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itsallovernowTitle: Five Feet High and Rising is Better Than Ballad of A Teenage Queen
Author: Thea
Notes: SG-1, S10. Mild spoilers for eps not yet aired in the US. Mild, very mild. NC-17.
Follows My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys by several months. Follows the The Bounty immediately, proving that once again, I have no shame. NC-17.
Granted, it's been a weird year.
But very little of that weirdness had lead him to expect an alien lolling in his bed, wearing his shirt, clutching her stomach from a pie hangover. Okay, some of the weirdness should have led him to expect that very thing, but at the same time, it's so… domestic. He could picture this scene playing out between her and Daniel, them bitching at each other, layered meanings and opposing universes and that met in the middle thing they've got going on.
Having Vala here instead, though, is like watching a movie synched to the wrong soundtrack.
Cam sits down on the edge of the bed, shakes her arm a little and when she opens her eyes, he hands her the glass. "Drink this," he says and then sets a can of 7-Up on the nightstand.
"I'm dying," she says, and sits up on her elbow, sniffs at the glass. "What is this?"
"Alka-Seltzer." She makes a face, but drinks it down and belches loudly, looking surprised and a little bit amused.
He smirks at her, but takes the glass away and opens the soda. She waves him off and flops back down on the bed. She's got his quilt covering her bare legs, breasts loose under his t-shirt, one arm up above her head and he kind of doesn't know what to think when he looks at her.
"You've just got no concept of restraint, do you?" he says, but he doesn't move from his spot by her side.
Vala waggles her fingers like he's not making any sort of sense. Strands of her hair lose a battle with gravity and drift over her eyes. She blows upwards, trying to dislodge them and he brushes the strands away. Her dark hair is spread out over his pillows, a study in contrast against the plain white sheets and he lingers for a moment, thumb against her cheekbone, fingers against the silk of her hair. He's surprised at himself for the low surge of tenderness that thrums under his skin at the sight of her – eyes closed, mouth a twist of pain. He'd spent most of the weekend wanting to lock her up in the trunk of the car.
He supposes that in her mind she'd been the epitome of restraint, all sex appeal and sweetness and expert marksmanship. Revealing cleavage and horrifying life history with a sunny smile. Scaring the natives and charming his mom.
She baffles him most days; hell, most moments – aggravating and frustrating and fascinating in that order. There's something almost… nice about seeing her sprawled out and vulnerable to normal, human complaints. And he doesn't much like to see her hurting, even when it's her own damn fault. He's seen quite enough of it over the past year, seen enough of all of his team hurting, and for what it's worth, she is firmly entrenched as part of his team now.
Vala startles him out of the reverie, grabbing his hand and shoving it under the quilt. He sucks in his breath, not prepared for one of her flights of sexual fancy, but she surprises him, settles it on her belly instead, over the shirt.
She's warm through the cotton, but he knows that, has felt her skin bare against his palms, the pale smoothness of her hips, her breasts, the fine skin of her inner thighs. Three wildly inappropriate semi-public sex acts, a mutual détente, and then Jackson didn't come through the gate with them and all she'd wanted to do after was hold hands with someone, anyone. Teal'c had been quiet comfort for a time, Sam a shoulder to lean on, but at the end, it had been Cam that she'd sought out. He'd stuck to her in turn, let her tuck into him as close as possible, wear a false sheen of purpose and bravado in the field and then sit too near to him at dinner, craving the kind of false promises that he'd never offered and that she would have rejected regardless. He was grateful that there was someone he could comfort, someone who lacked equal immunity to Jackson's absence.
Cam had wanted to tell her then that Jackson was no longer the glue keeping her in this place, that she'll be part of his team 'til she's not anymore, but he didn't know if she'd take that as him giving up on Jackson or just as a sign of weakness so Cam kept his mouth shut and let her do what she needed to do. He thinks that maybe she figured the rest out in the interim.
But Jackson did come back, and Vala was still staying close, eyeing Jackson like she didn't quite trust his presence, his place, like she'd had a taste of what it was to lose on someone else's behalf and didn't want to finish that particular meal. Cam figures she's had enough loss this past year, is hedging her bets on how much more she's willing to risk. It's part of why he lets her come with him to the reunion, knowing that he'd be embarrassed and she'd be outrageous, and at the end of the day, none of it would matter that much.
And now she's half naked in his bed and he's rubbing her stomach in small circles like he would a kid, soothing weight against her belly to ease some of the ache. He's guessing that despite her snap crackle demeanor in Kansas, the ache isn't all about pie.
"Tell me a story," she says, eyes closing, voice a murmuring order.
"'Bout what?" he asks and she puts her fingertips on his wrist, right over the bone. "You're the one with the stories."
" Hmmm," she wriggles a little, settles deep into the mattress. "Tell me about the blond."
"You didn't even like her," he says, and doesn't stop with the circles. "Why do you care?"
"Don't," she slurs her agreement, voice taking on the blurred edges of sleep, "but I like it when you get all soft and mumbly and embarrassed."
"She's always been nice to people," Cam says finally, thinking past sweet teenage smiles and breasts and girlish perfume, continues as an afterthought. "Always expected that they were nice too."
