FIC: with all our sun-bleached history [SG-1, Cam/Daniel, Daniel/Vala, R]
14 Valentines: V-Day. Be strong, be fierce, be wild, be brilliant, be beautiful.
Title: with all our sun-bleached history
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Cameron Mitchell/Daniel Jackson, past Cameron/Daniel/Vala & Daniel/Vala
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through 10x10, The Quest Part 1.
Disclaimer: Wright, Cooper and Glassman own these characters. I'm fooling around with no profit.
Summary: well here we are then you and me/some little joke of chemistry/with all our sun bleached history/fading as the light gets strong. Follows Valentine The Destroyer by nine months. 11,500 words.
Nine months later, and Daniel still has fourteen cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup in his kitchen cupboards and Cameron Everett Mitchell in his bed. Daniel knows that Cam's middle name comes from an old N.C. State basketball coach that his father admired. He knows that Cameron sleeps on his stomach when he's worried about something, and he knows that he still mostly calls Cam "Mitchell" in his head, even when he's thinking about Cameron fondly.
There's more pieces that he can count, and Daniel doesn't have half a clue how to put them together. There's a bigger picture, and Daniel can't step back far enough to see it.
He thinks he's missing something, something essential to understanding Mitchell, understanding this thing they've got, but Daniel's a little afraid to find out what he's missing. It's tentative, this happiness, and he doesn't want to upset it. Daniel's almost as happy as he knows how to be, and when Daniel rolls over in bed, Mitchell mumbles in his sleep and throws an arm across Daniel's stomach.
They've spent the summer in some kind of quiet domesticity, filling in the holes that Vala left. Daniel thinks that life is like building sand castles; you can find something sturdy, something safe, but only until the next waves sweeps your foundations away.
He's never gotten over always expecting that next wave, every time he's almost happy, because it's always washed his life away, but with Mitchell -- it never seems to come.
With Sam standing next to Daniel in the gate room, SG-1 -- Daniel, Mitchell, Sam (again, back from Area 51 for a year; and Daniel knows that Mitchell was not, is not, the only one in the Mountain who thinks that the original and revival SG-1 teams are heroes. Their current scientist, whose name Daniel can never remember because she isn't Sam, and she isn't Simmons, who'd been there when Vala left them and had stepped down immediately when Sam's transfer orders came through to Landry; as though it wasn't even a question) and a skinny, smart-mouthed Marine named Keeley -- almost feels like SG-1 again.
Cameron says, "It's raining on the MALP," so plaintive that Daniel turns and smirks at him, knowing that there's amusement and affection written all over his face. Cameron snorts, and smirks back at Daniel. Daniel thinks, soup, and long cool nights on Jack's roof, and taking Vala dancing in Denver.
All different kinds of affection -- all different definitions for home.
Daniel says, "You've been complaining about the heat for days."
"Just because the weather here sucks," Cam says, "does not mean it can suck off-world, too."
"Congratulations, Mitchell," Sam says, fiddling with one of her things -- the whole scene feels familiar to Daniel, because Sam is playing with something electronic that Daniel doesn't know the name for, and because someone (Jack or Cameron, they both complain the same way) is complaining about the weather. "You have, after only three years as CO of SG-1, managed to sound exactly like General O'Neill did whenever we went to a planet with trees. Sgt. Harriman will be waiting with a plaque when we get back."
"Planets with trees," Daniel says. "Or rocks, or water, or weather or any variety. Or indigenous peoples, or technology, or bugs for dinner, or outdoor toilets, or no ESPN, or Goa'uld -- "
"Hey, we all complained about those planets," Sam said. "The planets with Goa'uld were designated complainers. General O'Neill just expected that we ran while we complained."
"Well, he knew all about running while complaining," Daniel says sarcastically, and Sam giggles.
Cameron taps his fingers on his P-90 and says, "It's just like old times around here this week."
Daniel can't tell what he means by that -- it sounds halfway between pleased and disappointed, and Mitchell's flipped his sunglasses down so his eyes are inscrutable. Maybe it was the bracelet link, always hanging on underneath their skin, but Daniel had always known what Vala was feeling, but only on the deepest level -- fear, or pleasure, or surprise.
Cameron is easier to read. His face gives everything away, and if Daniel can see Cameron's eyes, he knows immediately what Cameron needs -- what he wants -- all the stupid day to day stuff that people who have relationships, which Daniel supposes after nine months he and Mitchell do, deal with. Mitchell only puts his sunglasses on in the gate room -- and it's raining on P9V-N7A, so he doesn't need them -- when he doesn't want Daniel to see something.
Nine months without Vala, and three years stepping through the gate with Cameron, and Cam is still more of a blank page to Daniel than Vala ever was, except when he isn't.
Daniel claps Cameron's shoulder briefly when he steps past Cam on the ramp, and something makes him turn a couple of steps later, looking back at Cameron. Cam's watching Daniel over the tops of his sunglasses, a gesture that's so familiarly Jack that Daniel smiles without thinking about it, and Cam winks at Daniel before clanging a boot down onto the ramp. "All right, troops," Cameron says, "let's get this show on the road."
It's raining buckets when they step through the gate onto N7A, but the UAV showed a significantly large, well-developed village less than a klick from the gate, and Landry -- like Hammond before him -- said that a little rain never hurt anybody. Jack always said that what if he was really the Wicked Witch of the West, and he melted when we stepped through into the rain, Daniel thinks while he's pulling his hat farther over his ears and trying to keep the rain from dripping farther down his collar.
Hammond had always said, You have a go, Colonel, as though he hadn't heard anything, and Sam always muttered that it'd be a good riddance, and Daniel had always tried to hide his smile. Jack never melted, and SG-1 had survived worse weather than this.
"This place is officially a shithole," Mitchell mutters. "Carter, you've got point. And walk fast, okay?"
Daniel falls in beside Mitchell and Keeley falls back to their six. It's August in Colorado and a heat wave had settled over the Springs the week before they left for N7A -- the kind of arid heat that Daniel has always associated with deserts, with places that he almost thought were home. SG-1 had been on stand down for the week, before Sam's first mission back on the team, and Daniel could have managed some work at the Mountain.
He hadn't -- when they'd debriefed after the last mission they'd gone on with the scientist whose name Daniel can't remember, he'd packed up a week's worth of work, told General Landry that he'd be available on both his phones if anyone needed him, and signed out of the Mountain without telling Cameron, or Sam, or anyone in his department, that he was going.
He was on his balcony an hour and a half later, shirt off, heat sinking into his skin like a kiss, when his front door opened and Cameron stomped in. "It's hotter'n fuck," Cam had said.
Daniel said, without turning, "You're from North Carolina. That's humid heat."
"Not up in the mountains," Cam said. He sank down into Daniel's other chair and passed Daniel a beer. "It gets hot during the day, but not as hot as the Piedmont or the coast, and it cools down at night. I never got used to summer in Raleigh, but Colorado has always felt more like home to me."
