itsallovernow | Fic - Now without pants

I'm having a week. And most of the arghness of that week is happening inside my own head. I had a wicked attack of homesickness last night, so strong it rivaled anything that I'd felt when I first left home 14 years ago. I could smell woodsmoke and that clean, clear crispness of fall and burning leaves and that faint chill and I just started to cry, doubled over and angry and so torn about what I was doing with my life.

I'm better today, I think. A sense of direction, of choices and options.

And because I utterly adore her, and because she's having a killer, crazy couple of weeks and may not even see this, but in fact YIM'd me to pseudo-ask, for

simplystars:

Five Ways Cameron Mitchell Loses His Pants

1. In a stroke of blinding efficiency – particularly blinding for the Air Force – all of the laundry had been taken at the same time and he'd miscalculated the number BDU's he'd packed and neither Teal'c nor Jackson had any extra to lend him so it was go out to the briefing on the Daedelus in his shorts or not go out at all.

Sadly, the latter wasn't really an option. He debates about whether or not to wear his boots, decides he's gotta retain a shred of dignity.

The new commander of the Daedelus, Aronson, looks him up and down, lets her mouth fall open then snaps it shut.

"Colonel," she says, voice low and deadpan.

Sam breaks in. "Don't worry, this happens all the time."

Cam sits down on the chair around the small briefing table, working very hard not to squirm at the feeling of cold metal against his ass, holds up three fingers. "Three. Much like two, three is not all the time."

These are the privileges of rank he thinks. No one under him can snigger out loud. But he's not taking bets on what'll happen afterwards.

2. Mitchell doesn't have another way of proving to the very large alien that he's not a threat, that his team is not a threat.

The room is filled with angry looking aliens with heads like rams, very Egyptian and he's pretty happy they aren't the jackal people because somehow he thinks he can live with the big horn sheep folks, but that smiling toothy snarl is something he'll never quite cop to. Like Lassie gone horribly, horribly wrong. Jackson'd turned into a quivering mass of geekish goo at the prospect of meeting the ram people, and Vala had speculated about how specific their anatomical anomalies might be, and Carter wondered about hands and hooves and right now none of that matters because he's the only one without a weapon at his throat.

He's down to his shorts – socks and boots and AK-47 long gone and he'll be damned if he's going to look around as he tugs off his underwear and kicks it to the side.

Cam holds up his hands as two of the guards approach, poking at his side, staff weapon nudging apart his legs. He turns around, grateful for the feeling of the dogtags against his chest. They keep him from feeling completely naked, totally exposed. When he turns back around, the lead ram nods, the weapons lower and he distinctly hears a wolf whistle from the back left corner. At this point in his career, he'd really prefer to not know whether it was Jackson, Vala or Carter. Teal'c's whistle is much, much lower.

3.He should have known better than to play strip poker with someone who's scammed her way across the universe. But it hadn't started out as strip poker, just regular poker, and Vala didn't even know how to play poker before last month and when she made that pretty little moue with her mouth, and sadly announced that she didn't have any more currency and felt guilty continually borrowing from Daniel, but she was so far into debt to all of them, he hadn't had the heart to kick her out of the game.

For the record, there had been beer. For the other record, no one else had objected.

It's not like he hasn't seen all of them in various states of undress, but at some point, it became the practice to stand up on the chair, remove the garment and do a little shimmy. He's pretty sure the shimmy wasn't his idea. Moderately sure, at the very least.

For the record, there'd been quite a bit of beer.

When they were all mostly bare-assed, farmer's tans and odd scars all on display – except, of course for Vala who still had on her pants and her bra, and he was pretty damn sure that the shirt had been removed for comfort when she'd taken off her boots and was even more sure that she must have been tanning naked because her skin was this very pale, pale beige, the color of devon cream without a line in site – when the end came, and Vala asked for a bag, he'd been up to fetch it for her before he'd thought twice. Got half way 'round the table, dangling in the breeze, before it occurred to him to ask what she wanted the sack for.

She looked at him as if he'd said something particularly stupid. "I won them," she said, gesturing at the pile of clothes. Cam looked over his shoulder at Jackson, who shrugged. "Technically," he started to say.

"Three hours on the internet and two hours of the shopping channel and next mission you get a real gun," Mitchell interrupted wearily.

"Done," she said, fox grin wide and winning.

"You could have just asked," he said.

"And where," she replied, cocking her head, "is there fun to be had in that?"

4. In the scheme of things, it was nothing. Double the trouble, double the fun. He never liked to see a woman hurt, certainly didn't like to be responsible for that hurt. So it was bandages, and the easy butt of an old joke.

And Sam, injured, was far more of a stoic than he'd ever been. Sacrificing the pants had been a no-brainer. They were thinner material, easy to tear into long strips.

