"The 'don't ask, don't tell' thing really screws us, doesn't it?"

Jack hadn't seen Sheppard sitting in the shadows of the room he had retreated to. He was trying to stay out of the way while those that knew what they were doing actually worked on the problem. There was nothing here for him to shoot or blow up and he hated it. His fingers itched, wishing for something physical he could rail against.

It seemed he could forever be standing between Daniel and the ocean, but he couldn't always hold back the tide.

"What are you doing up here?" Jack asked. They were both now in one of the very top rooms of one of the spires of Atlantis. The roof was glass and there was nothing but an expanse of stars overheard.

"Same as you, staying out of the way. They have my blood and they'll call me if they need more." Sheppard shrugged lazily. He was sitting on the floor with his back propped against a curved wall so that one of the clear overhead panels was directly in front of him. Moonlight played across his face, hiding his expression.

"I'll leave you be," Jack offered, but Sheppard raised a hand.

"No, stay if you like. Maybe both of us need someone to talk to before we go the non-induced-by-alien crazy."

"I'm fine," Jack said, but winced because he sounded anything but. He hated that he could remain stoic in the face of pretty much anything, except when in a room with a man who was practically a stranger but could pretty much see straight through him anyway.

"How long have you guys been together?" Sheppard asked as casually as if he was offering Jack a coffee. Jack started and his fists clenched.

"We've been friends for ten years." Jack said carefully.

"How about-"

"No," Jack snapped, cutting off Sheppard's further probing.

"No, never?" Sheppard was looking at him now, his head slightly canted and although Jack could now see his face properly, he still couldn't work out what expression the man was wearing.

"Of course not."

"Well, that's just nuts," Sheppard chuckled dryly.

"I'm sorry, but is it only me that realizes we're having a potentially career-ending conversation here?" Jack had backed up a few steps, as if putting distance between himself and Sheppard would stop the man seeing into the very heart of him.

"You risked career-ending the moment you looked at Doctor Jackson and thought, hmmm, I'd like to screw that."

Jack closed the necessary distance in order to hit Sheppard, but when the younger man stood up to meet him and simply raised his chin a little, expecting the punch with no intention of fighting back, Jack halted, fist clenched, elbow back. He grimaced and shook his head, dropping his anger like an old coat on the floor.

"Feel free to punish yourself, just don't try and make me do it," he grumbled.

Sheppard blinked and all the cocky self-assurance seemed to leak out of him. "I-"

"You have survivor's guilt. It's perfectly natural. You're the last man standing and if Doctor Beckett doesn't come up with the answer soon, you'll be the last man standing again."

"I'm sorry, Sir."

"So you should be. I resent the hell out of you dragging Daniel into your guilt party." Jack's voice was hard, but he touched a gentle hand to Sheppard's shoulder.

"You love him, right?" Sheppard asked.

For once in his life, Jack didn't hesitate. "Too much," he agreed.

"He doesn't know?"

"I've never actually told him, but Daniel's pretty clever. He's probably worked it out. He probably doesn't know how long."

"How long?" Sheppard asked, his lip quirking in a half smile.

"You're a nosy son of a bitch, you know that?" Sheppard just shrugged and nodded. "Fine, leaving that boy on Abydos, all skinny and scruffy-haired was the hardest thing I've ever done."

xxxxxxx

Carson had something, and Sam didn't remember ever being so relieved.

"As I said, the human body was actually doing a pretty neat job of fighting this virus off on it's own. Unfortunately, fighting took a lot of energy and depleted the body to the point where the virus won out because it just kept attacking."

Sam nodded, her eyes fixed on a green vial Carson held in his fingers.

"There are two types of immunity. Natural immunity is created by the body's natural barriers, such as the skin, and protective substances in the mouth, the urinary tract, and on the eye surface. Another type of natural immunity is in the form of antibodies passed on from mother to child." Carson drummed the table with his fingers. "Then there's acquired immunity. It develops through exposure to specific microorganisms, toxins or foreign tissue which are then remembered by the body's immune system."

