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Fic: Hold fast to dreams. SG-1, Howling. 1940 words.
Step 1: Read Broken Wings.
Step 2: Read A Howling in the Factory Yard.
Step 3: Read this. Is a missing scene from Howling. Is JD and Delta. *covers face* Have I mentioned how I'm a bad person?
Hold fast to dreams
(May)
He dreams. He wakes up with the snake on top of him. He's breathing hard. His throat hurts.
Nothing fucking new there.
Snake looks him in the eye, watches as he catches his breath, takes its weight off him. Nods once. Gets up to leave.
"Wait," he says. His voice is hoarse, and he hates the sound of it. The snake turns back, one arm on the door jamb. "What the fuck are you doing here?" he asks. "Why do you come over if you're never gonna fuck me?" he adds, because I'm here to watch over you while you sleep is not an acceptable answer. Because that's what the fucking snake's been doing, eating ice cream with its fucking feet on the coffee table and listening for when it needs to come in and pull him out of his nightmares, and he can't figure out why it cares.
(It doesn't care. It can't care. It has some other reason. That's the whole point of the question.)
"I wasn't aware that you wanted me to," says the snake. Slight lilt of a question. This is the snake that ran alongside him and told him it would respect his wishes if he wanted to run alone, the snake that asked him out to dinner like it was courting him, the snake that hasn't touched him since it wrote T-R-U-S-T M-E on his chest because apparently the only reason it fucked him that time was to pass the message in the dark.
Delta. Change. Uncertainty. The difference operator. Fucking nailed that name, but he can't get used to it, can't handle how human this snake is trying to be. Snake's playing too nice. Asking. What the fuck.
He licks his lips. Pushes up on his elbows. He doesn't want the snake to be this kind to him. He wants to sleep. He's never gonna if he can't stop thinking. A fuck might do it: good for twenty winks or so. The snake'll get him off. That'll help. Somewhere in the back of his brain there's a slow tumble down the rabbit hole, the question he's not asking himself. (Does he trust this snake enough to sack out at its side.) Not asking. Not. (He did it with Virta when he didn't know. Knows better now, no rest there. Wasn't safe there. Was less safe for not knowing. Ignorance isn't bliss, it's a trap waiting to be sprung. He knows the score with Delta. Thinks he knows. Hopes he knows. Knows the snake's a snake, at least. Does that make him safer? Fuck.)
"Yeah, I want," he says. "Get over here."
The snake saunters over, looking more curious than anything. (What was he expecting: lustful? smug? surprised? No, he was, actually. This is the snake with the human reactions.) It slides its hand under his t-shirt, and he curls up, arms over his head to pull the shirt off. The snake's hand is still resting on his chest, on his ink. "When all of this is over, how will you mark the story on your skin?" it asks.
Fuck. Too close. Too close to things that matter. He's lied about the ink and the snake still knows to ask the question. "Fuck if I know," he gasps. Truth. He hasn't thought about it. Hasn't let himself think about when all of this is over. Didn't admit, at the start, that he'd be so deep in the parts of O'Neill that he thought he was done with that he'll have to put it on his skin to get it out of his soul. If he can. If he has a soul left when all of this is over. If it's possible to disentangle who he is from who he was again. If he's still alive.
The snake's still got its fingertips resting on the inverted V, and he swallows, feels its fingertips rise and fall with his throat. It's looking at him like it's still waiting. Is he supposed to come up with something on the spot? "Decorative border," he says. (Cartouche: the outline for a name of royalty. Thank you, Daniel. Snake'll never be a system lord again if it plays by the rules it has agreed to, but it'll always be the king of its own castle.) "Around the last time you tortured me," he says, though values of you and me are something else again. Is Delta the one who did those things, over and over, or does it just remember them, someone else's actions? And it's still waiting, damn it. "Intertwining pattern. Bunch of snakes with dicks," he says.
"Hm," the snake says, a soft chuckle. "I've been assured the snake is a phallic symbol in its own right."
"I do not think it need be understated," he says, "how very fucked I am."