Daniel turned at that -- Cameron had his eyes closed, not even looking at Daniel, and Daniel hadn't said anything about the heat to anyone. Jack had always known that Daniel preferred the deserts to the lush forests and snowy mountains that they found off-world, because Jack had seen Daniel on Abydos. Jack had seen the way that Daniel sank into the heat there like a cat in sunshine, and Jack had recognized that as Daniel coming home.
Daniel knew that was why Jack left him there; Jack knew that Daniel would be okay. It was hot, therefore Daniel would be okay. It was a simple explanation, it was a Jack explanation, but Daniel always understood why Jack had drawn the conclusion.
Mitchell has never given any indication that he has noticed anything about Daniel on that level. Not that Daniel minded -- no one he'd ever met had known him as well as Jack knew him, and no one had ever looked at Daniel and taken his full measure as fast as Jack had. There were times when Jack hadn't liked the measure he'd taken of Daniel, but he always knew Daniel better than anyone.
Daniel doesn't mind that Mitchell doesn't know him that well; that Mitchell doesn't seem to care to. The things he gets from Mitchell -- the things he needs from Mitchell -- are different than the things he needed from Jack. The things he needed from Sha're. The things he needed from Vala.
"I was just thinking that this felt like home," Daniel said, and Mitchell cracked open an eye and took a long pull on his beer.
"Egypt," Daniel said. "Abydos."
Jack had always known, Mitchell had never noticed, and Vala had never really cared.
Vala had never wanted to talk about feelings. Needs, yes -- memories, no. He never thought of it as her lying to him, but half of Vala's stories were true and he never knew which half. Mitchell wasn't forthcoming about his feelings or his history, but they cropped up at the oddest moments and whenever Cameron said something about his past, Daniel knew it was true.
"Desert heat," Cameron said. "I never got used to that, either. It's drier here than Carolina, but it's wetter than the desert."
"Afghanistan," Daniel said.
"I'd rather talk about the mountains," Cameron said, and Daniel had set his translations down on the balcony and kissed Cameron, forgetting that they were in public, broad daylight, for a moment. "Hey," Cam said. "It's too hot to do that."
"It's never too hot," Daniel had said, and then he'd taken Cameron to bed and proven that fact. They spent the week in bed, sweaty and sated, and traded stories about ex-girlfriends. Daniel had felt entirely normal for the first time since Vala had left -- he couldn't see the cracks in his heart even when he tried -- and Cameron had laughed a lot.
Mitchell always laughs a lot -- a ready smile that almost always reaches his eyes. He's the first to make a joke, like Jack always was, and the first to laugh at himself when he does something dumb, like Jack never was. Daniel can't help but compare Mitchell to Jack, even though it's been three years -- he doesn't mean to, but it's the nature of his brain. He looks for similarities between cultures, between texts, between the people on one planet and the people of another planet. That's his job, it's what he does.
He has a hard time turning that off, and when Mitchell laughs, sometimes Daniel follows the sound and looks for Jack.
Jack and Mitchell are more alike than they're different. Some days that bothers Daniel; most of the time, it's comforting.
Mitchell is everything Daniel needs right now. He's stable and funny, smart and careful and kind. He lets Daniel push him until Daniel pushes too hard, and then Mitchell pushes back. They're well-balanced, keeping each other in a rational orbit, and Daniel leans on Mitchell more than he ever thought he would -- more than he'd really like to admit.
Mitchell leans back, though, and they keep each other upright.
Just like he always did for Jack, and Jack did for him. Synergistic relationships -- give and take. The kind he never had before they opened the 'gate -- the kind he'd always wanted.
Mitchell is a rock in his life, and Daniel tries not to take it for granted.
It's raining on this damn planet, though, and they're all already soaked to the bone by the time they reach the city. After six days of heat so dry that it choked you, the rain feels awful to Daniel, colder than it probably really is. He shudders a little as they squelch up to the edge of the city, and Mitchell -- who's taken his sunglasses off and is, by Daniel's estimation, looking entirely miserable -- slaps a hand against Daniel's shoulders, wiping a trail of rain from Daniel's collar with his thumb.
Daniel leans into Cameron's touch, just barely, Cam's fingers warm against his freezing neck, and someone steps out of the nearest house to look at them.
Daniel's dropped his head so he can wipe the rain off his glasses and sees the movement out of the corner of his eye, but Cameron's fingers tighten on Daniel's neck before Daniel can look up. When he slides his glasses on again, there's already rain streaming down them and he squints to see. Through the sheets of water, he almost thinks the striking, dark haired woman is Vala.
He's seen her on a dozen planets since she left -- glimpses through crowds, and shadows behind trees. It's never been her. It sometimes even hasn't been a person. Shadows and ghosts, at the corners of Daniel's eye. Cameron hasn't said anything about it, but he's watched Daniel jump at the phantoms, his gaze always level and carefully assessing, and afterwards, he always took Daniel home and took him to bed. Those days Mitchell touched him cautiously, hands gentle and firm against Daniel's skin, and Daniel feels everything that Mitchell never says to him in that touch.
The woman says, "Hello, Daniel."
Mitchell says, "What, no hello for me?"
Daniel sits down in the mud, hard.
He's been stepping through the gate for almost fifteen years, now -- not always with SG-1, but if you count back to the very first time that he and Jack stumbled onto Abydos. Jack says that he stopped being surprised by anything when he saw his first System Lord; Jack says that Daniel has never stopped being surprised. If anything, Jack had said the last time he was in Colorado Springs, four months earlier, you've just been more surprised lately.
The more Daniel sees in the galaxy, the more he knows there is to see. It will never be boring, stepping through the stargate, because he expects nothing. He expects nothing, and the galaxy gives him everything.
The galaxy takes everything away, as well. Daniel doesn't keep a list, a tally of things he's lost and things he's gained. There isn't any purpose to it -- there's no set of scales that measures the worth of any life.
He keeps his eyes wide so he misses nothing. He waits for the surprises, the things that make the galaxy worth marveling at.
Mitchell was a surprise -- Mitchell is a surprise, every day. He keeps Daniel from sinking into passivity, from losing himself in the tedium of life. He reminds Daniel to look for the surprises in the world.
He keeps Daniel standing when the surprises punch Daniel in the gut.
Daniel is very, very surprised to see Vala, and then again, he isn't at all. He stepped through the gate and got a surprise, that's not surprising at all -- that it's Vala is even less surprising. She'd disappeared on her own terms, and she's smiling at him now, so he can only guess that her reappearance was equally her own.
"Hello, Cameron," Vala says. "Sam. Get him out of the mud and come in."
When Jack was in the Springs four months ago, he'd stayed with Daniel -- the first time he'd stayed with Daniel since he'd left. Jack stared at all the soup in Daniel's cabinets and said, "What the hell is Mitchell doing with you?"
