SG-1 Fic: The Matter at Hand by cofax and Jonquil (Part 2 of 2) (NC-17)
The Matter at Hand
by cofax and Jonquil
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Daniel and Vala are trapped offworld. Stuff happens. 14,000 words.
Spoilers: Season 9 only; set just prior to "Beachhead".
Part 1 was here.
The Brotherhood isn't letting this one go, and in fact there seem to be more of them. Their options are narrowing, so Daniel and Vala keep pushing north, into the hills, struggling along the forested ridgeline. Daniel's not entirely sure the Brotherhood aren't driving them north: he decides not to mention it to Vala, who banged her injured wrist against a tree in that last dash, and is white-faced with pain.
They've come into a denser stand of trees and they can't see very far, which would be bad, except it means the Brotherhood can't, either. Pausing, Daniel catches Vala's arm and hands her the water bottle. She nods wordlessly and leans against a tree, tipping the plastic bottle above her head to catch the last drop.
This forest is dry: dust clings to every inch of her exposed skin, from the tiny gap between the bottom of her shirt and the waistband of her BDUs, to the sweat-slicked skin under her jaw, glistening as she swallows. Even filthy, sweaty, and in pain, she's--he cuts off the thought, swallows, and looks away. He's got more important things to think about than... that.
He squats down and begins drawing a map in the dirt, thinking. There's something he's missing here; something that could be useful.
"What is it?" Vala asks. She wipes off the top of the bottle and hands it back to him with a smirk.
"I think--" He throws his mind back to that first briefing, when they were reviewing the UAV data before ever coming through the gate to this godforsaken dusty place. The sun is over his left shoulder, and the gate is that way, and the villages that way, so, yeah. "I think there's a set of ruins off that way." He points north and west, just left of where the ridgeline flattens out into what looked, from the open, like a plateau. "You remember? It was something I wanted to see but we got all caught up with the discussions about the Ori, and--" He stops, struck by another thought, and then brings the heel of his hand to his head and thumps himself gently on the forehead once. And then again, harder.
Vala is looking at him blankly. "What? Daniel, what?"
"Enkoli. Incola."
"What's that mean?"
"I think maybe those ruins are Ancient."
Vala blinks at the apparent non sequitur. "And that matters because?"
"Because that guy--" Daniel nods downhill, "--might have been talking about these ruins. In which case there's nothing there to worry about. But if the Brotherhood are afraid of them, maybe they won't follow us."
"They seem pretty determined," she points out with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, well." He straightens up and smoothes the dirt map with the edge of his boot, blurring it into nothingness. "I think the Brotherhood think we're Ori."
She is affronted. "But we came to warn them about the Ori!"
"Yes, and then we stole a holy relic and spent four days dodging their patrols. And, apparently, lured some of their people into apostasy." His voice is not dry enough to drive away the image of the redheaded man's face, surrounded by the yellow of the Brotherhood's capes. "No wonder they're not giving up."
"So we hide in those ruins?" Vala's single-mindedness is occasionally refreshing, he'll grant her that. "You think they'll protect us?"
Stowing the bottle in the pack, he starts moving through the trees again, this time steering a bit to the west. They'll have to be careful to avoid the Brothers who were pursuing them along the valley floor, but if they move fast enough they might make it. "Well, in theory, sure. Unless the reason they think it's dangerous is--"
"--because there's actually something there." Vala curls her lips in disgust. "Well, aren't you just full of optimism?"
"I try," he says, squinting in the wash of sunlight as they cross a small glade. No point in telling her that he's been in worse positions before; so has she. Possibly far more of them, to be fair. "Vala," he says, wondering why it had never occurred to him before to ask, "how long were you a host?"
There is a profound silence from the woman at his side, a silence that sounds like--he realizes with a brush of shame--like Jack's, and like Sam's. The silence of someone who is remembering against her will, against her better judgment. "A long time," she says finally, into the soft thump of their boots on the forest floor.
Daniel suspects he shouldn't push, but he really does want to know. "How long?"
Grey eyes meet his in passing, shadowed by more than the trees about them, and then she shrugs, making her pack swing and bounce against her back. "Long enough that no one remembered my father's name, and my--my lover had grandchildren." She shrugs again, brushing some dust off her jacket with unnecessary force, and then looks up again with a bright smile. "He was an ugly old man, but his grandson, well." She waggles an eyebrow suggestively.
Daniel grimaces at the image, and shakes his head, pursuing the point she's dodging. "So you went back home afterwards? That must have been difficult." Were these the same people she had ruled over as Qeshet, threatening obliteration for any failure to meet the snake's exacting standards? Swap "difficult" out for "horrifying", and that might be closer to the truth, he thinks.
She shrugs again, the glossy mask firmly in place, and looks away from him. "So, how far away is this mythical set of ruins, anyway?"