Vala starts to snort but it turns into a sort of distracted snore. He continues to rub her stomach until she's utterly asleep, boneless and limp, lines of discomfort eased from her features. She looks so … normal when she's asleep.
In the shower, he thinks about high school dances, about that anticipatory flutter he used to feel right before he'd see Amy. How he feels that same kind of flutter now right before the gate opens and wonders when he switched his triggers from pretty blondes to interstellar travel. He doesn't feel that same sweet niggle when he sees Vala, or Sam.
With Vala, it's the sort of breathless Holy Shit, Oh Shit What Now, and with Sam it's a rush of awe and warmth and gratitude.
Cam runs soap over his chest, half hard at vague thoughts of wheat fields and clean skin and blond hair, at the innocence of the whole damn encounter – dancing in a gym in a haze of cheap punch and Chanel #5. At how easy it'd all been. His life the past few years had been wild and frightening and crazy and amazing, but it had ceased to be easy. Surrounded by people who are brilliant and constantly challenging, and Cam spends most of his time figuring out how to coax, cajole, order, lead and fool them into doing what needs to be done. And after that, he follows their lead. Hopes they don't all die.
With Amy, schooldaze fantasy come to life, all he'd had to do was smile, and sway and keep his mouth shut.
Cam closes his eyes, continues to wash – soap sliding against arms and legs and feet, shampoo clean and sweet in his hair. He stays away from his cock, stays away from thoughts of dark hair and a wicked mouth, stays far, far away from thoughts of milky flesh pressed against his, of the wet, hot, slapping sounds of sex in a bookstore bathroom.
His resolution sucks, though. Easy is one thing, but they'd been facing down bounty hunters in that high school gym, using tech that read like science fiction, sending in a fleet to spin the events to all these nice former peers and no matter how much he wanted warm and sweet and easy, what he had was a team. His team. His fabulous, fucked up team that was licking its wounds after Jackson's abduction and return, getting ready to save the world. Again.
And part of his team is half naked in his bed, snoring and dreaming avarice dreams.
Cam braces himself against the wall, his body betraying him as he brings himself to shaky release at the thought of Amy in a flowered dress, at Vala in those damned shorts because a man's got limits and Dorothy Gale as Daisy Duke is just a little too much to be expected to resist.
The TV is still on in the living room when he gets out of the shower, and he does a circuit, picking up bottles of beer and the empty pie pan, moving Vala's shoes out of the absolute middle of the living room where she'd kicked them before settling into the end of the couch, tucking her toes up underneath his thigh.
They'd watched basketball until she'd poked him with her toes, drinking beer when he switched to Law & Order while Vala rooted for the criminals and told the lawyers what they were doing wrong. He should have taken her back to the base, sent her home with her two suitcases and her pie, but when she tilted her head and didn't quite ask if she could stay, didn't say that Teal'c and Jackson and Carter had returned to their own lives for however brief a time, he just… let it happen. Let her go barefoot in house, and harass him into watching lame TV and gorge herself on his mother's berry pie. Pretended that it was perfectly normal to put her to bed in his t-shirt after she started feeling sick, the scent of her perfume curling around them both as she dropped her clothes on his floor, as she touched his cheek with sticky berry-tinged fingers, and crawled, groaning, into his bed.
Vala was good at taking – time, objects, thoughts, personal space. Whenever she's at his house he spends the next day searching for his watch, his wallet, his sense of order. She was getting better at giving back, though.
Cam turns off the lights, goes back to his bedroom to grab sheets and a pillow. His mother's couch was floral, overstuffed and he's got a crick in his neck from two nights on it, doesn't really want to bunk down on his own couch but he's trying to be good, decent, the kind of guy who doesn't take advantage. Thinking that way is easier than addressing the reality that the advantage is almost always Vala's.
The other quilt is under her feet and he's trying to tug it away without waking her up when she mumbles, "Just get into bed, Mitchell."
He drops his head, and follows her orders. She's under the covers and when he slides between the sheets, she pulls the comforter tightly around her, waits until he gets settled and presses cold feet to the curve of his calf. He can feel her small toes through the thin material of his sweats, feel the line of her body separated by such a small distance.
He murmurs "G'Night," and closes his eyes.
***
She wakes up to dreams of dying. They're different every night – sometimes it's her, sometimes Daniel, Tomin, the rest of the team. She'd dreamt of Mitchell falling to the Ori not long after Daniel returned, blue eyes white and glazed and she hadn't been able to speak to him all morning.
The dreams of people dying were easier to take.
Vala dreams some nights of Adria, of those brief moments when the girl was young – dark curls and serious mouth that reminds Vala of her youth but not much of her self. Those instances are rare, though. Much as she hates the idea of having participated in this particular disaster, Adria is not the worst thing that's been done to her. In the grand universal scheme, it may not even prove to be the worst thing she, herself, has done.