The snake chooses to interpret that as innuendo. "Not yet," it says. Its hand goes flat on his chest, and it leans forward to kiss him. He's--startled would be the word for how he handles it. Shocked would be the word for how he feels. None the snakes have kissed him, before this. Not even Virta, when it was pretending to be a person. (Hathor did. Mouthful of nish'ta.) He hopes to fuck he's not about to get snaked, wonders if he could bite it in half if it tries to slither up in his head. (Wonders if a snake moving from host body to host body that way has a plan to deal with the suddenly unsnaked former host. Or if it would just leave him dead. Get new body, engage in necrophiliac tonsil hockey.)
"Why," he says when the snake gives him the space. Not why the kiss. No. Not asking. "Why have you been hanging around if you weren't expecting this."
Wants it to say it was, wants it to admit to wanting. This snake's the one that glories in gourmet food and good wine and running. Why not sex? Even if it's not for the head games all the other play, why not just the physical release of fucking?
"Because it hasn't occurred to any of the others to want to share," the snake says. Of course it wouldn't. Snakes are greedy. Snakes don't play well with others. Snakes don't share. It's a wonder Ba'al conceived of the idea of dividing itself, sharing its empire with itself, in the first place.
And then the rest of it sinks in and he wants to fucking laugh or cry or kill something. As long as this snake's here, none of the others will bother him. That's what it's saying. That it's been protecting his fucking virtue, like he has an ounce of it left. He has to close his eyes. Can't look the snake in the face and take that--that kindness.
No. Fuck no. Maybe all it means is it wants him for itself. It doesn't want to share him with the others. (Doesn't explain why it's not been having him for itself. Why it's given him space. Why it's only in bed with him because he told it to be.) The snake slides his boxers away while his eyes are averted. He looks back. Hand between his thighs. Mouth on his stomach. Tease, yet. "Any of them complaining about you hogging the toy boy?"
The snake laughs against him. "I claimed you as my reward for some of the more, ah, unpleasant aspects of my role."
"Your--?" he asks. He's losing the thread of his thoughts, now. Would slip away from his body except he has the feeling this is important.
"We each have our own tasks," the snake says. Why would there be copies if there weren't more tasks than one Ba'al could handle? Why would they have differentiated, if they weren't performing different tasks? What is Delta's unpleasant task? He loses track of the chance to ask; it nips at him lightly, and he spreads his legs. Willing. Fuck me. Not sure when that changed, since when he had to ask. The snake says, "And you? Why are you doing this, JD? What are you trying to prove to me?"
He hates it when the snake calls him JD. Only snake in this face that doesn't call him Jack. (He hates it when all the others call him Jack. He hates it when it worms its way in and he calls himself Jack.) "Nothing to prove," he says flatly. "Using you."
"I'm sure," says the snake.
The snake fucks him; not particularly gently for all the bizarre foreplay, the asking, but he does his share of urging it to let go control. He wants to not think. He's not looking to feel good, only to feel nothing. Bone-weary nothing. It's easier not to think about it when it's the way it always has been, rough and hard and leaving fingerprint bruises on his hips. The snake shifts him, shakes him, finds his sweet spot and rams it: point of pride, with snakes? he idly wonders, as it wrings his body dry. The snake fucks him into oblivion, and the last thing he hears before he rolls over (back to the snake, yes, he'll turn his back to the snake, safe, not safe, known, unknown, any more dangerous to turn his back than show his belly?) is the snake solicitously asking, "Do you want a shower?"
Hopes, hopes the snake's not talking about the early days. Back before New Year's, when he crouched in the shower so long the water ran cold. He'd have to kill it if it were.
"Fuck off," he says. "Wanna sleep."
"Sweet dreams," says the snake, spooning behind him.
Doesn't know if the snake's being a dickhead about that either. Doesn't care. Sleeps.
He wakes once after only a short fragment of a dream, wakes to the snake's arms tightening around his waist. He wonders if he should be grateful that the snake's close enough to hear the little sounds he starts to make, didn't have to wait for screams to know to wake him. At least his throat doesn't hurt yet. The snake doesn't say anything, and he drops back under.