Daniel takes a breath, not willing to drop the subject, but then the dogs start baying again, closer than before, and they have to start running again.
*
When they get home, Daniel's going to take about six showers, and then lock himself into his apartment for a week, eating takeout Thai and watching the Food Network. Either Abydos, primitive as it was, was far more comfortable than he remembers, or he's just getting old. Because he's pretty sure he's never been this sore and dirty for this long in his life.
"Okay, this is it," he says, crouching in the shelter of a dull red wall, whose stones fit together without more than a fingernail's width between them. On another day, this workmanship could give rise to an impassioned lecture about the value of skilled labor in the pre-industrial economy, and what that says about the local social structure. Today, it just means--he hopes--that there will be enough whole buildings inside the complex to provide them a safe place to hide. He is pretty certain it's not actually an Ancient ruin, but doesn't see any need to point it out to Vala at the moment. "Can you see them?"
Her back pressed against his, Vala nods or shakes her head, he can't tell. "No, there's too many trees. What I'd give for a nice open desert right now," she whispers.
"Where they could see us from a distance and pick us off? Wonderful strategic sense you've got there," mutters Daniel, and gives one more cautious look around before pushing himself to his feet and scrambling over the low wall. Despite the quality of construction, it's very old indeed--the crumbling top is only about four feet above ground level. He reaches back over to help Vala, who gives a pained wince and ignores his proffered hand.
Inside the ruins is much like the outside: unlike other old complexes Daniel has investigated, this one has not kept the world at bay, and trees and brush are everywhere. Some of the ground was once paved, and the stones are lopsided and off-kilter, pushed apart by tree roots and covered with many years of soil and forest debris. He finds himself wishing for a GPS unit and survey equipment, and then reminds himself that their survival beyond the next three minutes is in no way guaranteed. They may well be trapped.
If Teal'c and Mitchell were here, he could leave the strategic thinking to them, but they're not. He knows who to blame for that, but when he slits his eyes resentfully at Vala, he finds he's lost most of the edge of his anger. She's on the last of the aspirin but it doesn't look like it's doing much good: the cheeky grin is nowhere to be seen. "Which way?" she asks quietly, looking around appraisingly at the jumbled stones and rough terrain.
A hound bays in the distance; they both twitch, shoulders brushing. Daniel considers for a long moment. It's not an Ancient ruin, he's sure of that now by the workmanship and the architecture, so the chances are slim they'll find any technology to protect themselves with. What they need to do is go deep, somewhere the Brotherhood would never find them. He takes a few steps forward, staying on the stones: they can at least try not to leave too clear a trail.
Five steps in, the stone beneath him cants sideways suddenly, throwing him off balance. "Aaah!" He stumbles, and Vala wrenches him to safety as the slab pivots, revealing a pit beneath, into which a few lumps of soil and gravel tumble. The stone slab settles back into place as Daniel watches, breathing heavily. In a moment there's no indication of anything amiss, just a section of old pavement on the ground, dusted with fallen leaves. "Uh, wow."
Whoever the builders of this complex were, they'd left it booby-trapped. Vala lets go of his arm and smiles broadly. "Oh, this is going to be fun!"
There's a pattern to the booby-traps, Daniel decides; he's just not sure what it is. He manages to avoid the next three as they push farther into the ruins, still looking for a good hiding place, but the fourth nearly crushes him under a suddenly-toppling wall. Again, it's Vala's sharp eyes that spot the incongruity and pull him out of the way. "Ah, thanks," he says, coughing out a lungful of dust.
She ignores him, staring at the rubble around them with a wisely suspicious eye. "The Yllarians didn't build this."
He rolls an eye at her, but she's ignoring him, tracing a hand along the still-sharp edge of a block in the wall. "Other than the obvious, what makes you think that?"
Her braids toss as she shrugs, knocking some dust off her jacket. "It's wrong? Look, look at that corner there, and the way the stones curve in that archway."
Daniel follows her pointing finger to one of the few buildings still mostly standing, and nods after a moment. She's not wrong: there's something indefinably off about the shapes and angles here, something utterly inconsistent with the staid and far-too-familiar Yllarian architecture. "Huh."
He's about to follow up on that thought when there's a shout in the distance, and another. In the distance, but not the far distance: the Brotherhood has entered the ruins. More shouts now, from the left--they're being flanked. Daniel's not sure how big the complex is, but they have to find a place to hide, out of reach of the dogs. They don't have the stamina to play hide-and-seek with the Brotherhood for long. Not and keep evading the damned booby-traps set by the city's unknown builders.
"Okay, shit."
"I have an idea." Vala's face is pale, but she tugs him forward, heading across the small open plaza, stepping cautiously on the untrustworthy flagstones. Daniel pulls the zat out of his pocket as the shouts increase in volume; he finds it only vaguely reassuring that the Yllarians don't have radio technology. If there's enough of the Brotherhood here, they'll be caught eventually.