It takes her a moment to remember where she is – in Mitchell's bed, in Mitchell's clothes – and she rolls towards the sounds of muffled snoring and curls up her legs to press her knees to the back of his thighs. He's warm and big, taking up most of the bed and she thinks for a moment about pressing against him, fitting her whole body to his and letting his solidity soothe her. He's clean, hair still a little damp and his skin smells like soap. She'd like to put her nose against the nape of his neck, drag her tongue along the shell of his ear, but despite the ages it's been since she's had sex, she refrains. She likes it when he comes to her.
There'd been a time, earlier, when they'd been ensnared together – a push-pull of command and obey, of sex and orders, and then she'd been kidnapped, lost her memory for a time and things had changed. Her own relationship with Daniel had taken on a deeper resonance, and Mitchell had stopped looking at her like she was something baffling and tempting in equal measures. He'd started treating her like she was part of something, not merely an unknown on the fringes of his understanding and that regard proved to be almost as good as sex. She liked it, felt heated and thrilled by it, by the way that all of them had made a place for her.
And then Daniel had stayed behind, gone missing, taken by her daughter, and it was Mitchell who'd held tight to her arm, looked her in the eye and offered her the truth. After that, she started to crave his truths, wanting the solid heat of his palms on her skin, his fingers curling over her arm. She wanted the weight of him against her because the press of his thigh, and the press of his truth, his unwillingness to lie, allowed her to keep thinking that Daniel might come home.
She hasn't felt this tied to anyone since she was a girl, and she's not quite sure she likes it, likes that there are now multiple people in the universe to whom she's unwilling to lie. Well, really lie, to. Small elaborations didn't count. At first it'd just been Daniel, and she seeded her lies with truth, tiny blooms of veracity to see if he'd pluck them out. Now, it's all of them, the whole team.
She'd dreamt tonight of her first husband, the reason hardly a mystery since she hadn't spoken of or thought of him for years prior to telling Mitchell of him in the car. She'd dreamt of his long fine fingers, and their handfast ceremony, of the hours of youthful sex and him falling to the Ori. Even the dream is a sort of a lie. The whole group of travelers had fallen to the Gou'ald not long after she'd been taken. She hadn't even tried to save them.
Mitchell twitches in his sleep and she wonders if he's dreaming of blond girls or of bounty hunters or of the Orii. He told her once that mostly he just dreamed of flying, and of the awful moments when he thought he'd never do it again.
He twitches again, muttering, head burrowing into the pillow and she pushes up on her elbow, prods at him until he startles, rolling swiftly to his other side and pinning her to the bed. His eyes are glazed, grip tight against her wrists and in the moonlight streaming in, the cording of his neck looks like marble. She forces herself to relax, to let him come to and then he's staring down at her like he's lost his mind. His shoulders sag, and he drops his weight onto her body, says her name in her ear with exasperation and not a little relief.
His torso is bare and she slips from his grip on her wrist, puts her hand on his scapula, sliding down to the small of his back. He shudders slightly and drags his fingers along her arm. Vala shifts her hips, arching her back just a little to relieve the press of his weight on her hip. She's got bruises from where she hit the table and Mitchell is a fairly concentrated mass. He ends up between her thighs and it feels… fantastic actually. He's hardening – must have been dreaming of blonds, then – and breathing heavily and she thinks perhaps she's prepared to take advantage. It's been months since she's been naked with anyone, since she was half naked with him and it's time to change all that.
"I told your mother we'd been having sex all over the house," she says. "Wouldn't it be nice to keep that from being a lie?"
His eyes are so wide she thinks they might pop right out of his head, but he doesn't move off of her, just rolls his hips a little and she sucks in her breath.
"Of course, I also told her we had a deep spiritual bond." She smirks and slips her hand down the back of his sweats. His skin is bare, warm and firm. "But a half truth is better than a full lie."
"Spose it can still be a spiritual bond if I go to hell for strangling you," he murmurs, and it sounds like flirting. She chuckles, palms the pliant curve of his ass and nudges him forward.
"Here I am, prepared to let you take full advantage of me, and all I get is talk of violence," she tsks, pushing herself up and taking his earlobe between her teeth. He makes a noise somewhere between a grasp and a moan and lets go of her other arm, shoves his hand up under her shirt to rest on the curve of her breast.
"What about…" and all the possibilities hang unspoken in the air between them. What about Jackson, Tomin, the pretty blond, all their vague dreams and fantasies swirling in the ether.
"It's just sex," she says, and smiles for him, honest as she can be.
"Guess you're recovered then," he murmurs, and brushes his thumb over her nipple.
Vala bites her lip. "Mmmm, feeling much better. In fact, I could eat something," she starts to say, and then he gently pinches the bud of her nipple and she arches into his touch. "Perhaps later."
"This is a bad idea," he breathes, taking away his hand to slide the shirt up her body. She angles and shifts and wiggles and then she's sitting up, straddling his lap, his hand on her back and his tongue in her mouth, shirt landing with a soft thwap on the carpet.
"You always think it's a bad idea," she says between kisses.
He tastes like mint and beer, toothpaste and fermented yeast and himself. He kisses her with all of himself, devoting his attention to the action the same way he devotes himself to action in the field and she likes that. She pulls him closer and rocks down against him, knees pushing into the bed. He holds on to her so tightly that her ribs hurt and then she can't breathe, moves away from his mouth to pant in his ear. He relaxes his hold, one hand coming up to cup her neck, to drag over the front of her, a hot trail that ends with his palm spread over her thigh.
