumpy ice known as Miller's Pond.

"There's a perfectly good ice rink in the rec centre," I griped. "And we could have gone for cappuccino afterwards." Or a brisk game of bowling or badminton, if the fancy struck us.

"If you think I'm taking you to the rink where my friends go, you can think again. I'd be the laughingstock of the team."

And otherwise, naturally, a forty-five year old Air Force colonel with bad knees and a worse attitude was the star quarterback. Or whatever they call it in hockey.

Jack's arm tightened around my waist as I stepped onto the ice. That was one good thing about this whole mess. Outside the skating lessons, Jack hadn't touched me much lately. If a humiliating, and physically painful, lesson in the intricacies of ice skating got him to take up the habit again, then it was worth it.

"That's it, Danny!" I gave a tentative push, and glided about six inches. Jack reacted like it was six miles, grinning and clapping his hands. Just like, I thought, he must have done when he was teaching Charlie.

I sometimes wished I could talk to Jack about him. Our relationship had never been a typical male buddy-buddy one, but there were still some subjects, notably that one, that were never broached, by Jack or by me. It was too bad. I would have liked to hear about Charlie. Any kid that was half Jack's had to be something special.

Caught up in my thoughts and heady with my skating success, I didn't see the Grand Canyon-sized chip in the ice until my blade was lodged in it. In a graceful move that I'm sure would have put Carter and Michelle Kwan to shame, I went head over heels and landed flat on my back, my bones jarred, gazing dazedly up at the off-white sky.

"Jesus, Daniel." I heard the scrape of Jack's skates on the ice, followed by a rather satisfying, at least temporarily: "Shit!" and the sound of an airborne Jack. My smugness was brought to an abrupt end when Jack's entire bony, hockey-glove-wearing frame landed on top of me.

I groaned. He groaned. I shifted. He shifted. And Jack had either brought an extra goalie stick along in his pocket, or he wasn't that upset to be lying on top of me on a frozen pond.

Archaeologists aren't typically the most fast-moving of scientists, but then I wasn't a typical archaeologist, and I'd never been anything but adaptable.

I squirmed a little, ignoring the rock hard ice dampening my back in favour of the rock hard flesh dampening Jack's pants.

Jack groaned again, sounding even more pained. I squirmed a little more, this time adding some squeezing for good measure. Jack made a noise like an asthmatic steam engine.

"Space Monkey." What the hell. I've been called worse things in sexual situations.

Fortunately, Jack didn't seem to have any intention of doing it on Miller's Pond. Of course not. It would be like a devout Catholic jacking off on the altar in St. Peter's. Jack scrambled to his feet and grabbed me by the collar, dragging me the fifty yards to his car.

He opened the back and spread out the emergency blanket. Fortunately, he'd put the back seat down a few weeks ago, when we'd helped Teal'c move. Who knew a Jaffa would have so many boxes marked "Miscellaneous Knickknacks"? And that both words would be spelled correctly?

I bent to start untying my skates, but Jack stopped me. Instead, he shoved me onto the blanket and snapped plastic skate guards over the skates. He didn't even wipe the blades first, which just shows how far gone he was.

When his skates were properly guarded and the gloves were history, Jack climbed in on top of me. He smelled like gas station coffee and sweat and blanket smelled like old horse, but the moment Jack's damp hand hit my crotch, I couldn't have cared less.

His hands were cold but his mouth was blazing. I kissed him back, hard, my hands undoing his jeans and pushing up the T-shirt he was wearing beneath the jersey. He grunted and positioned himself beside me (as 'beside' as it was possible to get in the back of a four by four, anyway), letting me stroke his cock while he stroked mine and our tongues stroked each other.

He came first, careful not to spatter my coat. I wasn't quite so polite. When I cracked my eyes open, I saw Jack's jersey had been liberally redecorated with my semen.

"Sorry, Jack." I was about to offer him a new one, but he shook his head.

"It's OK, Danny." He smiled fondly, resting his head on my shoulder. We were kind of scrunched up and I wondered if his knees were OK. If not, I decided, there was a large bathtub and an assortment of herbal rubs at my apartment. I'd soon get him better. "Now it really is my favourite shirt."

I kissed him again, gently this time, and lay back, thoroughly exhausted as I always was after this kind of encounter. He kissed back, nuzzling his nose into my hair. "We're hopeless," he admitted, as the nose worked its way down my cold cheek and nudged my ear. "How long did we last this time?"

The nose was replaced by a tongue, and I suddenly found it very hard to do simple math. I had to wait until he'd moved to my marginally less erogenous jaw to say: "Eleven minutes between getting onto the ice and…" I gulped as Jack flicked his tongue across my lips, then withdrew. "Getting off," I choked.

"Eleven minutes? That's crazy." But he sounded slightly awed anyway. I understood. I'd never been so perpetually horny, either.

"Want to go again?" I asked.

Jack laughed. "I'm not up for another 'lesson' just yet. Let's go home."

I felt a blast of cold air as he sat up and climbed out the still-open back door. One good thing about the middle of nowhere. I couldn't see us doing this in the parking lot of the rec centre.

"Is there anything good on the Discovery Channel today?" He bent over and untied his skates. I did the same, shuffling across the blanket until I was sitting with my feet hanging over the bumper.

"I think there's something on the Roman occupation of Egypt."

"Really?" Jack's eyes lit up. "I guess we'll have to stop at the drugstore on the way home, then. Unless you have enough stuff…"

Of course I did. I had, in fact, stocked an entire drawer with condoms, lubricant, Egyptology journals and hockey cards. Jack was clearly insane, but I wasn't letting him go any time soon. Not until I could skate rings around Teal'c, anyway.

And probably not even then.