"Cameron's not doing anything with me," Daniel had said mildly.
Jack snorted and held out a can. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table reading the most recent Carl Hiaasen book, and Jack slammed the can down in front of him. "Do you know how much processed crap is in condensed soup?"
Daniel snorted and said, "Jack, you lived on the stuff for almost 10 years."
"Yeah, well," Jack said gruffly. "I didn't take very good care of you either."
Daniel rolled his eyes and Jack put the soup back in the cabinet. He leaned against the sink and trained that look on Daniel, the look that Daniel knew meant you're not telling me something.
"Are you happy?" Jack said.
"That's always been a stupid question," Daniel said.
"Daniel," Jack said.
"Jack," Daniel said.
"It's not a stupid question," Jack said. "I'm getting old. You're getting old. Everybody's getting old, and I think we've earned a little happiness."
"Earning has nothing to do with it," Daniel said.
Jack snorted. "Earning has everything to do with it," he said. "They pay you plenty, and you live in a big apartment that you've hardly slept in the whole time you've had it, and you have a cabinet full of soup."
Daniel said, "It keeps coming back to soup."
"Is soup a metaphor for something?"
"I can't believe we're having this conversation," Daniel said. "This is a very good book, Jack, and you're distracting me from it. I don't have a lot of opinions about soup."
"Are you happy, Daniel?"
"Yes," Daniel said. "As well as I can be."
"The losses add up," Jack said.
"Karmic balance," Daniel said, and Jack smiled, a tiny smile. Daniel didn't know why he'd said it -- he'd never thought of everything he'd lost as things he was owed.
Jack drummed his knuckles against the counter and said, "Something like that."
"I'm happy enough," Daniel said. "That's the best anyone can do."
Jack smiled at him again, and said, "You deserve better than that."
"Everybody does," Daniel said.
"You more than most."
"No more than anyone else." Jack rolled his eyes and circled the kitchen, squeezing the back of Daniel's neck as he passed, and opened the fridge. He made himself a sandwich and sat across the table from Daniel, eating noisily, and Daniel thought, my life is as peaceful as I can hope.
The house that Vala takes them to is small and clean, but not nearly warm enough -- the rain has soaked all the way through to his skin and Daniel is freezing. Vala doesn't stare; she watches Cameron, she watches Sam, she watches the new Marine, but she doesn't look at Daniel. "There's nothing here that you want," she says to Sam. "It all looks advanced, but it's design, not function. None of it does anything."
"And you would know?" Sam says. There's a challenge in her voice, and Daniel can't tell if it's for him, for Vala's disappearing act, or if it's just Sam, so certain that she knows more than everyone else -- so often knowing more than everyone else. Daniel wouldn't bet on a guess, but he thinks it's a little of both.
"I know what's worth stealing," Vala teases back, and out of the corner of his eye, Daniel can see Mitchell studiously not watching Daniel. Cam has one hand on his P-90 and he's watching Vala carefully, though Daniel's spent enough time being covertly monitored by Air Force colonels that he knows Cameron's aware of every movement Daniel's made since they walked through the gate. (Daniel has spent enough time doing almost everything -- nothing new happens anymore. They say there's only seven stories in the whole world, and SG-1 has lived them all a hundred times over. It's the same old thing, every time, and somehow, it's comforting that the strangest situations aren't actually anything they haven't survived before.)
It's not suspicion on Cameron's face, but it's not affection for Vala, either.
"But they're interesting," Vala says cheerfully. She isn't looking at Daniel, so he looks at her, taking the measure of her absence. She's thinner, and she's damp around the edges, of course, from the rain, but she looks like Vala, the Vala he loved. Cheerful in the face of surprise and routine alike; tactless, rude and needy. Vala always loved surprises; she had no interest in a world that didn't have surprises. Daniel thinks that she's the one who taught him how to be surprised again; Vala always wanted to fly, wanted to see everything the galaxy had to offer. She wanted bombshells; Daniel wanted routine. She disappeared, and he has tried to fill her void with wonder of his own. "They're useless, but interesting, so you should stay the night."
She pours tea -- he's never seen Vala cook anything -- and slides into a chair across from Cameron at the table. "Well now," she says. "Isn't this a nice reunion. Didn't anyone call Teal'c? Or General O'Neill?"
Jack had treated Vala like Mitchell always did -- a live bomb to be handled with care. He only met her a handful of times, and Jack had worn the expression he saved for things that were funny and freakish at the same time. They'd been sitting in Mitchell's backyard, the week after they'd gotten her back from Athena's meddling sans a few stray memories, and Jack had been in town for something that Daniel suspected was really just needing to check up on Daniel.
He'd told Jack what he'd found in Vala, after the first time he'd taken her home. Jack snorted on the phone and made a joke about Daniel's predilection for women from other planets -- "Earth girls not good enough for you, Daniel?" -- but Daniel had heard the warmth in Jack's voice when Jack said it.
And Jack had come to Colorado after they'd almost lost Vala, to Athena, because Jack had picked Daniel up from the ground when he'd lost Sha're, and because Jack thought it was his job to keep Daniel from crumpling to the ground.
He and Vala had been feeling out their tentative relationship, and she had sprawled face down across Daniel's lap like a cat. Jack had smiled at Daniel across Vala and nodded, just a little. Daniel had taken it to mean, you got yourself another live one, huh? and yeah, okay, don't make me say it, I'm happy for you -- he'd known Jack long enough to know what Jack's emotive twitches meant.
Jack had twitched his head toward Mitchell, after that. Mitchell was telling some story about his grandmother, or maybe one of his aunts, and Sam was laughing her head off at something he'd just said. Daniel ran his fingers through Vala's hair and shrugged at Jack, who'd rolled his eyes at Daniel and interrupted Mitchell's story by flinging a tomato slice at Sam's face.
Vala had rolled over, then, and smiled up at Daniel before stretching and shimmying so that she showed off even more cleavage, and Daniel hadn't realized that Jack was asking if Mitchell was taking okay care of Jack's team until weeks later. Weeks later after he and Vala had seduced Mitchell, with no malice aforethought, even, into their bed -- weeks later after he'd realized that Vala was trying to push Daniel and Cameron together.
Well, Daniel had thought when he'd realized what Jack had meant, he is, after a fashion. He'd thought that and then Cameron had rolled over and mumbled, "Quit thinking so loud, Jackson, you're drowning out my snoring," before pressing his face against Daniel's ribs.
The next time Jack came back, Vala was already gone and Cam was taking a different kind of care of Daniel.
(He doesn't know why he's thinking of Jack, today, this week -- Jack calls every Sunday night and half the time Daniel's still at the Mountain (back at the Mountain, off-world, passed out in the infirmary) so he comes home on Monday (Tuesday, Friday, the Wednesday after that) and finds ten minutes' worth of messages from Jack broken up into 90 second segments. Mostly they're about hockey and fish, and Daniel has to listen carefully between the lines to hear what Jack's really telling him. Jack never disappeared fully, and they'd made their own peace about the promotion to Washington years ago.