"That's," he chokes out, "because it … always… is."
She slides her tongue along the ridge of his collarbone, grinding into his erection through the material of his pants. He slips his fingers along her spine, follows the path between the cheeks of her ass to tease against her sex.
She hitches her breath, nips at his skin. "Live a little, Mitchell," she says and shoves him onto his back.
He trails over her hip, gets between their bodies, presses his hand up against her sex. She's wet, slick and she clenches around his fingers as he enters her. She closes her eyes, braced against his chest as she rides his fingers, thrusting against his thumb as it bumps her clit.
They move well together, hands and fingers and tongues and skin, skills honed by months in the field and she likes this familiarity, likes that she can anticipate the shift in his muscles, that he can brace her back as she clenches against him, that when she can't wait and he can't wait, it's an easy thing to divest him of his pants, to roll to her back, thighs spread, pillow under her hips, knee up by his ribs as he penetrates, thrusts into her with a grunt and awe on his face.
They fuck across the bed until she's half on her side and he's half on the floor, one foot braced against the carpet, hands gripped tight, hips slamming against her ass, his cock deep inside her and she yells as she comes, as he quickly follows, movements jerky and quick, holding her in place as he finds his release.
Mitchell doesn't collapse when he withdraws so much as sits down on the floor and then sprawls onto his back on the floor, arms spread out. She misses his warmth and his weight and his sex, and she rolls over onto her other side, curling her legs up and props her head on her hand to look at him, hanging a little over the side of the bed.
He reaches up idly to catch the ends of her hair between her fingertips.
"Did you really tell my mom that we'd been having sex all over the house?" his voice is slurry, the drawl thick as heavy cream.
"Mmm hmmm."
"Huh. Great."
He continues to fiddle with her hair, an inscrutable look on his face.
"Mitchell," she finally says."
"Mmm?"
"Are you really going to stay down there?"
"Maybe."
She pauses, looks at him, likes his ease at being naked on the floor. However, "I really am hungry."
His jaw drops. "Are you serious?"
She nods vigorously, waits to see what he's going to do, and is gratified when he hauls himself off the floor and goes, naked, to the kitchen, coming back with a box of saltines and an apple and a beer.
"You're like a goat," he says.
"Superhuman metabolism," she says and grins as he shakes his head.
He crawls across the bed to his side, and gets under the covers, nudging her with his feet until she sits up and lets him have his space.
"Do not get those in my sheets," he warns, and takes a long swig of the beer.
She eats the saltines and the apple then holds her hand out. He trades her the beer for the crackers and puts the box on the bedside table. She finishes the beer and hands him the empty bottle and the apple core, then gets back under the covers. He throws the core across the room, where it drops into the trash can, then scoots down, eyes closing and she inches towards him until she can press her thigh over his, lean her forehead on his chest. He puts her arm around, his other arm tucked under the pillow.
"Mitchell."
"Mm?"
"I think you could find a nice blond closer to home. I could help."
He groans, "Vala, please, please don't help me with my love life." He pauses, says again. "Please."
She closes her eyes, then opens them again.
"Mitchell." He grunts and she pokes him in the ribs.
"What?"
"I liked meeting your parents."
He grunts again and sort of nods against her hair.
She closes her eyes again, breathes in the scent of his skin, slides her hand over his chest to tuck up by his neck. He curls his fingers around hers and makes a wordless noise.
"Cameron," she whispers and he groans.
"Vala, go to sleep. For the love of god, go to sleep."
She can feel his breathing start to even out, and she says his name one more time. He sighs, but when he says, "What?" it's kind.
"Thank you," she says against his skin, flicks her eyes up to his face.
He opens his eyes, "What for?" he asks and his voice is a low rumble of surprise.
"Taking me with you," she says, and feels the rough catch in her voice. He's a smart man, dense, but not unintelligent. She's certain he'll know what she means.
"Anytime," he mumbles, presses lips against the crown of her head. "Anytime."
It's the nicest lie anyone's ever told her, and she falls asleep against him, reminding herself to put his watch back in his desk drawer.
Author: Thea
Notes: SG-1, S10. Mild spoilers for eps not yet aired in the US. Mild, very mild. NC-17.
Follows My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys by several months. Follows the The Bounty immediately, proving that once again, I have no shame. NC-17.
Granted, it's been a weird year.
But very little of that weirdness had lead him to expect an alien lolling in his bed, wearing his shirt, clutching her stomach from a pie hangover. Okay, some of the weirdness should have led him to expect that very thing, but at the same time, it's so… domestic. He could picture this scene playing out between her and Daniel, them bitching at each other, layered meanings and opposing universes and that met in the middle thing they've got going on.
Having Vala here instead, though, is like watching a movie synched to the wrong soundtrack.
Cam sits down on the edge of the bed, shakes her arm a little and when she opens her eyes, he hands her the glass. "Drink this," he says and then sets a can of 7-Up on the nightstand.
"I'm dying," she says, and sits up on her elbow, sniffs at the glass. "What is this?"
