Shore Leave: Geartopia [Open to All]

[meat_mooks]

||Attention all crewmen, shore leave is now in progress, attention crewmen, shore leave is now in progress...||

Stacy's voiced called the entire crew, until all of them were gathered at the Obs Deck. Then, a dossier appeared on the screens, along with the image of a rotating planet.

Planet Designation: Geartopia
Status: Terrestrial, H-class.
Non-

Comments

[hi_there_aliens]

She was buzzed and/or drunk, Daniel himself was too brain dead to follow the conversation. She was practically memorizing every inch of his shoulders with her eyes and it was kind of distracting. That on top of his tickling sensation up his nose wasn't doing him any favors. All in all, he wasn't in the frame of mind to follow her "Ah-Ha! Room!" moment. All she got was a blank look.

"Yes you do. I saw it on the register." Not that he looked or anything. She stepped away from him then. Vala managed to get control of her balance, surprisingly not going to he ground again, long enough to completely take over the bed. His bed. The one he was desperately wanted to sleep in! Daniel gaped at her. At the bed that was occupied. At the way she took up the entire thing. For being smaller than he was, she seemed to take up a lot of space.

Oh no. No way. This was insane. She had options. There was any other room if she wanted to lock pick them, there was her own room, there was Stacy!

Daniel shook her roughly awake before she could pass out. "No, you don't. Wake up." Don't make him push you off, just so he can at least get some of it back.

[valaunbound]

There was no way she was moving now, she was far too comfy and sleep was imminent. Just the thought of having to stand up again made her feel bilious. She was down and she was staying down, unless you actually want her to puke on you Daniel. Daniel got barely more than an exasperated "Don't shake me," and an uncomfortable grimace at the jerky movement as she shunted up to one edge of the bed and lay on her side instead. She patted the space behind her invitingly and then pulled the gun out of the back of her pants and held it out to him in a silent gesture of 'take this'.

"There's plenty of room." And then she shifted her head a little, cosying it into the pillow. Sleep now please.

[hi_there_aliens]

She moved over, which wasn't exactly what Daniel was trying to go for. The only good thing so far was she wasn't taking up over ninety percent of the bed. Now she was taking seventy. How thoughtful. It didn't fail to impress upon him repeatedly that this was his bed, his room, and he was effectively being locked out of both. Daniel took the gun, as if she'd handed him dirty laundry to put away for her. Great. Now he was a servant.

Daniel set the gun down on the night table, away from his glasses, and looked down at her. What the hell did he do now? Share the bed, yeah right.

He could risk moving her, have him throw up on him. Something he'd prefer to avoid. He could get security, or get someone to help her to her room, both of which would involving walking down stairs, searching for help, coming back up. Even if he wasn't exhausted beyond all reason, his arms and legs already set their feet down. No, they were tired, so either do something for them or they quit. Or he could just take the last parcel of free land here and lie down.

What did he do to deserve this? If he wasn't so beat, he'd have taken the other options, but as it was, he was just going to have to tolerate it.

They were just sharing a bed. She better not get any ideas. Daniel reluctantly lay down on the open space, back to her. Ow. Every single limb protested. It was going to hurt worse in the morning once his muscles repaired themselves, and he had the anthropologist part of him to blame for it. He'd wanted to work alongside the locals, learn their methods. And he had! But now his body was killing him for it.

He tried to relax with a sigh.

[valaunbound]

If Vala had been more compos mentis and not so 'why is the bed moving underneath me' she may have lamented the fact she was lying in a bed with a semi dressed Daniel and there was nothing even remotely sexual going on.

As it was, she was just glad he was there. It felt 'nice'. It wasn't a feeling she'd had much experience of or would even admit she needed, but it was oddly comforting. Vala smiled to herself contentedly in her semi-conscious state not really sure if it was him or the comfiest bed she'd had in weeks that was making her smile, she just knew she'd never felt so relaxed and able to let go.

[hi_there_aliens]

The bed really was that comfortable. Daniel sank in, limbs relaxing. The temperature was just perfect, not too hot or cold. No weird throbbing sensation of the air around them from Stacy's innards, the one that even if you generally got used to it, it was always there. He could get used to this. He wouldn't have minded a faint breeze or nothing but clear night sky over head. This was great though. There was just one slight problem.

Now that Daniel was finally horizontal, he found that now his brain was working over time. No matter how tired he was, his mind was racing. So much for being able to pass out the moment he hit the pillow.

If he couldn't sleep, neither could Vala. And since she was here, buzzed and sleepy, it sounded like the perfect time to get down to business and start asking the questions he couldn't before, while her guard was down. Maybe a little underhanded (read: a lot), but Daniel wasn't feeling particularly guilty about it. It served her right for breaking into his room and stealing his bed.