Mitchell's keeping an eye on him, and Daniel doesn't mind that, and it still doesn't surprise him that he's willing to let Mitchell care like that; they went to a planet from the Abydos cartouche and found Vala. He keeps thinking about Jack.
He keeps thinking about Jack because Jack took him home the night they lost Sha're, and when Vala left, Mitchell is the one who stood next to Daniel and held him up.)
Daniel can't tell if she looks happy or not, and the fact that he can't read anything on her face other than false cheer scares him. "I need some fresh air," he says, and stands up abruptly, showering mud down onto the clean floor of Vala's apparent home.
Sam says, "Daniel, it's raining," but he's already halfway out the door.
It's still raining and it's still cold, but just standing outside makes him feel a little better, a little more normal. The door opens and shuts behind him, and he knows it's Mitchell before Mitchell says, "Jackson, you okay?"
Daniel thinks Mitchell never notices the details, except when Mitchell does.
Daniel says, "A little wet, but otherwise perfectly."
"Perfectly what?" Mitchell says, and when Daniel turns, Mitchell's got his hat pulled down to the tops of his sunglasses, which he's put back on.
"Perfectly okay, a little wet," Daniel says.
"You're going to have to ask the questions," Mitchell says quietly. The rain's slowing down, and Mitchell is hiding behind his sunglasses. "I don't -- it's your call, okay? Whatever you want to do, it's your call."
Daniel gets the feeling that Cameron's talking about a lot more than just asking Vala if she's coming back to Earth or not, a lot more than the logistical CO concerns of finding an ex-team member (an ex-girlfriend) on a raining planet. "I think the rain's stopping," Daniel says.
Cam snorts down a laugh and tilts his face up to the sky. The rain slides down his sunglasses, catches in the hollow of his throat, and Daniel stares, because he can't help it. Vala left Daniel and she left him Cameron as a consolation prize -- that's what you are, Daniel said to Cam one night a month after she left, when they were fighting about something, and Cam had just laughed and said, semantics, Jackson, and they hadn't talked about it anymore -- but the thing is that Cam was right. Semantics, definitions: consolation prize because Daniel had needed someone to console him, not because Cameron was second best to anyone.
Nine months and what Daniel knows is that he doesn't know what he wants to ask Vala, and sometimes he can't remember not having Mitchell sprawled out in his life, taking up too much room and never apologizing for it.
Cam says, "You always talk about the weather when you don't want to talk about whatever it is that's being talked about."
"I didn't know you were paying that much attention," Daniel says dryly. It comes out sounding a little mean and he immediately regrets it.
He didn't think that Cam was paying that much attention; the fact that he is makes Daniel's heart twist against his chest.
"Yeah, well," Cam says, sounding hurt, and he peers at Daniel over the tops of his sunglasses again. It's a stupid gesture that drove Daniel nuts when Jack had done it, when Sam does it, but Cameron is standing in the rain with Daniel, and it's Cam's way of saying that he's sorry -- Cam's freaked out about something, which is what the sunglasses are supposed to hide, but he's been paying attention to Daniel for the last couple of years, and despite the freak out, whatever it's about, Cam is doing his best to look Daniel in the eye.
Which counts for a lot, in Daniel's book.
Cam says, "I don't know what you want to know, or I'd already have asked everything until she coughed up a good reason for ripping your heart out." He says it casually, pushes his sunglasses back up on his nose, and jerks his head toward Vala's house.
Cameron knows that he was Daniel's second choice. He isn't now, because Daniel didn't have to stay -- didn't have to ask Cam to stay. He knows that Daniel walked wounded for weeks after she left. Cameron stayed anyway, and he was never anyone but himself. Cameron could have tried to be someone else, someone more like Vala, someone more like what it seemed to the world that Daniel wanted, and he didn't.
That's as much why Daniel's kept Cameron as anything else -- there's no artifice with Mitchell, what Daniel sees is what he gets, and Daniel welcomes that because it's easy, and it's normal. No games to be played -- they are what they are, and so far, they have managed to make things work.
Cameron is a fascinating anthropological experiment -- if Daniel was prone to thinking about his various lovers and partners and friends like that, which he tries not to be. (Jack broke him of the habit; there's such a thing as too much psycho-analysis of other people, Danny, stop looking at me like I'm a puzzle you can solve -- and Jack was right, Daniel has never quite solved Jack O'Neill, and Daniel preferred it that way. Almost 15 years, and Jack is still occasionally a surprise. It's a comforting truth by this point in Daniel's life: Jack is predictable, except when he's not.)
Daniel likes Cameron's company, because he's a smart guy, and curious, and with a cheerfully twisted sense of humor. He likes Cam because Cam is gorgeous, and he smiles easily, and he routinely asks stupid questions when they're off-world just to watch Daniel's head spin.
Cameron says, hand on the doorknob of Vala's little house, "What do you want to know?"
"More than I can ask," Daniel says. "Why. Why then. Why me, why you. Why us. Why here. Did she know we were coming, or is my luck really just still that shitty, even after 10 years of abysmally shitty luck? Is she coming home? Do I want her to come home? Do -- do you and I want her to come home?"
Lightning flashes above their heads like a camera going off, and the thunder crashes around them almost immediately on its heels. Mitchell squints at Daniel over his sunglasses. He says, "Are you asking me?"
Daniel shrugs. It's raining harder, now, and Cameron doesn't blink -- it's like he doesn't even notice the water coming down on his head. Daniel thinks that this is the best thing he's learned about Cam Mitchell in the last three years, that Cam is easy-going to the point of being almost too easy-going. Mitchell only asks questions when he really wants to know the answer, whatever the answer is -- otherwise he's content to stand in the rain, if he has to, because that's just how it is.
Cam only asks questions when he wants to know the answer, and Daniel doesn't know the answer to the question Cam's just asked.
"Is this one of those things that we don't talk about because we're guys?" Mitchell says.
Daniel can't stop himself from smiling. "No," he says. "We don't talk about how we don't talk about stuff because we're guys. We don't talk about this because -- "
He doesn't know why they haven't talked about Vala since she's been gone, or about this thing she's tangled them in. Daniel has spent nine months, the cold of the winter and the baking heat of the summer, figuring out who Cam Mitchell really is, and what Cam Mitchell really needs from Daniel, and it's been complicated and intense and surprising -- maybe that's all Vala intended to do, pushing them together. Maybe all she intended to do was distract Daniel from her absence, from the hole she left in his life when she stepped out of it.
Mitchell's been an excellent distraction.
He's been a good friend. He's been a good partner.
Little by little, Daniel's fallen in love with Cameron, and Daniel's heart almost doesn't feel bruised anymore. It almost feels whole.