"Alka-Seltzer." She makes a face, but drinks it down and belches loudly, looking surprised and a little bit amused.
He smirks at her, but takes the glass away and opens the soda. She waves him off and flops back down on the bed. She's got his quilt covering her bare legs, breasts loose under his t-shirt, one arm up above her head and he kind of doesn't know what to think when he looks at her.
"You've just got no concept of restraint, do you?" he says, but he doesn't move from his spot by her side.
Vala waggles her fingers like he's not making any sort of sense. Strands of her hair lose a battle with gravity and drift over her eyes. She blows upwards, trying to dislodge them and he brushes the strands away. Her dark hair is spread out over his pillows, a study in contrast against the plain white sheets and he lingers for a moment, thumb against her cheekbone, fingers against the silk of her hair. He's surprised at himself for the low surge of tenderness that thrums under his skin at the sight of her – eyes closed, mouth a twist of pain. He'd spent most of the weekend wanting to lock her up in the trunk of the car.
He supposes that in her mind she'd been the epitome of restraint, all sex appeal and sweetness and expert marksmanship. Revealing cleavage and horrifying life history with a sunny smile. Scaring the natives and charming his mom.
She baffles him most days; hell, most moments – aggravating and frustrating and fascinating in that order. There's something almost… nice about seeing her sprawled out and vulnerable to normal, human complaints. And he doesn't much like to see her hurting, even when it's her own damn fault. He's seen quite enough of it over the past year, seen enough of all of his team hurting, and for what it's worth, she is firmly entrenched as part of his team now.
Vala startles him out of the reverie, grabbing his hand and shoving it under the quilt. He sucks in his breath, not prepared for one of her flights of sexual fancy, but she surprises him, settles it on her belly instead, over the shirt.
She's warm through the cotton, but he knows that, has felt her skin bare against his palms, the pale smoothness of her hips, her breasts, the fine skin of her inner thighs. Three wildly inappropriate semi-public sex acts, a mutual détente, and then Jackson didn't come through the gate with them and all she'd wanted to do after was hold hands with someone, anyone. Teal'c had been quiet comfort for a time, Sam a shoulder to lean on, but at the end, it had been Cam that she'd sought out. He'd stuck to her in turn, let her tuck into him as close as possible, wear a false sheen of purpose and bravado in the field and then sit too near to him at dinner, craving the kind of false promises that he'd never offered and that she would have rejected regardless. He was grateful that there was someone he could comfort, someone who lacked equal immunity to Jackson's absence.
Cam had wanted to tell her then that Jackson was no longer the glue keeping her in this place, that she'll be part of his team 'til she's not anymore, but he didn't know if she'd take that as him giving up on Jackson or just as a sign of weakness so Cam kept his mouth shut and let her do what she needed to do. He thinks that maybe she figured the rest out in the interim.
But Jackson did come back, and Vala was still staying close, eyeing Jackson like she didn't quite trust his presence, his place, like she'd had a taste of what it was to lose on someone else's behalf and didn't want to finish that particular meal. Cam figures she's had enough loss this past year, is hedging her bets on how much more she's willing to risk. It's part of why he lets her come with him to the reunion, knowing that he'd be embarrassed and she'd be outrageous, and at the end of the day, none of it would matter that much.
And now she's half naked in his bed and he's rubbing her stomach in small circles like he would a kid, soothing weight against her belly to ease some of the ache. He's guessing that despite her snap crackle demeanor in Kansas, the ache isn't all about pie.
"Tell me a story," she says, eyes closing, voice a murmuring order.
"'Bout what?" he asks and she puts her fingertips on his wrist, right over the bone. "You're the one with the stories."
" Hmmm," she wriggles a little, settles deep into the mattress. "Tell me about the blond."
"You didn't even like her," he says, and doesn't stop with the circles. "Why do you care?"
"Don't," she slurs her agreement, voice taking on the blurred edges of sleep, "but I like it when you get all soft and mumbly and embarrassed."
"She's always been nice to people," Cam says finally, thinking past sweet teenage smiles and breasts and girlish perfume, continues as an afterthought. "Always expected that they were nice too."
Vala starts to snort but it turns into a sort of distracted snore. He continues to rub her stomach until she's utterly asleep, boneless and limp, lines of discomfort eased from her features. She looks so … normal when she's asleep.
In the shower, he thinks about high school dances, about that anticipatory flutter he used to feel right before he'd see Amy. How he feels that same kind of flutter now right before the gate opens and wonders when he switched his triggers from pretty blondes to interstellar travel. He doesn't feel that same sweet niggle when he sees Vala, or Sam.
With Vala, it's the sort of breathless Holy Shit, Oh Shit What Now, and with Sam it's a rush of awe and warmth and gratitude.
Cam runs soap over his chest, half hard at vague thoughts of wheat fields and clean skin and blond hair, at the innocence of the whole damn encounter – dancing in a gym in a haze of cheap punch and Chanel #5. At how easy it'd all been. His life the past few years had been wild and frightening and crazy and amazing, but it had ceased to be easy. Surrounded by people who are brilliant and constantly challenging, and Cam spends most of his time figuring out how to coax, cajole, order, lead and fool them into doing what needs to be done. And after that, he follows their lead. Hopes they don't all die.