The next stone is one of the balanced ones: Vala weights it gingerly, then steps back to let it swing. Daniel catches a glimpse of nothingness beneath it, and then it settles back into place. "So?"
She stares at him meaningfully, then points down at the stone.
"Oh, no." They have no idea what's down there--stakes, snakes, mud pits, all sorts of nasty things. Daniel's worked at the SGC for far too long and he's seen too many mission reports to be sanguine about conditions in an old booby-trapped cave. He's not going down there; he folds his arms and glares at Vala.
She starts to fold her arms, winces, and pouts instead. But it seems half-hearted, and her eyes keep flickering over his shoulder, watching for the telltale flash of a yellow cloak. "Do we have any other options?" she hisses.
"No, but--" Daniel stops, raises a hand, and puts it over her mouth. She opens her eyes wide in inquiry, then nods as he pulls her down into a crouch.
"Capes?" she mouths soundlessly; he nods.
Now, of course, they have no choice: there is a Brother walking through the trees, his fire staff at the ready, not thirty yards away. He's not looking toward them, but almost any noise would get his attention. Daniel squats carefully and pushes down on the flagstone, his hands slick on its cool, smooth surface.
It tilts, soundlessly, as if it were oiled. Weird. The darkness below it is impenetrable, but it looks like there's enough room for them to fit inside. If they're careful. Daniel heaves a little harder and the other side swings up, just high enough. He raises an eyebrow at Vala, who bites her lip and swings her legs into the hole. There's a soft grunt and a rustle as she squirms backwards, dirt falling onto her face and hair.
It takes all his effort to keep the stone lifted, so Daniel can't help lower her in, and he realizes her sprained wrist is going to be a problem only when she suddenly lets go of the lip and disappears from view. He hears a thump, and she mutters something in Goa'uld about the thirteenth pit of Netu.
The Brother has been joined by a second one: they are waving their arms around, and pointing in various directions, clearly arguing about the search. Daniel grimaces and edges his feet into the opening. He has to switch around so he can push up on the slab instead of down, and it's damned heavy. One hand slips, and it lurches downward, nearly pinning him in place, half into the pit and half out.
"Daniel!" hisses Vala from below. Something grabs his foot, and he nearly cries out in alarm before realizing it has to be Vala.
One of the Brothers begins to turn. Daniel heaves desperately at the slab, shoving it upwards so he can swivel around and let himself fall into the darkness.
*
Daniel doesn't fall far, but he lands heavily, stumbling sideways into Vala with a grunt he tries to stifle. Before he's regained his balance, the slab has settled back into place. It's completely lightless in here.
He turns around cautiously, arms outspread. On two sides his fumbling hands touch cold smooth stone; the other walls are a crumbled mass of rubble and dirt, as if a tunnel entrance had collapsed at some point. The entire space is about the size of his bathroom, but the floor is uncertain with loose rock. He trips as a stone turns under his foot, and finds himself folded over Vala, her sharp elbow jutting into his stomach.
"Ooof," he manages softly. "Sorry. You okay?" Straightening is hard, in the darkness with the unstable surface. He finds himself pressed close against her, his front to her back. She's tall, but still shorter than he is: her hair catches in his face and he brushes it away.
"Fine," she says shortly, her voice muffled, and he realizes she's shaking. Tiny tremors, noticeable only because they're tangled together. He rests a hand cautiously on her shoulder.
Five days of running, starvation, and people shooting at them, and now she's scared? Now she has time to be scared.
There's a shout above them, and the sound of boots stomping on hard stone carries clearly down into their cubbyhole. It sounds like dozens of Brothers are up there, and if they bring the dogs--
Vala shudders. "Daniel--" she whispers, barely loud enough for him to hear her.
He pats her shoulder, not above shuddering himself, truth be told. Of all the unpleasantnesses he's experienced since opening the Stargate, dealing with religious zealots is the worst. He's never been good with situations where reason has no foothold--this particular circumstance being one of them.
"They're going to burn us, Daniel..."
"No, they won't. I won't--" But he's broken that promise already, hasn't he?
They stand there, and somehow his arms find their way around her, so she's leaning against him, warm in the dank cold of the pit, cave, whatever it is. She doesn't shrug him off, as he half-expected she would--but that could make noise. The sound of the search above them continues, trails off, gains in volume again. From the sound of it, the Brotherhood has set up their center of operations in the middle of the plaza, no more than thirty feet away.
The pit smells of dirt and water, of cold stone and tree roots; but Vala's hair smells of dust, sweat, and a tiny hint of perfume. She smells alive. He wonders again what those tiny pots contain, and almost draws breath to ask, when she twists in his arms, swiveling around to face him. He drops his arms as she turns, but she hooks her arms behind his back, tucking herself in under his chin.