So quietly that Daniel almost misses it under the pounding sound of the rain, Cam says, "I'm not the one whose heart she broke."
*
On to Part Two.
Title: with all our sun-bleached history
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Pairing: Cameron Mitchell/Daniel Jackson, past Cameron/Daniel/Vala & Daniel/Vala
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through 10x10, The Quest Part 1.
Disclaimer: Wright, Cooper and Glassman own these characters. I'm fooling around with no profit.
Summary: well here we are then you and me/some little joke of chemistry/with all our sun bleached history/fading as the light gets strong. Follows Valentine The Destroyer by nine months. 11,500 words.
Nine months later, and Daniel still has fourteen cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup in his kitchen cupboards and Cameron Everett Mitchell in his bed. Daniel knows that Cam's middle name comes from an old N.C. State basketball coach that his father admired. He knows that Cameron sleeps on his stomach when he's worried about something, and he knows that he still mostly calls Cam "Mitchell" in his head, even when he's thinking about Cameron fondly.
There's more pieces that he can count, and Daniel doesn't have half a clue how to put them together. There's a bigger picture, and Daniel can't step back far enough to see it.
He thinks he's missing something, something essential to understanding Mitchell, understanding this thing they've got, but Daniel's a little afraid to find out what he's missing. It's tentative, this happiness, and he doesn't want to upset it. Daniel's almost as happy as he knows how to be, and when Daniel rolls over in bed, Mitchell mumbles in his sleep and throws an arm across Daniel's stomach.
They've spent the summer in some kind of quiet domesticity, filling in the holes that Vala left. Daniel thinks that life is like building sand castles; you can find something sturdy, something safe, but only until the next waves sweeps your foundations away.
He's never gotten over always expecting that next wave, every time he's almost happy, because it's always washed his life away, but with Mitchell -- it never seems to come.
With Sam standing next to Daniel in the gate room, SG-1 -- Daniel, Mitchell, Sam (again, back from Area 51 for a year; and Daniel knows that Mitchell was not, is not, the only one in the Mountain who thinks that the original and revival SG-1 teams are heroes. Their current scientist, whose name Daniel can never remember because she isn't Sam, and she isn't Simmons, who'd been there when Vala left them and had stepped down immediately when Sam's transfer orders came through to Landry; as though it wasn't even a question) and a skinny, smart-mouthed Marine named Keeley -- almost feels like SG-1 again.
Cameron says, "It's raining on the MALP," so plaintive that Daniel turns and smirks at him, knowing that there's amusement and affection written all over his face. Cameron snorts, and smirks back at Daniel. Daniel thinks, soup, and long cool nights on Jack's roof, and taking Vala dancing in Denver.
All different kinds of affection -- all different definitions for home.
Daniel says, "You've been complaining about the heat for days."
"Just because the weather here sucks," Cam says, "does not mean it can suck off-world, too."
"Congratulations, Mitchell," Sam says, fiddling with one of her things -- the whole scene feels familiar to Daniel, because Sam is playing with something electronic that Daniel doesn't know the name for, and because someone (Jack or Cameron, they both complain the same way) is complaining about the weather. "You have, after only three years as CO of SG-1, managed to sound exactly like General O'Neill did whenever we went to a planet with trees. Sgt. Harriman will be waiting with a plaque when we get back."
"Planets with trees," Daniel says. "Or rocks, or water, or weather or any variety. Or indigenous peoples, or technology, or bugs for dinner, or outdoor toilets, or no ESPN, or Goa'uld -- "
"Hey, we all complained about those planets," Sam said. "The planets with Goa'uld were designated complainers. General O'Neill just expected that we ran while we complained."
"Well, he knew all about running while complaining," Daniel says sarcastically, and Sam giggles.
Cameron taps his fingers on his P-90 and says, "It's just like old times around here this week."
Daniel can't tell what he means by that -- it sounds halfway between pleased and disappointed, and Mitchell's flipped his sunglasses down so his eyes are inscrutable. Maybe it was the bracelet link, always hanging on underneath their skin, but Daniel had always known what Vala was feeling, but only on the deepest level -- fear, or pleasure, or surprise.
Cameron is easier to read. His face gives everything away, and if Daniel can see Cameron's eyes, he knows immediately what Cameron needs -- what he wants -- all the stupid day to day stuff that people who have relationships, which Daniel supposes after nine months he and Mitchell do, deal with. Mitchell only puts his sunglasses on in the gate room -- and it's raining on P9V-N7A, so he doesn't need them -- when he doesn't want Daniel to see something.
Nine months without Vala, and three years stepping through the gate with Cameron, and Cam is still more of a blank page to Daniel than Vala ever was, except when he isn't.
Daniel claps Cameron's shoulder briefly when he steps past Cam on the ramp, and something makes him turn a couple of steps later, looking back at Cameron. Cam's watching Daniel over the tops of his sunglasses, a gesture that's so familiarly Jack that Daniel smiles without thinking about it, and Cam winks at Daniel before clanging a boot down onto the ramp. "All right, troops," Cameron says, "let's get this show on the road."
It's raining buckets when they step through the gate onto N7A, but the UAV showed a significantly large, well-developed village less than a klick from the gate, and Landry -- like Hammond before him -- said that a little rain never hurt anybody. Jack always said that what if he was really the Wicked Witch of the West, and he melted when we stepped through into the rain, Daniel thinks while he's pulling his hat farther over his ears and trying to keep the rain from dripping farther down his collar.
Hammond had always said, You have a go, Colonel, as though he hadn't heard anything, and Sam always muttered that it'd be a good riddance, and Daniel had always tried to hide his smile. Jack never melted, and SG-1 had survived worse weather than this.
"This place is officially a shithole," Mitchell mutters. "Carter, you've got point. And walk fast, okay?"
Daniel falls in beside Mitchell and Keeley falls back to their six. It's August in Colorado and a heat wave had settled over the Springs the week before they left for N7A -- the kind of arid heat that Daniel has always associated with deserts, with places that he almost thought were home. SG-1 had been on stand down for the week, before Sam's first mission back on the team, and Daniel could have managed some work at the Mountain.
He hadn't -- when they'd debriefed after the last mission they'd gone on with the scientist whose name Daniel can't remember, he'd packed up a week's worth of work, told General Landry that he'd be available on both his phones if anyone needed him, and signed out of the Mountain without telling Cameron, or Sam, or anyone in his department, that he was going.
He was on his balcony an hour and a half later, shirt off, heat sinking into his skin like a kiss, when his front door opened and Cameron stomped in. "It's hotter'n fuck," Cam had said.
Daniel said, without turning, "You're from North Carolina. That's humid heat."
"Not up in the mountains," Cam said. He sank down into Daniel's other chair and passed Daniel a beer. "It gets hot during the day, but not as hot as the Piedmont or the coast, and it cools down at night. I never got used to summer in Raleigh, but Colorado has always felt more like home to me."