With Amy, schooldaze fantasy come to life, all he'd had to do was smile, and sway and keep his mouth shut.
Cam closes his eyes, continues to wash – soap sliding against arms and legs and feet, shampoo clean and sweet in his hair. He stays away from his cock, stays away from thoughts of dark hair and a wicked mouth, stays far, far away from thoughts of milky flesh pressed against his, of the wet, hot, slapping sounds of sex in a bookstore bathroom.
His resolution sucks, though. Easy is one thing, but they'd been facing down bounty hunters in that high school gym, using tech that read like science fiction, sending in a fleet to spin the events to all these nice former peers and no matter how much he wanted warm and sweet and easy, what he had was a team. His team. His fabulous, fucked up team that was licking its wounds after Jackson's abduction and return, getting ready to save the world. Again.
And part of his team is half naked in his bed, snoring and dreaming avarice dreams.
Cam braces himself against the wall, his body betraying him as he brings himself to shaky release at the thought of Amy in a flowered dress, at Vala in those damned shorts because a man's got limits and Dorothy Gale as Daisy Duke is just a little too much to be expected to resist.
The TV is still on in the living room when he gets out of the shower, and he does a circuit, picking up bottles of beer and the empty pie pan, moving Vala's shoes out of the absolute middle of the living room where she'd kicked them before settling into the end of the couch, tucking her toes up underneath his thigh.
They'd watched basketball until she'd poked him with her toes, drinking beer when he switched to Law & Order while Vala rooted for the criminals and told the lawyers what they were doing wrong. He should have taken her back to the base, sent her home with her two suitcases and her pie, but when she tilted her head and didn't quite ask if she could stay, didn't say that Teal'c and Jackson and Carter had returned to their own lives for however brief a time, he just… let it happen. Let her go barefoot in house, and harass him into watching lame TV and gorge herself on his mother's berry pie. Pretended that it was perfectly normal to put her to bed in his t-shirt after she started feeling sick, the scent of her perfume curling around them both as she dropped her clothes on his floor, as she touched his cheek with sticky berry-tinged fingers, and crawled, groaning, into his bed.
Vala was good at taking – time, objects, thoughts, personal space. Whenever she's at his house he spends the next day searching for his watch, his wallet, his sense of order. She was getting better at giving back, though.
Cam turns off the lights, goes back to his bedroom to grab sheets and a pillow. His mother's couch was floral, overstuffed and he's got a crick in his neck from two nights on it, doesn't really want to bunk down on his own couch but he's trying to be good, decent, the kind of guy who doesn't take advantage. Thinking that way is easier than addressing the reality that the advantage is almost always Vala's.
The other quilt is under her feet and he's trying to tug it away without waking her up when she mumbles, "Just get into bed, Mitchell."
He drops his head, and follows her orders. She's under the covers and when he slides between the sheets, she pulls the comforter tightly around her, waits until he gets settled and presses cold feet to the curve of his calf. He can feel her small toes through the thin material of his sweats, feel the line of her body separated by such a small distance.
He murmurs "G'Night," and closes his eyes.
***
She wakes up to dreams of dying. They're different every night – sometimes it's her, sometimes Daniel, Tomin, the rest of the team. She'd dreamt of Mitchell falling to the Ori not long after Daniel returned, blue eyes white and glazed and she hadn't been able to speak to him all morning.
The dreams of people dying were easier to take.
Vala dreams some nights of Adria, of those brief moments when the girl was young – dark curls and serious mouth that reminds Vala of her youth but not much of her self. Those instances are rare, though. Much as she hates the idea of having participated in this particular disaster, Adria is not the worst thing that's been done to her. In the grand universal scheme, it may not even prove to be the worst thing she, herself, has done.
It takes her a moment to remember where she is – in Mitchell's bed, in Mitchell's clothes – and she rolls towards the sounds of muffled snoring and curls up her legs to press her knees to the back of his thighs. He's warm and big, taking up most of the bed and she thinks for a moment about pressing against him, fitting her whole body to his and letting his solidity soothe her. He's clean, hair still a little damp and his skin smells like soap. She'd like to put her nose against the nape of his neck, drag her tongue along the shell of his ear, but despite the ages it's been since she's had sex, she refrains. She likes it when he comes to her.
There'd been a time, earlier, when they'd been ensnared together – a push-pull of command and obey, of sex and orders, and then she'd been kidnapped, lost her memory for a time and things had changed. Her own relationship with Daniel had taken on a deeper resonance, and Mitchell had stopped looking at her like she was something baffling and tempting in equal measures. He'd started treating her like she was part of something, not merely an unknown on the fringes of his understanding and that regard proved to be almost as good as sex. She liked it, felt heated and thrilled by it, by the way that all of them had made a place for her.
And then Daniel had stayed behind, gone missing, taken by her daughter, and it was Mitchell who'd held tight to her arm, looked her in the eye and offered her the truth. After that, she started to crave his truths, wanting the solid heat of his palms on her skin, his fingers curling over her arm. She wanted the weight of him against her because the press of his thigh, and the press of his truth, his unwillingness to lie, allowed her to keep thinking that Daniel might come home.