He wakes again, weird and fuzzy, and if he was dreaming, he doesn't remember. He's awake because the snake's getting out of bed. He looks at the clock. 3:34 AM in red display. Ninety minutes after the last time he woke. Thinks maybe the snake timed that one. Snake doesn't care, does it. Can't. Snake's probably tired of hearing him scream.
He wakes the last time at oh-five-hundred. Reveille. The major told the captain, the captain told the sergeant, the sergeant told the bugler and the bugler told them all. Four and a half hours, not completely unbroken, but yeah. His twenty winks. He scrubs his face with the back of his hand and gets up.
Snake's waiting in the kitchen, dressed in the gym shorts. "Ready for your morning masochism?" it asks.
He doesn't say anything until he's gulped down a glass of orange juice. "Yeah."
They go downstairs, and at the door, he says, "About last night."
"Yes?" the snake asks. It makes a show of bending over, stretching out its calves.
He doesn't want to say anything, he really doesn't, but he somehow feels like he owes a word or deed: that if he doesn't say the words, he'll have to make some other gesture that will cost him more. So he says, "Thanks," and hits the sidewalk sprinting.
Downtown Seattle. Just Call Me Skippy: Unlikely Partner?
He doesn't let himself look back, so he doesn't see the snake's face. He doesn't know whether it's surprise or compassion that makes the fucker take two blocks to catch up.
Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly. Langston Hughes.
Step 2: Read A Howling in the Factory Yard.
Step 3: Read this. Is a missing scene from Howling. Is JD and Delta. *covers face* Have I mentioned how I'm a bad person?
Hold fast to dreams
(May)
He dreams. He wakes up with the snake on top of him. He's breathing hard. His throat hurts.
Nothing fucking new there.
Snake looks him in the eye, watches as he catches his breath, takes its weight off him. Nods once. Gets up to leave.
"Wait," he says. His voice is hoarse, and he hates the sound of it. The snake turns back, one arm on the door jamb. "What the fuck are you doing here?" he asks. "Why do you come over if you're never gonna fuck me?" he adds, because I'm here to watch over you while you sleep is not an acceptable answer. Because that's what the fucking snake's been doing, eating ice cream with its fucking feet on the coffee table and listening for when it needs to come in and pull him out of his nightmares, and he can't figure out why it cares.
(It doesn't care. It can't care. It has some other reason. That's the whole point of the question.)
"I wasn't aware that you wanted me to," says the snake. Slight lilt of a question. This is the snake that ran alongside him and told him it would respect his wishes if he wanted to run alone, the snake that asked him out to dinner like it was courting him, the snake that hasn't touched him since it wrote T-R-U-S-T M-E on his chest because apparently the only reason it fucked him that time was to pass the message in the dark.
Delta. Change. Uncertainty. The difference operator. Fucking nailed that name, but he can't get used to it, can't handle how human this snake is trying to be. Snake's playing too nice. Asking. What the fuck.
He licks his lips. Pushes up on his elbows. He doesn't want the snake to be this kind to him. He wants to sleep. He's never gonna if he can't stop thinking. A fuck might do it: good for twenty winks or so. The snake'll get him off. That'll help. Somewhere in the back of his brain there's a slow tumble down the rabbit hole, the question he's not asking himself. (Does he trust this snake enough to sack out at its side.) Not asking. Not. (He did it with Virta when he didn't know. Knows better now, no rest there. Wasn't safe there. Was less safe for not knowing. Ignorance isn't bliss, it's a trap waiting to be sprung. He knows the score with Delta. Thinks he knows. Hopes he knows. Knows the snake's a snake, at least. Does that make him safer? Fuck.)
"Yeah, I want," he says. "Get over here."
The snake saunters over, looking more curious than anything. (What was he expecting: lustful? smug? surprised? No, he was, actually. This is the snake with the human reactions.) It slides its hand under his t-shirt, and he curls up, arms over his head to pull the shirt off. The snake's hand is still resting on his chest, on his ink. "When all of this is over, how will you mark the story on your skin?" it asks.