Daniel turned at that -- Cameron had his eyes closed, not even looking at Daniel, and Daniel hadn't said anything about the heat to anyone. Jack had always known that Daniel preferred the deserts to the lush forests and snowy mountains that they found off-world, because Jack had seen Daniel on Abydos. Jack had seen the way that Daniel sank into the heat there like a cat in sunshine, and Jack had recognized that as Daniel coming home.
Daniel knew that was why Jack left him there; Jack knew that Daniel would be okay. It was hot, therefore Daniel would be okay. It was a simple explanation, it was a Jack explanation, but Daniel always understood why Jack had drawn the conclusion.
Mitchell has never given any indication that he has noticed anything about Daniel on that level. Not that Daniel minded -- no one he'd ever met had known him as well as Jack knew him, and no one had ever looked at Daniel and taken his full measure as fast as Jack had. There were times when Jack hadn't liked the measure he'd taken of Daniel, but he always knew Daniel better than anyone.
Daniel doesn't mind that Mitchell doesn't know him that well; that Mitchell doesn't seem to care to. The things he gets from Mitchell -- the things he needs from Mitchell -- are different than the things he needed from Jack. The things he needed from Sha're. The things he needed from Vala.
"I was just thinking that this felt like home," Daniel said, and Mitchell cracked open an eye and took a long pull on his beer.
"Egypt," Daniel said. "Abydos."
Jack had always known, Mitchell had never noticed, and Vala had never really cared.
Vala had never wanted to talk about feelings. Needs, yes -- memories, no. He never thought of it as her lying to him, but half of Vala's stories were true and he never knew which half. Mitchell wasn't forthcoming about his feelings or his history, but they cropped up at the oddest moments and whenever Cameron said something about his past, Daniel knew it was true.
"Desert heat," Cameron said. "I never got used to that, either. It's drier here than Carolina, but it's wetter than the desert."
"Afghanistan," Daniel said.
"I'd rather talk about the mountains," Cameron said, and Daniel had set his translations down on the balcony and kissed Cameron, forgetting that they were in public, broad daylight, for a moment. "Hey," Cam said. "It's too hot to do that."
"It's never too hot," Daniel had said, and then he'd taken Cameron to bed and proven that fact. They spent the week in bed, sweaty and sated, and traded stories about ex-girlfriends. Daniel had felt entirely normal for the first time since Vala had left -- he couldn't see the cracks in his heart even when he tried -- and Cameron had laughed a lot.
Mitchell always laughs a lot -- a ready smile that almost always reaches his eyes. He's the first to make a joke, like Jack always was, and the first to laugh at himself when he does something dumb, like Jack never was. Daniel can't help but compare Mitchell to Jack, even though it's been three years -- he doesn't mean to, but it's the nature of his brain. He looks for similarities between cultures, between texts, between the people on one planet and the people of another planet. That's his job, it's what he does.
He has a hard time turning that off, and when Mitchell laughs, sometimes Daniel follows the sound and looks for Jack.
Jack and Mitchell are more alike than they're different. Some days that bothers Daniel; most of the time, it's comforting.
Mitchell is everything Daniel needs right now. He's stable and funny, smart and careful and kind. He lets Daniel push him until Daniel pushes too hard, and then Mitchell pushes back. They're well-balanced, keeping each other in a rational orbit, and Daniel leans on Mitchell more than he ever thought he would -- more than he'd really like to admit.
Mitchell leans back, though, and they keep each other upright.
Just like he always did for Jack, and Jack did for him. Synergistic relationships -- give and take. The kind he never had before they opened the 'gate -- the kind he'd always wanted.
Mitchell is a rock in his life, and Daniel tries not to take it for granted.
It's raining on this damn planet, though, and they're all already soaked to the bone by the time they reach the city. After six days of heat so dry that it choked you, the rain feels awful to Daniel, colder than it probably really is. He shudders a little as they squelch up to the edge of the city, and Mitchell -- who's taken his sunglasses off and is, by Daniel's estimation, looking entirely miserable -- slaps a hand against Daniel's shoulders, wiping a trail of rain from Daniel's collar with his thumb.
Daniel leans into Cameron's touch, just barely, Cam's fingers warm against his freezing neck, and someone steps out of the nearest house to look at them.
Daniel's dropped his head so he can wipe the rain off his glasses and sees the movement out of the corner of his eye, but Cameron's fingers tighten on Daniel's neck before Daniel can look up. When he slides his glasses on again, there's already rain streaming down them and he squints to see. Through the sheets of water, he almost thinks the striking, dark haired woman is Vala.
He's seen her on a dozen planets since she left -- glimpses through crowds, and shadows behind trees. It's never been her. It sometimes even hasn't been a person. Shadows and ghosts, at the corners of Daniel's eye. Cameron hasn't said anything about it, but he's watched Daniel jump at the phantoms, his gaze always level and carefully assessing, and afterwards, he always took Daniel home and took him to bed. Those days Mitchell touched him cautiously, hands gentle and firm against Daniel's skin, and Daniel feels everything that Mitchell never says to him in that touch.
The woman says, "Hello, Daniel."
Mitchell says, "What, no hello for me?"
Daniel sits down in the mud, hard.
He's been stepping through the gate for almost fifteen years, now -- not always with SG-1, but if you count back to the very first time that he and Jack stumbled onto Abydos. Jack says that he stopped being surprised by anything when he saw his first System Lord; Jack says that Daniel has never stopped being surprised. If anything, Jack had said the last time he was in Colorado Springs, four months earlier, you've just been more surprised lately.
The more Daniel sees in the galaxy, the more he knows there is to see. It will never be boring, stepping through the stargate, because he expects nothing. He expects nothing, and the galaxy gives him everything.
The galaxy takes everything away, as well. Daniel doesn't keep a list, a tally of things he's lost and things he's gained. There isn't any purpose to it -- there's no set of scales that measures the worth of any life.
He keeps his eyes wide so he misses nothing. He waits for the surprises, the things that make the galaxy worth marveling at.
Mitchell was a surprise -- Mitchell is a surprise, every day. He keeps Daniel from sinking into passivity, from losing himself in the tedium of life. He reminds Daniel to look for the surprises in the world.
He keeps Daniel standing when the surprises punch Daniel in the gut.
Daniel is very, very surprised to see Vala, and then again, he isn't at all. He stepped through the gate and got a surprise, that's not surprising at all -- that it's Vala is even less surprising. She'd disappeared on her own terms, and she's smiling at him now, so he can only guess that her reappearance was equally her own.
"Hello, Cameron," Vala says. "Sam. Get him out of the mud and come in."
When Jack was in the Springs four months ago, he'd stayed with Daniel -- the first time he'd stayed with Daniel since he'd left. Jack stared at all the soup in Daniel's cabinets and said, "What the hell is Mitchell doing with you?"
"Cameron's not doing anything with me," Daniel had said mildly.