"Vala...?" He murmured. "Back in the lab, you were saying something about the year you know me from...did I ever say why I was still there?"

[valaunbound]

"Hmm?" Vala mumbled, frowning to get her head round the question. Well not so much the question, just to translate the words into something comprehensible. Was he really asking her questions now? Couldn't it wait til the morning, Daniel? He knew she was drunk, right? How much sense did drunk people make? Granted she was probably more in control of her faculties than most and if push came to shove she'd probably even manage to be able to spring out of bed in a crisis and cope, but him asking serious questions was way beyond her abilities right now.

"Mostly because you kept missing out on Atlantis." Vala yawned and hoped that answered him sufficiently and he'd shut up now. She took the elastics out of her hair that were holding it in the pigtails and dropped them carelessly to the floor by the bed. That was better, they weren't pulling anymore.

[hi_there_aliens]

"Atlantis exists?" Daniel brightened, in that same way a kid might if they found out Santa Claus was actually real all along. No wonder! Of course he'd try to go. Atlantis, the Lost Continent.

Wait, get back on track. While the exploration aspects of the Stargate were immense, important, and easily the best part of the job, the constant danger and getting shot at or injured wasn't. The only reason he'd pushed to join the team in the first place was because of Skaara and Sha're. Sometimes, when he lay trying to sleep back on Earth, Daniel tried to imagine what he'd do if he ever succeeded. He didn't stay on the topic long. It was too hard to. It drifted too closely to a more realistic, what if they don't. Daniel believed Jack when he said they'd get them back, but it had been so long already. Each day, each new planet without news or signs of where they might be, brought on a colder trail.

Daniel half rolled over, neck craned to look at Vala. "You're saying the only reason I stayed at the SGC was because of missing a trip." ...Only a trip to Atlantis. What did that say about everything else. Was there nothing keeping him there? "What about Jack? Teal'c? Sam?"

He bit back the question before it followed, 'what about Sha're and Skaara?'. The topic of his wife had slipped out in front of Eva and only because she'd stumbled on it herself. Daniel would've preferred she never found out. It wasn't something he even willingly shared with the other SG teams. It felt too private, too personal. He wasn't ready to tell her that part of him. Maybe she supposedly knew him in the future, but he didn't know her. He trusted her enough (or he was exhausted enough not to care) to fall asleep in the same bed, which made him vulnerable, but not enough to spill his guts. Talk about skewed priorities.

Daniel could dig around some instead, read between the lines.

[valaunbound]

Vala sighed, this was hardly the right time and he was buzzing in her ear like a fly that wouldn't go away. She considered just ignoring him, pretend she was already flat out and maybe he'd just give up, but the bigger part of her knew it was only fair to answer his questions, even if she wasn't up to her usual standards of elaboration. She'd want to know her future if she was in the same position, and she'd probably be far more annoying about it, she considered. She doubted she'd have been able to wait this long before she started to press.

"Yes, they're all still there," Vala sighed, not hiding the fact that answering was a trial despite her feeling she owed him this. "Muscles, Samantha, Jack's moved on but he still comes by from time to time. Daniel, I really need to sleep, can't this wait?" She held her hand to her forehead, somehow hoping that would stop the spinning and him.

[hi_there_aliens]

"You only stole my bed. So no, it can't," Daniel rolled over onto his back, looking at the line of her spine, which, if he judged it right, indicated she was very much not asleep. And if she started to, he was just going to shake her away until he got some answers. No passing out on his watch, he wasn't done pestering you. He was perfectly ready to go to sleep earlier. Vala ruined that, so the least she could do is talk a little.

Daniel fell silent for a minute, long enough to lull her into a false sense of security. It felt like someone had shaken the floor out from under him. "Jack moved on? He quit just like that?" But Jack said he'd get Sha're and Skaara back. Jack might be a lot of things, annoying, hard-assed, shoot first, don't bother with questions later, but when he said they'd find them, Daniel could trust him. Maybe, Daniel thought tentatively, that meant that where Vala came from, they'd been saved. No mention of his wife coming with him, but maybe she'd joined the program or something. Or settled on Earth. Daniel couldn't see himself leaving on a joy trip anywhere, even to Atlantis if they weren't saved. "What happened?"

Then again, he remembered with a trace of shame, he'd been ready to drop everything when he'd seen Heliopolis, and even to this day, some of him still felt like he should've stayed.

[valaunbound]

He had a point but it didn't make it any less irritating. There was a reason she stole your bed Daniel, a very good one. One that was insisting she slept.