Fuck. Too close. Too close to things that matter. He's lied about the ink and the snake still knows to ask the question. "Fuck if I know," he gasps. Truth. He hasn't thought about it. Hasn't let himself think about when all of this is over. Didn't admit, at the start, that he'd be so deep in the parts of O'Neill that he thought he was done with that he'll have to put it on his skin to get it out of his soul. If he can. If he has a soul left when all of this is over. If it's possible to disentangle who he is from who he was again. If he's still alive.
The snake's still got its fingertips resting on the inverted V, and he swallows, feels its fingertips rise and fall with his throat. It's looking at him like it's still waiting. Is he supposed to come up with something on the spot? "Decorative border," he says. (Cartouche: the outline for a name of royalty. Thank you, Daniel. Snake'll never be a system lord again if it plays by the rules it has agreed to, but it'll always be the king of its own castle.) "Around the last time you tortured me," he says, though values of you and me are something else again. Is Delta the one who did those things, over and over, or does it just remember them, someone else's actions? And it's still waiting, damn it. "Intertwining pattern. Bunch of snakes with dicks," he says.
"Hm," the snake says, a soft chuckle. "I've been assured the snake is a phallic symbol in its own right."
"I do not think it need be understated," he says, "how very fucked I am."
The snake chooses to interpret that as innuendo. "Not yet," it says. Its hand goes flat on his chest, and it leans forward to kiss him. He's--startled would be the word for how he handles it. Shocked would be the word for how he feels. None the snakes have kissed him, before this. Not even Virta, when it was pretending to be a person. (Hathor did. Mouthful of nish'ta.) He hopes to fuck he's not about to get snaked, wonders if he could bite it in half if it tries to slither up in his head. (Wonders if a snake moving from host body to host body that way has a plan to deal with the suddenly unsnaked former host. Or if it would just leave him dead. Get new body, engage in necrophiliac tonsil hockey.)
"Why," he says when the snake gives him the space. Not why the kiss. No. Not asking. "Why have you been hanging around if you weren't expecting this."
Wants it to say it was, wants it to admit to wanting. This snake's the one that glories in gourmet food and good wine and running. Why not sex? Even if it's not for the head games all the other play, why not just the physical release of fucking?
"Because it hasn't occurred to any of the others to want to share," the snake says. Of course it wouldn't. Snakes are greedy. Snakes don't play well with others. Snakes don't share. It's a wonder Ba'al conceived of the idea of dividing itself, sharing its empire with itself, in the first place.
And then the rest of it sinks in and he wants to fucking laugh or cry or kill something. As long as this snake's here, none of the others will bother him. That's what it's saying. That it's been protecting his fucking virtue, like he has an ounce of it left. He has to close his eyes. Can't look the snake in the face and take that--that kindness.
No. Fuck no. Maybe all it means is it wants him for itself. It doesn't want to share him with the others. (Doesn't explain why it's not been having him for itself. Why it's given him space. Why it's only in bed with him because he told it to be.) The snake slides his boxers away while his eyes are averted. He looks back. Hand between his thighs. Mouth on his stomach. Tease, yet. "Any of them complaining about you hogging the toy boy?"
The snake laughs against him. "I claimed you as my reward for some of the more, ah, unpleasant aspects of my role."
"Your--?" he asks. He's losing the thread of his thoughts, now. Would slip away from his body except he has the feeling this is important.
"We each have our own tasks," the snake says. Why would there be copies if there weren't more tasks than one Ba'al could handle? Why would they have differentiated, if they weren't performing different tasks? What is Delta's unpleasant task? He loses track of the chance to ask; it nips at him lightly, and he spreads his legs. Willing. Fuck me. Not sure when that changed, since when he had to ask. The snake says, "And you? Why are you doing this, JD? What are you trying to prove to me?"
He hates it when the snake calls him JD. Only snake in this face that doesn't call him Jack. (He hates it when all the others call him Jack. He hates it when it worms its way in and he calls himself Jack.) "Nothing to prove," he says flatly. "Using you."
"I'm sure," says the snake.
