STARGATE FANFIC: "Bookends, or Six Ways 'Til Sunday" Chapter 8/10
TITLE: "Bookends, or Six Ways 'Til Sunday"
AUTHOR: campylobacter
FANDOM: Stargate SG-1
PAIRINGS: Daniel/Vala; (implied Jack/Daniel)
RATING: NC-17/Adult (sexual situations) to PG-13/Teen (language), depending on the chapter
STATUS: complete
TIMELINE/SPOILERS: post-Continuum
ARCHIVE: Permission granted; drop me a URL if, for some reason, you aren't afraid to archive it -- I'll link to it from my blog.
CATEGORY/GENRE: humor; romance: het, first time
SERIES: none
WORD COUNT: 13,182
DISCLAIMER: Stargate: SG-1 characters belong to MGM; any others are fictitious scenery and resemble your mom.
SUMMARY/SYNOPSIS/PREMISE: After an unexpected guest drops by, Daniel's apartment is never the same again. (The Home Crasher Trope meets archaeo-linguistics and pirate-goddess sexual mayhem, in that point of character development after Continuum.) Only enough plot to sustain the slap-slap-kiss porn.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1/10: The Front Door Rattles (PG-13/Teen) [1137 words]
Chapter 2/10: You're Trashing My Place (PG-13/Teen) [1181 words]
Chapter 3/10: A Point of Resistance (NC-17/Adult) [1109 words]
Chapter 4/10: Two Doorposts Beneath a Lintel (R/Mature) [1220 words]
Chapter 5/10: How She Wears My Name (NC-17/Adult) [1358 words]
Chapter 6/10: The Precarious Bed (NC-17/Adult) [1496 words]
Chapter 7/10: Something Simple (NC-17/Adult) [1149 words]
Chapter 8/10: Choke and Throttle (PG-13/Teen) [1189 words]
Have you ever had a feeling that made absolutely no logical sense, but it turned out to be right?
When I analyze the ways we're so completely opposite and wrong for each other, they could just as easily be the ways we're right. As we head for the mechanic's, I walk; Vala skips ahead of me. The open, wind-scrubbed Colorado sky presses the last warmth of an indolent summer against approaching autumn, preserving the bloom against the sere.
I catch up to her as she bends over an unidentifiable pile of road kill. "What creature was that?"
"I have no idea. Maybe a large squirrel or other rodent?"
"Poor beast. Didn't see the car coming, I guess." She tosses the snapped-off bud of a wildflower near where its head might've been. "So why do your people still use internal combustion engines for common transport? The technology's far too primitive for your stage of industrial development."
I shrug. "Good question. Could be because robber barons still control the fossil fuel market."
"And your vehicle technician is repairing an oil leak, yes?"
"Yes," I answer, and seize her by the waist, drawing her away from the carcass. "And I need to get my truck before he closes shop at noon."
She turns in my arms to face me. "You said before we left that he specializes in the repair of motorcycles. Why's he fixing your truck?"
"Jack had a motorcycle and a truck, which he gave me when he moved to DC, and recommended the guy who's kept his machines running after he divorced. His wife wasn't around to fix them anymore. It's just another half mile - almost a klick ahead."
"Race ya!" She slides out of my grasp and sprints away.
The pigtailed apparition in military boots, leather pants, and a tank top so tight it tells the temperature, flits away. But having become intimate with the apparition reveals the ruse - the huntress behind the decoy - and I'm as complicit in my capture as she is in the chase.
The race ends when she's suddenly drawn short by a heap of rusted engine parts outside the neighboring auto parts wholesaler. "Oh, Daniel, that's from a Wankel engine! Samantha and Cameron were arguing about the epitrophoid chamber last week." She paws through the detritus, plucking off dead leaves as she wrests out a mangled rotor.
"We're not adopting random scrap metal," I warn before heading into the mechanic's office.
No one's in the office, so I poke my head in the garage.
"Carlos? Hi, it's me, Daniel Jackson."
"Hey Daniel!" I hear the voice, but don't see the man. "Almost done with this muffler. Last job of the day. Be with you in a few."