Sam made a 'hurry up' gesture with her hand and Carson sighed. "You and Rodney, like two peas in a pod," he remarked and Sam grimaced.

"Anyway, because the Wraith's rate of recovery is so high, the virus was engineered with an acquired immunity suppressor, to basically stop the production of the specific antibodies needed to fight this thing. The science is a little beyond me, and if Colonel Sheppard hadn't been around, I might not have been able to do anything about it. It seems his exposure to the retrovirus boosted his production of these antibodies."

"So, stuff like antibiotics won't help?"

"Antibiotics are good for bacterial infections but nigh on useless for viral infection. Viruses traditionally have been difficult to treat because they replicate themselves using a body's own cells' enzymes and proteins."

Sam reached out and grabbed the green vial. "Tell me this is something and you're not just teasing me?"

"I've stripped back the retrovirus to its most basic form. This should give us an immune booster similar to Sheppard's, without the unpleasant turning-into-a-bug side effects."

"Should?"

"It's all very experimental, but that's all we have at the moment."

Sam watched Carson for a few beats and then put the vial down on the table with a soft click. "You've already injected yourself, haven't you?" she asked slowly.

"Aye. I'm feeling better. Of course, I have no idea if that's because I've reached the second stage and the antivirus is completely ineffective," Carson grimaced.

"But in about six hours we'll know for sure. I can retest myself and if there is no presence of the virus, then we have a winner."

xxxxxx

Jack found Cameron and Teal'c sitting in the stasis room, close by Daniel's chamber. They'd found chairs from somewhere and had dragged them down. They were talking quietly, or at least Cameron was talking and Teal'c would occasionally nod or offer one or two words.

"What are you two doing down here?" Jack asked. He then noticed a third chair had been brought down and smiled when he sank into it.

"There should always be someone by our side when we are ill," Teal'c answered simply.

Jack touched his hand to the Jaffa's shoulder.

xxxxxx

Sam was dancing from foot to foot and Carson finally had to order her out of the room as he worked. He'd just drawn a sample of his own blood and was checking it for the presence of Babette's plague.

About ten minutes later, he stepped out into the hallway and Sam turned. She had Espenez beside her, looking almost as keen as she was. Espenez had started sneezing only an hour earlier.

"I'm clear." Carson announced. Sam squealed and threw her arms around the Scottish Doctor. "Alright-" he chuckled, breaking free. "Let's get you both inoculated."

Espenez held up a hand. "My guys first, please," he looked to Sam, who nodded.

xxxxxx

The sound of voices, after so long, filled Atlantis with life again. There was relief and not a few tears. All of this failed to carry down to the stasis rooms, where the final thirty-one people waited to be revived.

Carson had his full medical compliment, minus one nurse who was still in stasis who had hidden her own symptoms for as long as she could to keep working on others. A woman by the name of Beth Ambrose, who along with Daniel, concerned Carson the most.

Sam had been checking out the chambers and came up, rubbing at a patch of grease on her forehead and only succeeding in spreading it further rather than removing it. "There are clamps on the bottom of the chambers. You can remove them and transport them. It's only logical considering in an emergency you wouldn't want to wait for someone to revive before moving them. You'd want to be able to just get people out of here. I've been looking at the schematics as well, and there looks to be a retrieval system set up to move the chambers directly to the infirmary, kind of similar to how the Jumpers are moved to the 'gate room."

"Think you can activate it?" Carson asked.

"I'm sure we can figure it out, Carson." Rodney McKay sighed from behind Sam's shoulder. "If people had listened to me and not opened this room with a crow bar maybe none of this would have happened," he couldn't help but add.

"Yes, Rodney," Carson sighed tiredly.

Sam chuckled.

xxxxxxx

He was on the balcony again.