Jack snorted and held out a can. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table reading the most recent Carl Hiaasen book, and Jack slammed the can down in front of him. "Do you know how much processed crap is in condensed soup?"
Daniel snorted and said, "Jack, you lived on the stuff for almost 10 years."
"Yeah, well," Jack said gruffly. "I didn't take very good care of you either."
Daniel rolled his eyes and Jack put the soup back in the cabinet. He leaned against the sink and trained that look on Daniel, the look that Daniel knew meant you're not telling me something.
"Are you happy?" Jack said.
"That's always been a stupid question," Daniel said.
"Daniel," Jack said.
"Jack," Daniel said.
"It's not a stupid question," Jack said. "I'm getting old. You're getting old. Everybody's getting old, and I think we've earned a little happiness."
"Earning has nothing to do with it," Daniel said.
Jack snorted. "Earning has everything to do with it," he said. "They pay you plenty, and you live in a big apartment that you've hardly slept in the whole time you've had it, and you have a cabinet full of soup."
Daniel said, "It keeps coming back to soup."
"Is soup a metaphor for something?"
"I can't believe we're having this conversation," Daniel said. "This is a very good book, Jack, and you're distracting me from it. I don't have a lot of opinions about soup."
"Are you happy, Daniel?"
"Yes," Daniel said. "As well as I can be."
"The losses add up," Jack said.
"Karmic balance," Daniel said, and Jack smiled, a tiny smile. Daniel didn't know why he'd said it -- he'd never thought of everything he'd lost as things he was owed.
Jack drummed his knuckles against the counter and said, "Something like that."
"I'm happy enough," Daniel said. "That's the best anyone can do."
Jack smiled at him again, and said, "You deserve better than that."
"Everybody does," Daniel said.
"You more than most."
"No more than anyone else." Jack rolled his eyes and circled the kitchen, squeezing the back of Daniel's neck as he passed, and opened the fridge. He made himself a sandwich and sat across the table from Daniel, eating noisily, and Daniel thought, my life is as peaceful as I can hope.
The house that Vala takes them to is small and clean, but not nearly warm enough -- the rain has soaked all the way through to his skin and Daniel is freezing. Vala doesn't stare; she watches Cameron, she watches Sam, she watches the new Marine, but she doesn't look at Daniel. "There's nothing here that you want," she says to Sam. "It all looks advanced, but it's design, not function. None of it does anything."
"And you would know?" Sam says. There's a challenge in her voice, and Daniel can't tell if it's for him, for Vala's disappearing act, or if it's just Sam, so certain that she knows more than everyone else -- so often knowing more than everyone else. Daniel wouldn't bet on a guess, but he thinks it's a little of both.
"I know what's worth stealing," Vala teases back, and out of the corner of his eye, Daniel can see Mitchell studiously not watching Daniel. Cam has one hand on his P-90 and he's watching Vala carefully, though Daniel's spent enough time being covertly monitored by Air Force colonels that he knows Cameron's aware of every movement Daniel's made since they walked through the gate. (Daniel has spent enough time doing almost everything -- nothing new happens anymore. They say there's only seven stories in the whole world, and SG-1 has lived them all a hundred times over. It's the same old thing, every time, and somehow, it's comforting that the strangest situations aren't actually anything they haven't survived before.)
It's not suspicion on Cameron's face, but it's not affection for Vala, either.
"But they're interesting," Vala says cheerfully. She isn't looking at Daniel, so he looks at her, taking the measure of her absence. She's thinner, and she's damp around the edges, of course, from the rain, but she looks like Vala, the Vala he loved. Cheerful in the face of surprise and routine alike; tactless, rude and needy. Vala always loved surprises; she had no interest in a world that didn't have surprises. Daniel thinks that she's the one who taught him how to be surprised again; Vala always wanted to fly, wanted to see everything the galaxy had to offer. She wanted bombshells; Daniel wanted routine. She disappeared, and he has tried to fill her void with wonder of his own. "They're useless, but interesting, so you should stay the night."
She pours tea -- he's never seen Vala cook anything -- and slides into a chair across from Cameron at the table. "Well now," she says. "Isn't this a nice reunion. Didn't anyone call Teal'c? Or General O'Neill?"
Jack had treated Vala like Mitchell always did -- a live bomb to be handled with care. He only met her a handful of times, and Jack had worn the expression he saved for things that were funny and freakish at the same time. They'd been sitting in Mitchell's backyard, the week after they'd gotten her back from Athena's meddling sans a few stray memories, and Jack had been in town for something that Daniel suspected was really just needing to check up on Daniel.
He'd told Jack what he'd found in Vala, after the first time he'd taken her home. Jack snorted on the phone and made a joke about Daniel's predilection for women from other planets -- "Earth girls not good enough for you, Daniel?" -- but Daniel had heard the warmth in Jack's voice when Jack said it.
And Jack had come to Colorado after they'd almost lost Vala, to Athena, because Jack had picked Daniel up from the ground when he'd lost Sha're, and because Jack thought it was his job to keep Daniel from crumpling to the ground.
He and Vala had been feeling out their tentative relationship, and she had sprawled face down across Daniel's lap like a cat. Jack had smiled at Daniel across Vala and nodded, just a little. Daniel had taken it to mean, you got yourself another live one, huh? and yeah, okay, don't make me say it, I'm happy for you -- he'd known Jack long enough to know what Jack's emotive twitches meant.
Jack had twitched his head toward Mitchell, after that. Mitchell was telling some story about his grandmother, or maybe one of his aunts, and Sam was laughing her head off at something he'd just said. Daniel ran his fingers through Vala's hair and shrugged at Jack, who'd rolled his eyes at Daniel and interrupted Mitchell's story by flinging a tomato slice at Sam's face.
Vala had rolled over, then, and smiled up at Daniel before stretching and shimmying so that she showed off even more cleavage, and Daniel hadn't realized that Jack was asking if Mitchell was taking okay care of Jack's team until weeks later. Weeks later after he and Vala had seduced Mitchell, with no malice aforethought, even, into their bed -- weeks later after he'd realized that Vala was trying to push Daniel and Cameron together.
Well, Daniel had thought when he'd realized what Jack had meant, he is, after a fashion. He'd thought that and then Cameron had rolled over and mumbled, "Quit thinking so loud, Jackson, you're drowning out my snoring," before pressing his face against Daniel's ribs.
The next time Jack came back, Vala was already gone and Cam was taking a different kind of care of Daniel.
(He doesn't know why he's thinking of Jack, today, this week -- Jack calls every Sunday night and half the time Daniel's still at the Mountain (back at the Mountain, off-world, passed out in the infirmary) so he comes home on Monday (Tuesday, Friday, the Wednesday after that) and finds ten minutes' worth of messages from Jack broken up into 90 second segments. Mostly they're about hockey and fish, and Daniel has to listen carefully between the lines to hear what Jack's really telling him. Jack never disappeared fully, and they'd made their own peace about the promotion to Washington years ago.