"Well," she says softly after a moment, as his eyes search the darkness fruitlessly. "This is cozy." There's a wicked smile curled into those words, and he can't help but roll his eyes. She pats his ass; Daniel twitches, but there's not much he can do without making any noise.
Which is, of course, when the buzzing starts.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttt, it sounds. It's very soft--at first. But as Daniel stands in stunned disbelief, the pitch, and the volume, begin to climb.
"What is it?" he whispers, and she shakes her head, pushing him away to grab at her pack. He stumbles back against the wall and bats at his radio, but it's not that.
There's nothing in his pack or in the pockets of his vest that could be making the noise, and now that he's a little ways away from her, he realizes the sound is definitely coming from her. From the sound of it, she's realized this as well--but the pitch, and the volume, of the buzzing is beginning to increase. And the Brotherhood are still there, not fifteen feet above their heads, walking around with their yellow capes and their nasty firebolt-throwing-staves.
"Where, where?" Vala mutters, and rips open a velcro tab: Daniel winces.
The sound is still climbing. Desperate, Daniel lunges forward and grabs her: one hand lands on her shoulder, the other on her breast.
He'd apologize, except there's something under his hand that really shouldn't be. It's been a while, but he's pretty sure women's breasts aren't hard.
She begins to squawk: the hand on her shoulder gets shifted to her mouth, muffling her outrage. The other dives into her jacket. It's there: tucked between her corset and the BDU jacket is something palm-sized: hard, smooth, and buzzing. He yanks it out and begins fumbling with it.
"It's the damned Icon," he mutters in her ear. "How do I turn it off?"
She grabs hold of his elbow and fumbles her hand down to his, where he's clutching the Icon, stabbing at it randomly with a stiff finger.
"I don't know!" Vala tries to take it out of his hand, but he's not letting it go, and just squeezes it tighter. "I didn't know you could turn it on!"
She gets her small nimble fingers inside his, so they're both clinging to it, squeezing and pressing at the enamel panels--and the volume drops.
"Wha?" Daniel mutters. He moves a finger tentatively, brushing against one of hers, and the sound drops a little lower. He lifts it off the surface of the artifact and the volume goes up again. "Don't let go."
"No, really?" she murmurs, and giggles a little under her breath.
Bending his head close to her ear, he says softly, "It likes it when we're both touching it, and each other. I think it must have sensors--"
"Well, we can do that," she replies into his chin.
They stand there in relieved silence for no more than a minute, hands entwined, and then Daniel swears miserably into her hair. The noise level is beginning to climb again.
Vala huffs in frustration. "More touching?"
In answer, he detaches one hand from the artifact and pats his way up her arm until it comes to rest on the bare skin of her neck--and the tone dips again, falling almost to silence. "More touching," he confirms. Bare skin only, no less. Whatever they do, it only lasts for a little while before the artifact becomes impatient and demands action. If he could only figure out how to turn it off entirely--but that isn't going to happen in the darkness, with the Brotherhood waiting about overhead. They can't even take the risk of zatting it--zats are quieter than firearms, but far from silent.
It becomes a dance of sorts: cautious movements, a finger drawn carefully along the other's skin, a chin brushed across the other's cheek, followed by a long pause until the buzz starts climbing again. Just moving isn't enough, though--the artifact is too smart for that. It wants more. New skin, more movement. Daniel begins to suspect there's an AI at work; again, not something they can actually deal with, under the circumstances. They don't even have a light.
The footsteps continue above their heads, accompanied by the occasional shout of alarm. Daniel guesses the Brotherhood is running afoul of the city-builders' booby-traps, not that it's helping at the moment. He's trying to think about that, trying to keep focused on the danger, because it's getting hard to remember that they're at risk for their lives. Vala has her lips pressed to his neck, one hand pushed up under his shirt, her other hand tangled with his on the artifact. His cheek is brushing her ear, his hand cautiously stroking along her neck.
They're running out of skin.
"Bzzzzt," says the artifact demandingly.
Vala drops the hand she has on his back. The buzz gets louder.
"Vala!" What are you doing? he begins to ask, but the quiet click of snaps opening stops him.
"Why Daniel--you're not shy, are you?" The words are expected, but there's a tremor underneath them, one that hasn't gone away since they've been trapped in here. She moves against him, her shoulders shifting as she struggles, he assumes, out of her jacket. "Help me," she demands. "Do it fast so we don't have to do it again--"
Oh, right. Every time they have to let go of one another to take something off is another chance for the artifact to get louder.
Getting Daniel out of his tac vest and t-shirt isn't too difficult, but Vala's corset has too many straps, and they're at one point reduced to pulling it over her head fast, like a Band-Aid coming off. Finally they're gasping, hands locked together once more about the artifact, and naked from the waist up.