"Fine," Vala groaned concedingly, contemplating hiding her head underneath the pillow and drowning him out. But then he went quiet and she found herself opening her eyes and trying to look over her shoulder without actually moving. Was he done? He'd gone very quiet. Oh thank god for that. She settled back down again flipping onto her front with a humph and buried her face into the pillow, letting the mass of black hair serve as a cover - a cover that he wouldn't be able to see her making faces at him underneath if he did persist.

Maybe she shouldn't have had that thought process, because as soon as she thought it he piped up again. "Nothing happened, he's just a General now, spends most of his time in Washington."

[hi_there_aliens]

With a stolen bed comes consequences and a disgruntled archaeologist is one of them. Maybe this will be a lesson to go back to your own room instead of sneaking into his.

"Jack. A general," Daniel couldn't help sounding extremely skeptical. It wasn't that Jack didn't make a good Colonel. Not that he had much experience with other Colonels in general, other than Makepeace, but he thought Jack did a good job most of the time, if a bit unorthodox in how he acted. But General... when Daniel thought of a General, he instantly thought of Hammond or West, one strict but fatherly once you got behind the hard ass exterior, intelligent and keen, the other, completely humorless, dull and short sighted, only able to see the immediate threat in a wonderful piece of technology rather than the big picture.

Thank God for Hammond.

But Jack was not someone Daniel thought of as a general. Actually, the thought of him commanding an entire base, having that much power, was a little bit scary. What was his first order of business? Mandatory Simpsons showings in the cafeteria, nothing else allowed, the entire base required to attend. Daniel tried to imagine Jack sitting at a desk. He couldn't do it. Jack would never be happy anywhere but the field.

"I can't believe he accepted the job." Daniel said to the ceiling. The ceiling didn't have much to say when it came to setting things straight. At least he hadn't been killed on a mission. Or wouldn't be. This looked promising though. Jack didn't get discharged and he'd taken a promotion. He'd only do that if they'd found their two missing. It came unbidden to his mouth, a tiny little smile in the darkness.

[valaunbound]

Whilst Daniel's thought processes were long and convoluted, Vala's weren't. Her's consisted of nothing more than 'there were no direct questions there, nothing I need to answer. Thank the gods of archaeology for that!' and that made her smile too, probably at the same moment he did but for very different reasons. Part of her smile could also be attributed to his less than convinced reply regarding Jack, he didn't strike her as the general type either and Daniel's reaction amused her, enough to get a small snort of a laugh.

Still, she could rest now. Question time was over. Maybe in the morning she might realise what he was getting at, but for now she passed it off as nothing more than curiosity. Annoying curiosity that she'd be happy to discuss at length in the morning!

[hi_there_aliens]

Oh no. You're not going to sleep yet. Daniel actually reached over and poked her in the shoulder. Then even harder just in case the first didn't go through. Come on. He wasn't done yet.

"So the only reason I stayed at the SGC is because I was effectively stuck there?" He asked. As much as he wanted to know what Sam and Teal'c were doing in the future, at least he knew they were working alongside him. Safe and sound. Sort of, but maybe they drifted apart, if he felt like he had to take off to Atlantis and leave everything he knew behind. Maybe they'd been with each other so long, it was just that time to go their separate ways. Not the most comforting thing to think of in the middle of the night. He didn't have family, and those two were the closest he got to one.

[valaunbound]

Okay, that was it. If poking her in the shoulder hadn't been enough to make her want to headbutt the mattress repeatedly, his question was. Vala lifted her head completely and propped herself up on her elbows to be able to face him with a heavy sigh. She couldn't see much, but it was the principle of the thing.

"I'm pretty sure this isn't what's meant by pillow talk you know Daniel. I mean I might not be an expert on Earth phrases but please shut up."

[hi_there_aliens]

It was a perfectly valid question. Besides, he didn't think he'd get another chance to ask her questions when her inhibitions were down.

Daniel also rolled over to face her, got up on one elbow and glared myopically at Vala. She was close enough he didn't have to squint, which would've ruined the whole glaring thing if he had. This was his room! He wasn't going to get told to shut up, much less in his own bed here! Maybe it wasn't his bed per say, but for this shore leave, to all intents and purposes, it was all his. Assigned to one Doctor Daniel Jackson, Archaeologist. He didn't see any Vala Mal Doran, Miss Drunken Pain in the Ass, in there anywhere.

"Door's that way if you can't take it. I'm sure you remember where it is."

[valaunbound]

He was insufferable sometimes, he really was. It infuriated Vala. It also curiously made her want him more at moments like this. Maybe it was her stubbornness but when he glared at her and challenged her like that, she felt slightly accomplished that she'd managed to push his buttons.

Her tongue fell into her cheek like it always does when she's thwarted and she considered her options with a frustrated humph.

"Fine," she finally offered sarcastically. "Ask away, just don't ask me about our nights of unbridled passion because I'm not sure you can take that."