crack_van | Bend Low Towards The Dirt by surreallis (R)

Fandom: STARGATE SG1
Pairing: Cameron Mitchell/Jack O'Neill
Length: 9,600
Author on LJ:

surreallis
Author Website: None,just on lj
Why this must be read:

Before the rec starts, have some warnings: this was written for

apocalypse_kree last year, and it starts off with all of SG1 dead, except for Jack and Cam, and most of the world destroyed. It's one of the most depressing stories I've ever read.

That said, it is a brilliantly written depressing story. She gives only the barest information about how the world ends, but it's enough to draw a perfect mental picture of this completely changed world, and Cam and Jack in it. Cam watches the Mountain blow up, then goes all the way to Washington to tell Jack that SG1 are gone; and then he pretty much turns right back around and goes back to prove it, with Jack and the ghosts of SG1 and Cam not saving them, not dying with them, to keep him company.

It's a story about acceptance, more than anything else: about accepting what you had, and what you didn't, and what you've lost, and all the things that you regret and can't change, and that what you're left with is all that you've got, and that you have to find a way to live with that. The physical plot is the journey Jack and Cam make back to where the mountain used to be, and the moment when they arrive, and Jack sees what happened, breaks my heart every time I read it, almost as much as how badly Cam doesn't want to be the one to show it to him.

There's an element of hope, at the end, for the two of them, but it's a brief glimmer of hope in a whole lot of darkness; it's the only possible way this could end. Jack and Cam are a rare pairing at best; in the circumstances, there's a whole lot of desparation, of trying to hold onto something that's gone, when they do have sex; again, it's the only real way it could go in this story, and it's a beautifully written inevitability.

Cam wakes some mornings in the muted, blue dawn of the tent, and there’s a solid, warm weight against his back. Sometimes in the night Jack rolls up against him and stays, and his long, slow breaths tickle the short hairs on Cam’s nape. It nearly makes him shiver.

He hasn’t thought about sex very often since the day the world ended, but every so often it creeps up on him, sending sparks over his skin and through his blood. The weight of the world drops away and he sees bare skin and gritted teeth and his whole body wants that release, that moment of distraction. He’s never been immune to Jack O’Neill. O’Neill is an easy man to fall for, but a difficult man to get to know. He has a feeling he wasn’t the only one to have suffered with that over the years.

But there are things between them, people between them, that form a wall as intimidating as a glacier.

They’re on a mission to rescue the dead. So he lies in the dark dawn with O’Neill’s breath against his skin, and he ignores the ache in his chest and his groin. They may as well be the last two men on earth at this point. He has no right to ask for more…

Bend Low Towards The Dirt