She hasn't felt this tied to anyone since she was a girl, and she's not quite sure she likes it, likes that there are now multiple people in the universe to whom she's unwilling to lie. Well, really lie, to. Small elaborations didn't count. At first it'd just been Daniel, and she seeded her lies with truth, tiny blooms of veracity to see if he'd pluck them out. Now, it's all of them, the whole team.
She'd dreamt tonight of her first husband, the reason hardly a mystery since she hadn't spoken of or thought of him for years prior to telling Mitchell of him in the car. She'd dreamt of his long fine fingers, and their handfast ceremony, of the hours of youthful sex and him falling to the Ori. Even the dream is a sort of a lie. The whole group of travelers had fallen to the Gou'ald not long after she'd been taken. She hadn't even tried to save them.
Mitchell twitches in his sleep and she wonders if he's dreaming of blond girls or of bounty hunters or of the Orii. He told her once that mostly he just dreamed of flying, and of the awful moments when he thought he'd never do it again.
He twitches again, muttering, head burrowing into the pillow and she pushes up on her elbow, prods at him until he startles, rolling swiftly to his other side and pinning her to the bed. His eyes are glazed, grip tight against her wrists and in the moonlight streaming in, the cording of his neck looks like marble. She forces herself to relax, to let him come to and then he's staring down at her like he's lost his mind. His shoulders sag, and he drops his weight onto her body, says her name in her ear with exasperation and not a little relief.
His torso is bare and she slips from his grip on her wrist, puts her hand on his scapula, sliding down to the small of his back. He shudders slightly and drags his fingers along her arm. Vala shifts her hips, arching her back just a little to relieve the press of his weight on her hip. She's got bruises from where she hit the table and Mitchell is a fairly concentrated mass. He ends up between her thighs and it feels… fantastic actually. He's hardening – must have been dreaming of blonds, then – and breathing heavily and she thinks perhaps she's prepared to take advantage. It's been months since she's been naked with anyone, since she was half naked with him and it's time to change all that.
"I told your mother we'd been having sex all over the house," she says. "Wouldn't it be nice to keep that from being a lie?"
His eyes are so wide she thinks they might pop right out of his head, but he doesn't move off of her, just rolls his hips a little and she sucks in her breath.
"Of course, I also told her we had a deep spiritual bond." She smirks and slips her hand down the back of his sweats. His skin is bare, warm and firm. "But a half truth is better than a full lie."
"Spose it can still be a spiritual bond if I go to hell for strangling you," he murmurs, and it sounds like flirting. She chuckles, palms the pliant curve of his ass and nudges him forward.
"Here I am, prepared to let you take full advantage of me, and all I get is talk of violence," she tsks, pushing herself up and taking his earlobe between her teeth. He makes a noise somewhere between a grasp and a moan and lets go of her other arm, shoves his hand up under her shirt to rest on the curve of her breast.
"What about…" and all the possibilities hang unspoken in the air between them. What about Jackson, Tomin, the pretty blond, all their vague dreams and fantasies swirling in the ether.
"It's just sex," she says, and smiles for him, honest as she can be.
"Guess you're recovered then," he murmurs, and brushes his thumb over her nipple.
Vala bites her lip. "Mmmm, feeling much better. In fact, I could eat something," she starts to say, and then he gently pinches the bud of her nipple and she arches into his touch. "Perhaps later."
"This is a bad idea," he breathes, taking away his hand to slide the shirt up her body. She angles and shifts and wiggles and then she's sitting up, straddling his lap, his hand on her back and his tongue in her mouth, shirt landing with a soft thwap on the carpet.
"You always think it's a bad idea," she says between kisses.
He tastes like mint and beer, toothpaste and fermented yeast and himself. He kisses her with all of himself, devoting his attention to the action the same way he devotes himself to action in the field and she likes that. She pulls him closer and rocks down against him, knees pushing into the bed. He holds on to her so tightly that her ribs hurt and then she can't breathe, moves away from his mouth to pant in his ear. He relaxes his hold, one hand coming up to cup her neck, to drag over the front of her, a hot trail that ends with his palm spread over her thigh.
"That's," he chokes out, "because it … always… is."
She slides her tongue along the ridge of his collarbone, grinding into his erection through the material of his pants. He slips his fingers along her spine, follows the path between the cheeks of her ass to tease against her sex.
She hitches her breath, nips at his skin. "Live a little, Mitchell," she says and shoves him onto his back.
He trails over her hip, gets between their bodies, presses his hand up against her sex. She's wet, slick and she clenches around his fingers as he enters her. She closes her eyes, braced against his chest as she rides his fingers, thrusting against his thumb as it bumps her clit.
They move well together, hands and fingers and tongues and skin, skills honed by months in the field and she likes this familiarity, likes that she can anticipate the shift in his muscles, that he can brace her back as she clenches against him, that when she can't wait and he can't wait, it's an easy thing to divest him of his pants, to roll to her back, thighs spread, pillow under her hips, knee up by his ribs as he penetrates, thrusts into her with a grunt and awe on his face.