"No problem. Don't rush on my account." Inside the office, I sit in the lone customer chair and pick up a 1990 Ducati owner's manual from the magazine table. The door opens; it's not Vala, but an overweight, middle-aged man in ridiculously branded biker leather. A butterfly bandage spans the bridge of his nose.
"What're you starin' at, Four Eyes?" he asks, glaring down at me, a swollen and discolored eye socket subverting his menace.
I shake my head and look back down at the much more interesting diagram of a choke and throttle.
"Yo, Gomez!" he bellows into the garage. "Que pasa, ese?"
"His name's Carlos," I mutter, knowing that if the man heard me, he wouldn't care. "He's Portuguese, not Mexican."
"Be right with you!"
"Andale, andale! It's an emergency! Some idiot cocktease busted the cruise control on my chopper last night."
I have a bad feeling about this. Vala chooses that moment to enter, purposefully walks over to the man and taps him on the back. He turns around.
"I believe this is yours." She holds up the GPS locator she'd used the night before.
"Well hello, lady love," he coos in instant recognition, and grabs her wrist. "Didja hunt me down to transact some unfinished business?"
"Not particularly, given that your business model is based on third-rate beer and bluster," Vala replies, smilingly ignoring the way he twists her wrist to pull her closer. She lets the device fall from her captured hand.
"Looks like the mechanic's booked today." I'd quietly stepped behind the man before clapping a heavy hand in the crook of his shoulder, avoiding an absurdly fringed epaulet. "Guess you'll be getting your chopper fixed elsewhere." I punctuate the suggestion with an audible, bruising punch to his lower back. "Don't forget your toy." I kick the locator toward the door and push him after it.
The man grunts and spins around, prepared to confront a four-eyed bookworm, then reconsiders as he assesses me and Vala's boxing stance as she focuses on re-injuring his nose.
"Look me up when you need your mortgage refinanced." He nods courteously, picks up the gadget and lurches out the door.
"Darth Poseur," mutters the mechanic, who'd emerged from the garage. "He pisses off my paying clients and owes me for the last two jobs I did."
Vala holds up a fat wallet decorated with an Iron Cross. "I suspect he can well afford to settle the tab." She unsnaps it, revealing a scandalous wad of cash in denominations of one-hundred. Carlos counts out an amount and nods, leaving among the few extra Benjamins a suspicious, powder-coated twenty.
Through the open door, I watch the man ride away on his noise machine. "What's left is obviously worth more than his wedding ring."
"He’s rather unsophisticated for being a 'retired Berringer Consolidated multinational account executive' don’t you think?" Vala remarks, reading through the wallet's contents.
Oh shit. Berringer Consolidated is connected to the Trust. "Eh... let's just wipe off your prints and let Carlos mail this back to him," I advise her. "How much I owe ya, Carlos?"
"Not one dime if the Kaiser of Fucktardia never returns to my shop."
I haggle over paying my bill even after he tosses me the key.
Ninety-six dollars later, I lead Vala to the pickup parked in the side lot. "So he followed you into the alley after you left the bar?"
"Yep. Offered to pay for oral favors. Attacked when I refused. Matters got a bit, uh... unmanageable when two more randy drunkards showed up."
"Glad you didn't tell me earlier. I'd've killed him - a lot."
"I'd've beaten him - a lot - had I not slipped and fallen on someone's vomit."
"It scares me that you're so used to such bad company."
"The universe is a rough place, Daniel, but I'm glad you've got my six."
I reach around and press her six until there's no space between us. "Got your twelve o'clock now, too." Twelve hours ago, I would've been ashamed to display affection in public, but a small parking lot in an old industrial park is hardly the worst place to kiss her and cop a feel.
When we come up for air, Vala blinks dizzily.
"Mmm... delicious. I'm hungry."
"You in the mood for Greek?"
"Right here against the truck?"
"I meant the cuisine."
"Oh." She seems genuinely disappointed. Then, "Oh! I'll drive us there!"