The buzzing had begun to approach dangerous levels, but as Daniel puts a finger cautiously on Vala's collarbone and slides it sideways, the artifact settles down, humming in what he imagines as satisfaction. "We're not getting out of this, are we?" he says in the softest tone he can manage. The air in the pit has suddenly warmed, or they've used up all the oxygen, he's not sure.
"Well, we could try," she whispers, and bites his shoulder lightly, making him jump and the artifact positively purr. "But it's much more fun this way, don't you think?"
She's not wrong; so he groans, and pulls her head to his. Her lips, which have smirked and pouted and driven him mad with frustration for weeks, are warm, a little chapped, and just as lush as he imagined. Not that he's been imagining them. Much. He lets his fingers smooth along the soft skin of her shoulder, and slide down her back to her waist. He's not eager for too much, yet. "Slow," he reminds her, not yet touching her anywhere else.
She sighs. "Oh, if you insist," but stiffens when a loud thump and a cry of rage echo down from the surface. "Might be a while..."
They draw it out as long as they can, and Daniel isn't sure how much of that is intentional anticipation, and how much is awareness that at some point there won't be any more they can do to keep the artifact silent--and the Brotherhood are still there. They have only been trapped here for about forty minutes. SGC search operations he's been involved in can last for days. He doesn't mention this.
He's pretty sure the oxygen is actually getting thin, because every moment begins to attenuate, the buzzing of the artifact and the hammering of his pulse making his head swim. The only thing that matters is the way the skin under her ear tastes on his tongue; the way her nipples stiffen when he brushes his palm across them slowly; her rasping breath in his ear. Each touch is gingerly contained, sustained as long as they can withstand it, traded one for the next. She balances delicately, her left hand locked in his right around the artifact, and licks a stripe down his chest to his navel; he returns the favor with a series of kisses along her jawline and down her neck to her collarbone, which he sucks on until she emits a low moan.
The artifact is less patient than he is, though, and the sense of urgency begins to return. They have stopped talking, communicating in gasped breaths and touches instead. When he reaches down with an unsteady hand to unsnap her BDU trousers, she nods enthusiastically, and uses her free hand to help him, kicking the pants down around her ankles. She's still yanking at them, trying to pull one of her boots up through the leg, while he opens his own trousers.
"Um," he mutters in frustration, and pauses, while the artifact buzzes in his hand. With only one free hand each, standing up seems like a bad idea, even if his back could take it--which, after sleeping on the ground for five days, it probably can't. Vala grunts in triumph and rises, apparently de-pantsed.
She somehow senses his uncertainty and leans forward to plant a smacking kiss on his chest, then swings him around so he's standing where she was. When he doesn't do anything, she sighs--he can absolutely see the eyebrow arch in annoyance--and pushes him gently backward. His calves hit something, and he realizes there's a ledge there, part of the crumbled side wall with a level surface at about knee level.
Perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, but for this? More than adequate.
Daniel pushes at his trousers and his shorts; it's a delicate production with only one hand. Vala snickers softly, but uses her free hand to help--when she touches his cock he sucks in a startled breath and the artifact falls almost completely silent. They pause, startled: maybe it's done?
But it's not; only a few seconds later it starts up again. So he settles down on the stone, which is sharp-edged and cold under his ass. His left hand, fumbling around for something to lean against, comes down on something that clatters suddenly as it falls off the ledge onto the floor below. Doesn't matter what it is--he brushes impatiently at the rest of the debris, ignoring the suspicion that it's not random vegetative debris, and certainly not stones.
Vala climbs into his lap, panting hot into his face, and he's suddenly thrown back to that first meeting on the Prometheus, when she beat him up and kissed him and he wanted nothing better than to stuff her out the nearest airlock. He kisses her again and then hesitates as she hooks one arm around his neck. "Ah, do we need--"
"No, I spoke to your lovely physician some time ago," she whispers into his lips, and eases down onto him, wet and ready. "Your people have remarkable foresight." Then she locks her legs around him and begins to rock. Slowly.
"You're trying to kill me, aren't you," he mutters; but she just snorts, and nibbles on his throat. He brings their interlocked hands, nearly numb with the tension of keeping the artifact silent, to his mouth and bites gently at her wrist. She pulses once around him in response, and he groans.
She rocks, and he thrusts shallowly, his braced feet cold on the stone floor. Matching her, falling into rhythm and then out again, trying to make it last. It's been a long time for him--not that he'll admit it to her--and he suspects he's not going to last nearly as long as he needs to. He tries to stall, tries to think of something that will hold off the climax that he feels building, but his brain is fuzzy and fractured, and she feels--god, she feels good. Soft and wet and hard and firm, clenching and releasing around him, hot breathes puffing against his neck, his chest, his face. Even the thought of fiery death isn't going to keep him from exploding into her.
Speaking of which: he lifts his head to listen.