They fuck across the bed until she's half on her side and he's half on the floor, one foot braced against the carpet, hands gripped tight, hips slamming against her ass, his cock deep inside her and she yells as she comes, as he quickly follows, movements jerky and quick, holding her in place as he finds his release.
Mitchell doesn't collapse when he withdraws so much as sits down on the floor and then sprawls onto his back on the floor, arms spread out. She misses his warmth and his weight and his sex, and she rolls over onto her other side, curling her legs up and props her head on her hand to look at him, hanging a little over the side of the bed.
He reaches up idly to catch the ends of her hair between her fingertips.
"Did you really tell my mom that we'd been having sex all over the house?" his voice is slurry, the drawl thick as heavy cream.
"Mmm hmmm."
"Huh. Great."
He continues to fiddle with her hair, an inscrutable look on his face.
"Mitchell," she finally says."
"Mmm?"
"Are you really going to stay down there?"
"Maybe."
She pauses, looks at him, likes his ease at being naked on the floor. However, "I really am hungry."
His jaw drops. "Are you serious?"
She nods vigorously, waits to see what he's going to do, and is gratified when he hauls himself off the floor and goes, naked, to the kitchen, coming back with a box of saltines and an apple and a beer.
"You're like a goat," he says.
"Superhuman metabolism," she says and grins as he shakes his head.
He crawls across the bed to his side, and gets under the covers, nudging her with his feet until she sits up and lets him have his space.
"Do not get those in my sheets," he warns, and takes a long swig of the beer.
She eats the saltines and the apple then holds her hand out. He trades her the beer for the crackers and puts the box on the bedside table. She finishes the beer and hands him the empty bottle and the apple core, then gets back under the covers. He throws the core across the room, where it drops into the trash can, then scoots down, eyes closing and she inches towards him until she can press her thigh over his, lean her forehead on his chest. He puts her arm around, his other arm tucked under the pillow.
"Mitchell."
"Mm?"
"I think you could find a nice blond closer to home. I could help."
He groans, "Vala, please, please don't help me with my love life." He pauses, says again. "Please."
She closes her eyes, then opens them again.
"Mitchell." He grunts and she pokes him in the ribs.
"What?"
"I liked meeting your parents."
He grunts again and sort of nods against her hair.
She closes her eyes again, breathes in the scent of his skin, slides her hand over his chest to tuck up by his neck. He curls his fingers around hers and makes a wordless noise.
"Cameron," she whispers and he groans.
"Vala, go to sleep. For the love of god, go to sleep."
She can feel his breathing start to even out, and she says his name one more time. He sighs, but when he says, "What?" it's kind.
"Thank you," she says against his skin, flicks her eyes up to his face.
He opens his eyes, "What for?" he asks and his voice is a low rumble of surprise.
"Taking me with you," she says, and feels the rough catch in her voice. He's a smart man, dense, but not unintelligent. She's certain he'll know what she means.
"Anytime," he mumbles, presses lips against the crown of her head. "Anytime."
It's the nicest lie anyone's ever told her, and she falls asleep against him, reminding herself to put his watch back in his desk drawer.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 04:01 am (UTC)I'm glad Bounty gave you some inspiration *g*
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 04:01 am (UTC)This is also hot, which is always a bonus in your fic. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:53 pm (UTC)And hee - I'm glad you found it hot. It was so tilting towards the domestic that I wondered if they were even gonna get to the sex!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:54 pm (UTC)And thank you!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 04:41 am (UTC)I, too, love the way they interact in your hands, the way their personalities bump and weave against one another.
seva
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 03:14 pm (UTC)I love the hot, and the domestic, and most of all I love the way Vala's now tied to the whole team, a connection that is rooted in Mitchell instead of Daniel.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:57 pm (UTC)And I'm glad you liked it:) I enjoyed this ep in all it's ridiculousness, but I can totally understand a different reaction.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 04:07 pm (UTC)Please, don't ever stop writing this pairing? Because you have them down perfectly and I can so easily fit this into the series and it's absolutely awesome.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 05:58 pm (UTC)I'm very glad you liked it!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 08:36 pm (UTC)I could hear BB saying this so clearly: "Vala, go to sleep. For the love of god, go to sleep."
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Date: 2007-02-14 08:57 pm (UTC)I think that's one of the things I've wanted to explore with all of this - how it's both. How the sex is like icing, and this family that's forming is the cake. This weird friendship is devil's food cake with red icing;)
And hee - if you can hear them saying it, then I definitely feel like I've done my job:)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 11:00 pm (UTC)....as it is, let's stick this:
"She fed him pie...and then they had sex!!!!!"
no subject
Date: 2007-02-15 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-16 12:43 am (UTC)I really liked this paragraph:
Vala was good at taking – time, objects, thoughts, personal space. Whenever she's at his house he spends the next day searching for his watch, his wallet, his sense of order. She was getting better at giving back, though.
Vala doesn't get romanticized & he doesn't lose track of who she is, and yet he's grown fond of her anyway (almost because of instead of in spite of these things).
& I liked the bit about how they moved well together in bed because they'd learned to move well as a team in the field.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-16 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 07:12 pm (UTC)