Next:
Chapter 9: Dining on the Spoils (PG-13/Teen) [1306 words]
Following Chapter:
Chapter 10/10: 100% Down (NC-17/Adult) [2099 words]
Entire "Bookends" story on 1 page at Google Docs
AUTHOR: campylobacter
FANDOM: Stargate SG-1
PAIRINGS: Daniel/Vala; (implied Jack/Daniel)
RATING: NC-17/Adult (sexual situations) to PG-13/Teen (language), depending on the chapter
STATUS: complete
TIMELINE/SPOILERS: post-Continuum
ARCHIVE: Permission granted; drop me a URL if, for some reason, you aren't afraid to archive it -- I'll link to it from my blog.
CATEGORY/GENRE: humor; romance: het, first time
SERIES: none
WORD COUNT: 13,182
DISCLAIMER: Stargate: SG-1 characters belong to MGM; any others are fictitious scenery and resemble your mom.
SUMMARY/SYNOPSIS/PREMISE: After an unexpected guest drops by, Daniel's apartment is never the same again. (The Home Crasher Trope meets archaeo-linguistics and pirate-goddess sexual mayhem, in that point of character development after Continuum.) Only enough plot to sustain the slap-slap-kiss porn.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1/10: The Front Door Rattles (PG-13/Teen) [1137 words]
Chapter 2/10: You're Trashing My Place (PG-13/Teen) [1181 words]
Chapter 3/10: A Point of Resistance (NC-17/Adult) [1109 words]
Chapter 4/10: Two Doorposts Beneath a Lintel (R/Mature) [1220 words]
Chapter 5/10: How She Wears My Name (NC-17/Adult) [1358 words]
Chapter 6/10: The Precarious Bed (NC-17/Adult) [1496 words]
Chapter 7/10: Something Simple (NC-17/Adult) [1149 words]
Chapter 8/10: Choke and Throttle (PG-13/Teen) [1189 words]
Have you ever had a feeling that made absolutely no logical sense, but it turned out to be right?
When I analyze the ways we're so completely opposite and wrong for each other, they could just as easily be the ways we're right. As we head for the mechanic's, I walk; Vala skips ahead of me. The open, wind-scrubbed Colorado sky presses the last warmth of an indolent summer against approaching autumn, preserving the bloom against the sere.
I catch up to her as she bends over an unidentifiable pile of road kill. "What creature was that?"
"I have no idea. Maybe a large squirrel or other rodent?"
"Poor beast. Didn't see the car coming, I guess." She tosses the snapped-off bud of a wildflower near where its head might've been. "So why do your people still use internal combustion engines for common transport? The technology's far too primitive for your stage of industrial development."
I shrug. "Good question. Could be because robber barons still control the fossil fuel market."
"And your vehicle technician is repairing an oil leak, yes?"
"Yes," I answer, and seize her by the waist, drawing her away from the carcass. "And I need to get my truck before he closes shop at noon."
She turns in my arms to face me. "You said before we left that he specializes in the repair of motorcycles. Why's he fixing your truck?"
"Jack had a motorcycle and a truck, which he gave me when he moved to DC, and recommended the guy who's kept his machines running after he divorced. His wife wasn't around to fix them anymore. It's just another half mile - almost a klick ahead."
"Race ya!" She slides out of my grasp and sprints away.
The pigtailed apparition in military boots, leather pants, and a tank top so tight it tells the temperature, flits away. But having become intimate with the apparition reveals the ruse - the huntress behind the decoy - and I'm as complicit in my capture as she is in the chase.
The race ends when she's suddenly drawn short by a heap of rusted engine parts outside the neighboring auto parts wholesaler. "Oh, Daniel, that's from a Wankel engine! Samantha and Cameron were arguing about the epitrophoid chamber last week." She paws through the detritus, plucking off dead leaves as she wrests out a mangled rotor.
"We're not adopting random scrap metal," I warn before heading into the mechanic's office.
No one's in the office, so I poke my head in the garage.
"Carlos? Hi, it's me, Daniel Jackson."
"Hey Daniel!" I hear the voice, but don't see the man. "Almost done with this muffler. Last job of the day. Be with you in a few."