"Are you ignoring me?" demands Vala in a quietly outraged voice.
Daniel puts a hand over her mouth: she licks his palm and he shudders, but stays focused, concentrating. He's right--the voices on the surface have all died away, the footsteps are silent. Either the Brotherhood are preparing an elaborate trap, or they've actually left.
Vala has stilled as well, and she presses her breasts against his chest, leaning forward to peer upwards into the darkness. "They're gone?"
"I think so," he says cautiously.
"Good," she replies. "Then I can do this--" And she rears up and then grinds down onto him, simultaneously clenching her muscles in a wave.
It's exactly the sort of thing she would do, after all, but he'd forgotten who he was dealing with. He comes with a choked cry, hips bucking uncontrollably; only when he reaches down and is swatted away for his trouble does he realize she'd climaxed as well. He missed it, and he wonders with a disturbing amount of disappointment whether he'll ever get to witness it in the light.
She sighs and sags forward onto him, kissing him lazily, with just enough tongue to remind him who's in charge. Her breasts are soft against his chest, still tempting despite his exhaustion. But she's a thief and a liar, and they wouldn't be trapped here if she hadn't stolen the Icon.
He kisses her back anyway, and then drops his head against the wall behind them. He figures they've got about two minutes before the damned artifact goes off again. At least with the Brotherhood gone it won't kill them.
Which is precisely the moment when the radio crackles. "SG-One-Niner to Doctor Jackson, come in."
*
"How long did they say they'd be?" Vala asks again, three minutes after the last time she asked.
It's dark enough for Daniel to roll his eyes without getting caught, but he can't argue with her impatience. The last time he was this filthy was probably after the mission to Netu, and while this trip is an improvement over that one--he didn't get any sex on Netu, for one thing, and this time none of his team was tortured--he's beginning to fantasize about the sauna in the Marines' locker room on Level 25. SG-1 has its own locker room, but Jack always bitched about the fact that they didn't have their own sauna.
"You heard Mitchell," says Daniel, shifting uncomfortably on the uneven ground. "They have a lot of teams to bring back in, and he wasn't sure when they'd get to us." They are squatting in the brush at the top of the ridge above the Stargate, having spent the previous eighteen hours moving with uttermost care in a loop back to their starting point. While Daniel is almost certain the Icon was only activated by exposure to some buried Ancient device in the ruins--he has a theory about early human settlers driving out a native race who had been in contact with the Ancients--Vala is taking no chances, and the Icon is carefully wrapped in several layers at the bottom of Daniel's pack. Vala also insisted Daniel sacrifice his BDU jacket for the cause, and the temperature has dropped noticeably since the afternoon. He therefore doesn't move away when she presses closer to his side, welcoming her warmth. "I'm pretty sure it should be soon."
But when a hand slides under his t-shirt, he twitches. "Vala..."
"What? No one is going to see us up here!" Her hand stills, though, and she pulls it out, hooking her thumb through his belt-loop instead.
He fumbles for something to say, maybe even the truth. If he can figure out what that is. "We, I, well--I just. I don't think--"
"You wish we hadn't had sex!" The outrage is mostly feigned, but after five days of round-the-clock companionship, Daniel can hear the tiny thread of hurt in her voice.
"No. No, I don't," he says, feeling his way along. "I just--it's. We're on the same team, at least sort of. And the Air Force--" He stops. Playing the fraternization card is a cheat, and she deserves better than that. He's lost count of how many times they saved each other's lives in the last week.
He frees a hand and wraps it around her waist, pulling her close, tilting his head so her hair tickles his lips. "You're a liar and a thief," he says into that dark cloud. "And I don't like you all that much."
Her breath puffs against his neck as she turns her head; her hand flattens against his hip and strokes back and forth. Daniel keeps his eyes open, watching through the brambles for the blue flash of an establishing wormhole, or the torches of the Brotherhood. "That's it?" Vala asks when he doesn't anything else. "That's your reason for not having sex again?"
"Well..."
"That's stupid! We had fun, didn't we?"
"I shouldn't even be here," he finally whispers. "I should be on Atlantis, and if it weren't for you--and me--" he adds ruefully, "there wouldn't be an Ori threat, and those people on P8X-412 wouldn't have lost their freedom, and none of this would have happened."
There's a baffled silence. Daniel has to admit it doesn't make a lot of sense. But he just can't. He doesn't regret having sex with Vala in the ruins--it was good, and it did save their lives. But it wasn't something he would have chosen to do. Not yet, anyway, to be honest. The choice was taken away from him, the way so many other choices have been taken away from him, since he first walked through the Stargate.
This he has a choice about.
He presses a kiss to Vala's temple, and reaches around to detach her from his hip. She snorts with disgust, but drops her hand. She does not, however, move away; her warm body presses against his, her hands picking at the material of her jacket. Daniel feels her body relax, and his shoulders drop in turn.
