Burning Man's Ball by Paian (NC-17)

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Show: Stargate SG-1

Rec Category: Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson
Characters: Daniel Jackson, Jack O'Neill
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson
Het/Slash/Gen: slash
Warning: none
Author on LJ: paian at DW
Author's Website: Paian at AO3
Link: on AO3

Why This Must Be Read: This year's Jack/Daniel ficathon features many, many gems. I was thrilled to find Paian contributed a new piece, over 15K words, that includes her trademark detailed descriptions, intelligent characters, and the mature conversations her characters use to confirm their unspoken connections. Burning Man's Ball turns the description up to 11 as Daniel visits a masked party at a dressed up abandoned warehouse, where Washington DC's power brokers on the down-low indulge their underground desires in lush, decadent fashion. I don't want to give anything more away, as watching the story unfold is its own pleasure, but know that Jack has not lost his ability to triple think ahead of his opponents since his black ops days.


Excerpt:
Daniel pushed through the doorway into a cone of light from a soft overhead spot and the shadow-sense of a large, crowded area beyond it. High-end audio equipment projected "So What" at a volume just too high to comfortably speak over, but there was no ambient noise of conversation or clinking cocktail ice, and something was subtly dampening the music. Textiles, he realized, so new that he could smell them; lush carpet underfoot, thick hangings on the walls, a quick and convenient way to transform a broken, boarded-up factory floor into a luxurious, even decadent space. He could make out dappled figures swaying on a pale wood dance floor now, lit as if by moonlight through breeze-ruffled foliage, within a circle of hip-high oblongs that must be sofas, and a dark parting in the far right side of the drapery beyond it. A twist and glance at the elevator wall behind him resolved the draping as upholstery velvet, in the same deep red as the carpet, neither of them cheap. The clandestine forces of the capital's special interests could afford all kinds of expensive masks for their transient affairs.

What appeared to be a youth in servetta muta mask and ruffled Elizabethan motley appeared at his left and showed a stockinged leg, one arm bent neatly behind his back, the other extended. To receive his coat, Daniel understood. He shrugged it off and draped it over the proffered arm. The youth withdrew into a silk-hung corner booth. Daniel waited at the edge of the spotlight, letting his eyes adjust better before he tried to navigate through the shifting shadows, giving the guests a chance to thoroughly evaluate him. Carnevale meant 'good-bye to meat.' This, apparently, was hello.

The building occupied half a block, and these lofts typically took up entire floors, but the area visible here accounted for at most two-thirds of that, which implied the existence of other rooms or sections beyond the draped passage in the far corner. Possibly a bar slash smoking area, since the modest tables against the walls to right and left held only ranks of bottled water, and he caught more than a faint whiff of the fine tobacco whose pale smoke gave substance to the light cone he stood in; and assuredly some space for more explicit, if not private, activity than he was seeing on the dance floor.

When it seemed clear that no coat chit would be forthcoming and he'd stood in the spotlight long enough, he moved into the chiaroscuro.