"No problem. Don't rush on my account." Inside the office, I sit in the lone customer chair and pick up a 1990 Ducati owner's manual from the magazine table. The door opens; it's not Vala, but an overweight, middle-aged man in ridiculously branded biker leather. A butterfly bandage spans the bridge of his nose.
"What're you starin' at, Four Eyes?" he asks, glaring down at me, a swollen and discolored eye socket subverting his menace.
I shake my head and look back down at the much more interesting diagram of a choke and throttle.
"Yo, Gomez!" he bellows into the garage. "Que pasa, ese?"
"His name's Carlos," I mutter, knowing that if the man heard me, he wouldn't care. "He's Portuguese, not Mexican."
"Be right with you!"
"Andale, andale! It's an emergency! Some idiot cocktease busted the cruise control on my chopper last night."
I have a bad feeling about this. Vala chooses that moment to enter, purposefully walks over to the man and taps him on the back. He turns around.
"I believe this is yours." She holds up the GPS locator she'd used the night before.
"Well hello, lady love," he coos in instant recognition, and grabs her wrist. "Didja hunt me down to transact some unfinished business?"
"Not particularly, given that your business model is based on third-rate beer and bluster," Vala replies, smilingly ignoring the way he twists her wrist to pull her closer. She lets the device fall from her captured hand.
"Looks like the mechanic's booked today." I'd quietly stepped behind the man before clapping a heavy hand in the crook of his shoulder, avoiding an absurdly fringed epaulet. "Guess you'll be getting your chopper fixed elsewhere." I punctuate the suggestion with an audible, bruising punch to his lower back. "Don't forget your toy." I kick the locator toward the door and push him after it.
The man grunts and spins around, prepared to confront a four-eyed bookworm, then reconsiders as he assesses me and Vala's boxing stance as she focuses on re-injuring his nose.
"Look me up when you need your mortgage refinanced." He nods courteously, picks up the gadget and lurches out the door.
"Darth Poseur," mutters the mechanic, who'd emerged from the garage. "He pisses off my paying clients and owes me for the last two jobs I did."
Vala holds up a fat wallet decorated with an Iron Cross. "I suspect he can well afford to settle the tab." She unsnaps it, revealing a scandalous wad of cash in denominations of one-hundred. Carlos counts out an amount and nods, leaving among the few extra Benjamins a suspicious, powder-coated twenty.
Through the open door, I watch the man ride away on his noise machine. "What's left is obviously worth more than his wedding ring."
"He’s rather unsophisticated for being a 'retired Berringer Consolidated multinational account executive' don’t you think?" Vala remarks, reading through the wallet's contents.
Oh shit. Berringer Consolidated is connected to the Trust. "Eh... let's just wipe off your prints and let Carlos mail this back to him," I advise her. "How much I owe ya, Carlos?"
"Not one dime if the Kaiser of Fucktardia never returns to my shop."
I haggle over paying my bill even after he tosses me the key.
Ninety-six dollars later, I lead Vala to the pickup parked in the side lot. "So he followed you into the alley after you left the bar?"
"Yep. Offered to pay for oral favors. Attacked when I refused. Matters got a bit, uh... unmanageable when two more randy drunkards showed up."
"Glad you didn't tell me earlier. I'd've killed him - a lot."
"I'd've beaten him - a lot - had I not slipped and fallen on someone's vomit."
"It scares me that you're so used to such bad company."
"The universe is a rough place, Daniel, but I'm glad you've got my six."
I reach around and press her six until there's no space between us. "Got your twelve o'clock now, too." Twelve hours ago, I would've been ashamed to display affection in public, but a small parking lot in an old industrial park is hardly the worst place to kiss her and cop a feel.
When we come up for air, Vala blinks dizzily.
"Mmm... delicious. I'm hungry."
"You in the mood for Greek?"
"Right here against the truck?"
"I meant the cuisine."
"Oh." She seems genuinely disappointed. Then, "Oh! I'll drive us there!"
Next:
Chapter 9: Dining on the Spoils (PG-13/Teen) [1306 words]
Following Chapter:
Chapter 10/10: 100% Down (NC-17/Adult) [2099 words]
Entire "Bookends" story on 1 page at Google Docs