"You Tau'ri really are stupid, aren't you?"
"Well, you have to admit, the two of us together aren't exactly doing wonderful things for the galaxy at large. Or the universe, even."
"I suppose." He can positively hear her pouting, but there's no time to argue it now, because a mile down the valley he sees the vivid bloom of a wormhole forming.
As he pulls her to her feet and turns on his radio, he stops before slinging his pack onto his back. "Vala, I--"
"Daniel, I understand." There's a flash as she faces him, the dim light reflecting off her broad smile. "I promise not to tease you." He nods his thanks and toggles the broadcast switch of the radio. "Much."
END
I know a girl mess with your mind
She'll come to you in the summer sometime
She'll talk about things you don't understand
You better keep to the matters at hand
Before the whole damn thing unwinds.
--John Hiatt, "Georgia Rae"
by cofax and Jonquil
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Daniel and Vala are trapped offworld. Stuff happens. 14,000 words.
Spoilers: Season 9 only; set just prior to "Beachhead".
Part 1 was here.
The Brotherhood isn't letting this one go, and in fact there seem to be more of them. Their options are narrowing, so Daniel and Vala keep pushing north, into the hills, struggling along the forested ridgeline. Daniel's not entirely sure the Brotherhood aren't driving them north: he decides not to mention it to Vala, who banged her injured wrist against a tree in that last dash, and is white-faced with pain.
They've come into a denser stand of trees and they can't see very far, which would be bad, except it means the Brotherhood can't, either. Pausing, Daniel catches Vala's arm and hands her the water bottle. She nods wordlessly and leans against a tree, tipping the plastic bottle above her head to catch the last drop.
This forest is dry: dust clings to every inch of her exposed skin, from the tiny gap between the bottom of her shirt and the waistband of her BDUs, to the sweat-slicked skin under her jaw, glistening as she swallows. Even filthy, sweaty, and in pain, she's--he cuts off the thought, swallows, and looks away. He's got more important things to think about than... that.
He squats down and begins drawing a map in the dirt, thinking. There's something he's missing here; something that could be useful.
"What is it?" Vala asks. She wipes off the top of the bottle and hands it back to him with a smirk.
"I think--" He throws his mind back to that first briefing, when they were reviewing the UAV data before ever coming through the gate to this godforsaken dusty place. The sun is over his left shoulder, and the gate is that way, and the villages that way, so, yeah. "I think there's a set of ruins off that way." He points north and west, just left of where the ridgeline flattens out into what looked, from the open, like a plateau. "You remember? It was something I wanted to see but we got all caught up with the discussions about the Ori, and--" He stops, struck by another thought, and then brings the heel of his hand to his head and thumps himself gently on the forehead once. And then again, harder.
Vala is looking at him blankly. "What? Daniel, what?"
"Enkoli. Incola."
"What's that mean?"
"I think maybe those ruins are Ancient."
Vala blinks at the apparent non sequitur. "And that matters because?"
"Because that guy--" Daniel nods downhill, "--might have been talking about these ruins. In which case there's nothing there to worry about. But if the Brotherhood are afraid of them, maybe they won't follow us."
"They seem pretty determined," she points out with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, well." He straightens up and smoothes the dirt map with the edge of his boot, blurring it into nothingness. "I think the Brotherhood think we're Ori."
She is affronted. "But we came to warn them about the Ori!"
"Yes, and then we stole a holy relic and spent four days dodging their patrols. And, apparently, lured some of their people into apostasy." His voice is not dry enough to drive away the image of the redheaded man's face, surrounded by the yellow of the Brotherhood's capes. "No wonder they're not giving up."
"So we hide in those ruins?" Vala's single-mindedness is occasionally refreshing, he'll grant her that. "You think they'll protect us?"
Stowing the bottle in the pack, he starts moving through the trees again, this time steering a bit to the west. They'll have to be careful to avoid the Brothers who were pursuing them along the valley floor, but if they move fast enough they might make it. "Well, in theory, sure. Unless the reason they think it's dangerous is--"
"--because there's actually something there." Vala curls her lips in disgust. "Well, aren't you just full of optimism?"
"I try," he says, squinting in the wash of sunlight as they cross a small glade. No point in telling her that he's been in worse positions before; so has she. Possibly far more of them, to be fair. "Vala," he says, wondering why it had never occurred to him before to ask, "how long were you a host?"
There is a profound silence from the woman at his side, a silence that sounds like--he realizes with a brush of shame--like Jack's, and like Sam's. The silence of someone who is remembering against her will, against her better judgment. "A long time," she says finally, into the soft thump of their boots on the forest floor.
Daniel suspects he shouldn't push, but he really does want to know. "How long?"