His back's up against the wall of the cave and he doesn't want her to lay down, so she's sitting up, propped half against him, half against the wall. Protocol can kiss his ass. Hell, protocol went out the door the first time he stepped through the gate.

Her hands are too warm against his bare leg, eyes glassy, but all of their supplies are outside the cave, where the people with the guns and the teeth are lying in wait.

"They'll be here," he says. "I'm sorry," he says. Means it more. Believes it more.

Carter shakes her head, pats his knee, long, competent fingers tracing the patella. "'s okay," she slurs. "It's not so bad. If you have to be in a cave with a half naked someone, you're a good half naked someone to be with."

He takes her fingers. "You're not so bad yourself," he whispers.

5. It's nearly 3:00 a.m., but things had gone radically pear shaped and they'd been scheduled to return nearly 36 hours prior.

He'd needed the shower at least 36 hours ago, and now Cam's got the water on so hot his skin is stinging. Teal'c's in the infirmary – pissed off and fighting his head wound and Jackson's arm just looked… wrong before they bandaged it. Cam had steered Carter to the closest quarters, made sure she made it to the bed before he pulled the door shut.

He should be in the infirmary, in the gate room, somewhere, anywhere, but he's got a lot to scrub off. The gash in his leg is bleeding freely, nasty and torn on the edges, deeper than it looked earlier. He should probably get it checked out, but Vala was the only one who knows about it, the only one who saw it happen, and he knows she'll let him keep his own counsel.

Finally, Cam shuts the water off, dries himself with the towel, careful of the cut, wraps it around his waist. He's so tired he could sit down on the floor, lean up against the tile, sink into blackness. At the very least, he needs to go by the infirmary first.

He's less surprised than he should be to see Vala sitting on the bench beside his locker. He doesn't ask how she knew it was his, doesn't even ask why she's in the men's locker room, if she knows how much trouble she could, should get into. She wouldn't care. Right now, neither does he.

She looks up at him, tries to grin, fails. Her skin is bruised, circles under her eyes like the afterwards of a fist. Her hair is limp, shoulders slumped like all the life's gone out of her.

He moves closer, puts his hand on the back of her neck, pulls her towards his hip. Her fingers rest behind the curve of his knee, curled tight. She puts her other hand on his waist. Her fingers leave behind a smear of dirt. They rest like that for a minute, and then he takes her hand, pulls her up. She follows him, holds his hand until they get to the entrance of the shower. He moves to unbutton her pants, remembers her boots, goes to kneel but his thigh screams in protest. Vala nudges him to the side, bends over, unties the boots, strips efficiently and then steps into the communal shower.

He doesn't follow, just watches her. She looks over her shoulder, invitation, question, but he's so tired. He leans against the wall. The water slides over her body, but she just stands there, head tilted back, not moving. Cam sighs, drops his towel on the ground, goes to gather soap, slick between his palms. Her skin is very soft, the bruises standing out so brightly that he lingers over them. He just washes what he can reach – her hips, her belly, the curve of her ass, the line of her bicep, behind her ears and the bones of her face. She leans into him, skin to skin and he rests soapy hands on the sway of her lower back. Vala moves her cheek and he thinks she's going to kiss him, is too tired to be aroused, skin hot and prickly nonetheless. He wants her. He wants them all. Right now, all he can do his hold tight.

She doesn't kiss him, just nuzzles against his cheek, catlike, her scent against the planes of his face. He rubs the soap between his palms again, washes her hair as best he can, letting the water carry warm suds over the both of them, letting the water wash them clean.

When he comes back with dry towels, her eyes are clear. She wraps her body, twists out her hair. He dries off, doesn't know what to say.

When they get back to his locker, he finds he can't quite bear to put his clothes back on.

"No one's here," she says. "Go to the infirmary in a towel. I'll burn our clothes. I intend to fall into bed and not move for days."

He actually laughs. Somehow, it's the best idea he's heard all day.

No one's in the corridor, which is good. He's too beat to think of any explanation that would justify his own state of undress, or Vala in a towel, damp and bruised and beautiful coming out of the men's locker room.

"Thank you," she says, sudden and rough like the words don't quite fit. "No one … nothing like that … anyway," she pauses, rushes the rest of the words together. "You could come with me. Stay with …" she swallows hard. "Never mind."

He's so goddamned relieved that he doesn't have to say no that his knees get weak. He touches her cheek, lips against her forehead. This isn't a place where he could kiss her on the mouth.

Lam is cranky about his injury, crankier about his lack of underwear, but he holds the towel over his private bits, falls asleep on the table thinking about white sheets and bare skin and doing things better.
***
Dude, Starsy, that was harder than it had any right to be.

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I loved this a lot.

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I Don't Get Out Much, So I Read - Thea's Journal

Fic - Now without pants

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