The snake fucks him; not particularly gently for all the bizarre foreplay, the asking, but he does his share of urging it to let go control. He wants to not think. He's not looking to feel good, only to feel nothing. Bone-weary nothing. It's easier not to think about it when it's the way it always has been, rough and hard and leaving fingerprint bruises on his hips. The snake shifts him, shakes him, finds his sweet spot and rams it: point of pride, with snakes? he idly wonders, as it wrings his body dry. The snake fucks him into oblivion, and the last thing he hears before he rolls over (back to the snake, yes, he'll turn his back to the snake, safe, not safe, known, unknown, any more dangerous to turn his back than show his belly?) is the snake solicitously asking, "Do you want a shower?"
Hopes, hopes the snake's not talking about the early days. Back before New Year's, when he crouched in the shower so long the water ran cold. He'd have to kill it if it were.
"Fuck off," he says. "Wanna sleep."
"Sweet dreams," says the snake, spooning behind him.
Doesn't know if the snake's being a dickhead about that either. Doesn't care. Sleeps.
He wakes once after only a short fragment of a dream, wakes to the snake's arms tightening around his waist. He wonders if he should be grateful that the snake's close enough to hear the little sounds he starts to make, didn't have to wait for screams to know to wake him. At least his throat doesn't hurt yet. The snake doesn't say anything, and he drops back under.
He wakes again, weird and fuzzy, and if he was dreaming, he doesn't remember. He's awake because the snake's getting out of bed. He looks at the clock. 3:34 AM in red display. Ninety minutes after the last time he woke. Thinks maybe the snake timed that one. Snake doesn't care, does it. Can't. Snake's probably tired of hearing him scream.
He wakes the last time at oh-five-hundred. Reveille. The major told the captain, the captain told the sergeant, the sergeant told the bugler and the bugler told them all. Four and a half hours, not completely unbroken, but yeah. His twenty winks. He scrubs his face with the back of his hand and gets up.
Snake's waiting in the kitchen, dressed in the gym shorts. "Ready for your morning masochism?" it asks.
He doesn't say anything until he's gulped down a glass of orange juice. "Yeah."
They go downstairs, and at the door, he says, "About last night."
"Yes?" the snake asks. It makes a show of bending over, stretching out its calves.
He doesn't want to say anything, he really doesn't, but he somehow feels like he owes a word or deed: that if he doesn't say the words, he'll have to make some other gesture that will cost him more. So he says, "Thanks," and hits the sidewalk sprinting.
Downtown Seattle. Just Call Me Skippy: Unlikely Partner?
He doesn't let himself look back, so he doesn't see the snake's face. He doesn't know whether it's surprise or compassion that makes the fucker take two blocks to catch up.
Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly. Langston Hughes.
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The riff on Delta: Change. Uncertainty. The difference operator. Fucking nailed that name -- that's exactly it.
And this bit is when I started to hear JD screaming, brakes screeching, sirens and all manner of signs that "there's no way this ends well." I shuddered at this:
He knows the score with Delta. Thinks he knows. Hopes he knows. Knows the snake's a snake, at least. Does that make him safer? Fuck.
Terrific missing scene. More please?
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Terrific missing scene. More please?
*headdesking*
Probably not?
(Except for that brainpoison about Delta I need to spread far and wide...)
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Still, great fic, great voice and lots of stuff that I wish I had thought of. Yay.
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Um.
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Dense or painful?
*grins*
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It's also totally your fault.
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Somewhere in the back of his brain there's a slow tumble down the rabbit hole, the question he's not asking himself. (Does he trust this snake enough to sack out at its side.) Not asking. Not. (He did it with Virta when he didn't know. Knows better now, no rest there. Wasn't safe there. Was less safe for not knowing. Ignorance isn't bliss, it's a trap waiting to be sprung. He knows the score with Delta. Thinks he knows. Hopes he knows. Knows the snake's a snake, at least. Does that make him safer? Fuck.)
You've got the inside of his head down just perfectly.
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You are like, the most encouraging fanfic inspirer ever.
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(Oh, god. He fits my archetypal character. Except sort of backwards. Ahahahah.)
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Welcome to my shame!
*headdesk*
Thank you.
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(back to the snake, yes, he'll turn his back to the snake, safe, not safe, known, unknown, any more dangerous to turn his back than show his belly?)
One of my most favoritest bits. And such a good example of how very fucked JD is.
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This is gorgeous.
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Weird. But very, very good!
Love.
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