stargateficrec | Not Us by Komos (NC-17)

Rec Category: Jack/Daniel
Pairing: Jack/Daniel, clone!Jack/clone!Daniel
Category: slash
Warning: sex, language
Author on LJ:

paian
Author's Website: http://komos.lyricalmagic.com/kmain.html
Link: http://paian.livejournal.com/88638.html

Why This Must Be Read: As per usual with

paian, this is a gorgeous Jack/Daniel love story, this time told through two very different couples. The depth of their bond shows when Daniel has Thor make a clone of himself, to keep Jack's clone from being alone in the world. The clones are even more tightly entwined, sharing a secret nobody else can know. Ten years later, the clones' tech startup is of interest to the Air Force, and the two pairs are forced to think about "the others" they never wanted to encounter again. It turns out not to be a bad thing.

paian captures the multi-layered nuances of who the clones would be, the constraints on Daniel and Jack, and the similarities and differences between the clones and their counterparts. Plot, character, dialogue and sex all weave together perfectly to create a portrait of all four men.

Excerpt:
Jack looked at him now, stroked his sleeping head. He honest-to-god ached with love for this extraordinary soul. Somewhere along the line he'd come to think of the others as the poor schmucks who got stuck with all the responsibility while he and Daniel got to go off and live the lives they wanted to. He still missed Carter and Teal'c and Hammond and Fraiser, Jake and Bra'tac; hell, he missed Harriman and Siler, and he missed going through the Stargate, and sometimes he still reached for things he didn't own anymore, looked for pictures of Sara and Charlie on the mantel, felt a sense of dislocation. Sometimes he felt unmoored without the structure of the Air Force to buttress everything he did; he missed the discipline, the uniform, the pride of his rank and his service. But he felt sorry for the guys who'd had to go on locked in their miserable isolation, martyring themselves to duty, the weight of the universe on their shoulders.

He hoped they were still alive. He hoped they'd found some happiness along the way. And he never, ever wanted to know whether they were, or they had.