Jack hated him being so close to the railing, and knew he should actually tell Daniel that.

He supposed there were a lot of things he should have told him by now. Ten years was a long time to procrastinate, even for Jack O'Neill.

Daniel, as if sensing his presence, turned his head slightly. He was still a little drawn and pale from the whole experience, but Carson had reported that he was recovering fine. Jack wanted nothing more than to pull Daniel to himself, reassure his body that Daniel was fine. He knew it would be going a little fast though, zero to one hundred with no precursor in between.

"Do you think that's nine lives yet?" Daniel asked dryly and Jack chuckled.

"Can I just-?" Jack grasped Daniel's shoulders and shuffled him around until he was off the railing. Daniel swayed a little and Jack steadied him.

"What are you doing?" Daniel protested. "I'm not really steady here yet."

"I've got you," Jack reassured, his voice a little rough and his eyes darker. "Look, there's something… ah hell." Jack risked taking one hand away from Daniel to rub the back of his head. Daniel was watching him, curiosity plain on his features, like he was trying to decipher a particularly tricky passage of script.

"Whatever it is, Jack, just say it. I almost died again. We should probably stop walking on eggshells around each other."

"This thing, between us, it's not just all in my head. I mean, we've kind of had this conversation before."

Daniel blinked. "When did we have this conversation?"

"Well, it wasn't in so many words."

"What words was it in? I think I would remember a conversation that involved you, me and the topic of having sex."

Jack flushed and suddenly found his boots fascinating. "Well, you remember the time I got a little too drunk and asked you to come back to my place?"

Daniel rubbed his temple. "Which time?" he asked.

"Uh… pretty much all of them."

Daniel was staring and Jack flushed darker. He forgot himself for a second and took his hands away from Daniel. The younger man fell against him heavily, hands bracing on Jack's shoulders. "Oh God, sorry," Jack raised his arms to help Daniel upright again but Daniel's hands snaked around Jack's neck instead and he pressed his lips to Jack's own. Jack opened his mouth to protest, but all that did was afford Daniel the opportunity to lick his way into Jack's mouth.

Jack made a noise that was halfway between a groan of resignation and a sigh of pleasure and then grasped Daniel around the waist, pressing him closer to his body. He'd been in the shower with the man, stark naked, but nothing had compared to the intimacy of being pressed bodily against him.

They broke off and Daniel was panting a little. Jack's eyes hooded with concern. "Are you okay?" he pressed backwards a little until Daniel was upright again.

"Sorry, I'm not a hundred percent, or I would be, you know-" Daniel made a gesture with his hand that was unmistakable. "A hundred percent."

Jack laughed. "It's probably better that you aren't. We're standing on a non-too-private balcony in a city that's filled with people again." Jack was a little breathless himself and he reached up and ran fingers through Daniel's hair, mussing it so Daniel looked more than a little wanton.

"Ten years huh?" Daniel breathed, letting Jack manhandle him until he was propped up against the metal pillar of the balcony.

"We both had to get to the point where we were indispensable," Jack shrugged and Daniel chuckled wryly.

"Plus, you had to get thousands of miles away," Daniel reminded him and Jack sighed heavily. He brought a hand up to Daniel's face and rubbed his thumb along Daniel's jaw line.

"We'll work it out," he said.

"But-"

"Daniel, we'll work it out," Jack repeated, more sternly this time.

xxxxx

Teal'c was standing by the balcony entrance. Every now and again some celebrating city citizen would approach and Teal'c would gently, but firmly, steer them in another direction.

Cameron approached, and tried to look past Teal'c, who sidestepped to block his view. "Watcha up to, T?" he asked.

"Absolutely nothing."

"Is that-?" Cameron started, getting a glimpse past Teal'c's broad shoulder.

"No." Teal'c raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, right." Cameron held up his hands, smirking. "Poor Daniel, he looks dead on his feet. Lucky the General is out there to help hold him up."

"Indeed."