Mitchell's keeping an eye on him, and Daniel doesn't mind that, and it still doesn't surprise him that he's willing to let Mitchell care like that; they went to a planet from the Abydos cartouche and found Vala. He keeps thinking about Jack.
He keeps thinking about Jack because Jack took him home the night they lost Sha're, and when Vala left, Mitchell is the one who stood next to Daniel and held him up.)
Daniel can't tell if she looks happy or not, and the fact that he can't read anything on her face other than false cheer scares him. "I need some fresh air," he says, and stands up abruptly, showering mud down onto the clean floor of Vala's apparent home.
Sam says, "Daniel, it's raining," but he's already halfway out the door.
It's still raining and it's still cold, but just standing outside makes him feel a little better, a little more normal. The door opens and shuts behind him, and he knows it's Mitchell before Mitchell says, "Jackson, you okay?"
Daniel thinks Mitchell never notices the details, except when Mitchell does.
Daniel says, "A little wet, but otherwise perfectly."
"Perfectly what?" Mitchell says, and when Daniel turns, Mitchell's got his hat pulled down to the tops of his sunglasses, which he's put back on.
"Perfectly okay, a little wet," Daniel says.
"You're going to have to ask the questions," Mitchell says quietly. The rain's slowing down, and Mitchell is hiding behind his sunglasses. "I don't -- it's your call, okay? Whatever you want to do, it's your call."
Daniel gets the feeling that Cameron's talking about a lot more than just asking Vala if she's coming back to Earth or not, a lot more than the logistical CO concerns of finding an ex-team member (an ex-girlfriend) on a raining planet. "I think the rain's stopping," Daniel says.
Cam snorts down a laugh and tilts his face up to the sky. The rain slides down his sunglasses, catches in the hollow of his throat, and Daniel stares, because he can't help it. Vala left Daniel and she left him Cameron as a consolation prize -- that's what you are, Daniel said to Cam one night a month after she left, when they were fighting about something, and Cam had just laughed and said, semantics, Jackson, and they hadn't talked about it anymore -- but the thing is that Cam was right. Semantics, definitions: consolation prize because Daniel had needed someone to console him, not because Cameron was second best to anyone.
Nine months and what Daniel knows is that he doesn't know what he wants to ask Vala, and sometimes he can't remember not having Mitchell sprawled out in his life, taking up too much room and never apologizing for it.
Cam says, "You always talk about the weather when you don't want to talk about whatever it is that's being talked about."
"I didn't know you were paying that much attention," Daniel says dryly. It comes out sounding a little mean and he immediately regrets it.
He didn't think that Cam was paying that much attention; the fact that he is makes Daniel's heart twist against his chest.
"Yeah, well," Cam says, sounding hurt, and he peers at Daniel over the tops of his sunglasses again. It's a stupid gesture that drove Daniel nuts when Jack had done it, when Sam does it, but Cameron is standing in the rain with Daniel, and it's Cam's way of saying that he's sorry -- Cam's freaked out about something, which is what the sunglasses are supposed to hide, but he's been paying attention to Daniel for the last couple of years, and despite the freak out, whatever it's about, Cam is doing his best to look Daniel in the eye.
Which counts for a lot, in Daniel's book.
Cam says, "I don't know what you want to know, or I'd already have asked everything until she coughed up a good reason for ripping your heart out." He says it casually, pushes his sunglasses back up on his nose, and jerks his head toward Vala's house.
Cameron knows that he was Daniel's second choice. He isn't now, because Daniel didn't have to stay -- didn't have to ask Cam to stay. He knows that Daniel walked wounded for weeks after she left. Cameron stayed anyway, and he was never anyone but himself. Cameron could have tried to be someone else, someone more like Vala, someone more like what it seemed to the world that Daniel wanted, and he didn't.
That's as much why Daniel's kept Cameron as anything else -- there's no artifice with Mitchell, what Daniel sees is what he gets, and Daniel welcomes that because it's easy, and it's normal. No games to be played -- they are what they are, and so far, they have managed to make things work.
Cameron is a fascinating anthropological experiment -- if Daniel was prone to thinking about his various lovers and partners and friends like that, which he tries not to be. (Jack broke him of the habit; there's such a thing as too much psycho-analysis of other people, Danny, stop looking at me like I'm a puzzle you can solve -- and Jack was right, Daniel has never quite solved Jack O'Neill, and Daniel preferred it that way. Almost 15 years, and Jack is still occasionally a surprise. It's a comforting truth by this point in Daniel's life: Jack is predictable, except when he's not.)
Daniel likes Cameron's company, because he's a smart guy, and curious, and with a cheerfully twisted sense of humor. He likes Cam because Cam is gorgeous, and he smiles easily, and he routinely asks stupid questions when they're off-world just to watch Daniel's head spin.
Cameron says, hand on the doorknob of Vala's little house, "What do you want to know?"
"More than I can ask," Daniel says. "Why. Why then. Why me, why you. Why us. Why here. Did she know we were coming, or is my luck really just still that shitty, even after 10 years of abysmally shitty luck? Is she coming home? Do I want her to come home? Do -- do you and I want her to come home?"
Lightning flashes above their heads like a camera going off, and the thunder crashes around them almost immediately on its heels. Mitchell squints at Daniel over his sunglasses. He says, "Are you asking me?"
Daniel shrugs. It's raining harder, now, and Cameron doesn't blink -- it's like he doesn't even notice the water coming down on his head. Daniel thinks that this is the best thing he's learned about Cam Mitchell in the last three years, that Cam is easy-going to the point of being almost too easy-going. Mitchell only asks questions when he really wants to know the answer, whatever the answer is -- otherwise he's content to stand in the rain, if he has to, because that's just how it is.
Cam only asks questions when he wants to know the answer, and Daniel doesn't know the answer to the question Cam's just asked.
"Is this one of those things that we don't talk about because we're guys?" Mitchell says.
Daniel can't stop himself from smiling. "No," he says. "We don't talk about how we don't talk about stuff because we're guys. We don't talk about this because -- "
He doesn't know why they haven't talked about Vala since she's been gone, or about this thing she's tangled them in. Daniel has spent nine months, the cold of the winter and the baking heat of the summer, figuring out who Cam Mitchell really is, and what Cam Mitchell really needs from Daniel, and it's been complicated and intense and surprising -- maybe that's all Vala intended to do, pushing them together. Maybe all she intended to do was distract Daniel from her absence, from the hole she left in his life when she stepped out of it.
Mitchell's been an excellent distraction.
He's been a good friend. He's been a good partner.
Little by little, Daniel's fallen in love with Cameron, and Daniel's heart almost doesn't feel bruised anymore. It almost feels whole.
So quietly that Daniel almost misses it under the pounding sound of the rain, Cam says, "I'm not the one whose heart she broke."
*
On to Part Two.