Grey eyes meet his in passing, shadowed by more than the trees about them, and then she shrugs, making her pack swing and bounce against her back. "Long enough that no one remembered my father's name, and my--my lover had grandchildren." She shrugs again, brushing some dust off her jacket with unnecessary force, and then looks up again with a bright smile. "He was an ugly old man, but his grandson, well." She waggles an eyebrow suggestively.
Daniel grimaces at the image, and shakes his head, pursuing the point she's dodging. "So you went back home afterwards? That must have been difficult." Were these the same people she had ruled over as Qeshet, threatening obliteration for any failure to meet the snake's exacting standards? Swap "difficult" out for "horrifying", and that might be closer to the truth, he thinks.
She shrugs again, the glossy mask firmly in place, and looks away from him. "So, how far away is this mythical set of ruins, anyway?"
Daniel takes a breath, not willing to drop the subject, but then the dogs start baying again, closer than before, and they have to start running again.
*
When they get home, Daniel's going to take about six showers, and then lock himself into his apartment for a week, eating takeout Thai and watching the Food Network. Either Abydos, primitive as it was, was far more comfortable than he remembers, or he's just getting old. Because he's pretty sure he's never been this sore and dirty for this long in his life.
"Okay, this is it," he says, crouching in the shelter of a dull red wall, whose stones fit together without more than a fingernail's width between them. On another day, this workmanship could give rise to an impassioned lecture about the value of skilled labor in the pre-industrial economy, and what that says about the local social structure. Today, it just means--he hopes--that there will be enough whole buildings inside the complex to provide them a safe place to hide. He is pretty certain it's not actually an Ancient ruin, but doesn't see any need to point it out to Vala at the moment. "Can you see them?"
Her back pressed against his, Vala nods or shakes her head, he can't tell. "No, there's too many trees. What I'd give for a nice open desert right now," she whispers.
"Where they could see us from a distance and pick us off? Wonderful strategic sense you've got there," mutters Daniel, and gives one more cautious look around before pushing himself to his feet and scrambling over the low wall. Despite the quality of construction, it's very old indeed--the crumbling top is only about four feet above ground level. He reaches back over to help Vala, who gives a pained wince and ignores his proffered hand.
Inside the ruins is much like the outside: unlike other old complexes Daniel has investigated, this one has not kept the world at bay, and trees and brush are everywhere. Some of the ground was once paved, and the stones are lopsided and off-kilter, pushed apart by tree roots and covered with many years of soil and forest debris. He finds himself wishing for a GPS unit and survey equipment, and then reminds himself that their survival beyond the next three minutes is in no way guaranteed. They may well be trapped.
If Teal'c and Mitchell were here, he could leave the strategic thinking to them, but they're not. He knows who to blame for that, but when he slits his eyes resentfully at Vala, he finds he's lost most of the edge of his anger. She's on the last of the aspirin but it doesn't look like it's doing much good: the cheeky grin is nowhere to be seen. "Which way?" she asks quietly, looking around appraisingly at the jumbled stones and rough terrain.
A hound bays in the distance; they both twitch, shoulders brushing. Daniel considers for a long moment. It's not an Ancient ruin, he's sure of that now by the workmanship and the architecture, so the chances are slim they'll find any technology to protect themselves with. What they need to do is go deep, somewhere the Brotherhood would never find them. He takes a few steps forward, staying on the stones: they can at least try not to leave too clear a trail.
Five steps in, the stone beneath him cants sideways suddenly, throwing him off balance. "Aaah!" He stumbles, and Vala wrenches him to safety as the slab pivots, revealing a pit beneath, into which a few lumps of soil and gravel tumble. The stone slab settles back into place as Daniel watches, breathing heavily. In a moment there's no indication of anything amiss, just a section of old pavement on the ground, dusted with fallen leaves. "Uh, wow."
Whoever the builders of this complex were, they'd left it booby-trapped. Vala lets go of his arm and smiles broadly. "Oh, this is going to be fun!"
There's a pattern to the booby-traps, Daniel decides; he's just not sure what it is. He manages to avoid the next three as they push farther into the ruins, still looking for a good hiding place, but the fourth nearly crushes him under a suddenly-toppling wall. Again, it's Vala's sharp eyes that spot the incongruity and pull him out of the way. "Ah, thanks," he says, coughing out a lungful of dust.
She ignores him, staring at the rubble around them with a wisely suspicious eye. "The Yllarians didn't build this."
He rolls an eye at her, but she's ignoring him, tracing a hand along the still-sharp edge of a block in the wall. "Other than the obvious, what makes you think that?"
Her braids toss as she shrugs, knocking some dust off her jacket. "It's wrong? Look, look at that corner there, and the way the stones curve in that archway."
Daniel follows her pointing finger to one of the few buildings still mostly standing, and nods after a moment. She's not wrong: there's something indefinably off about the shapes and angles here, something utterly inconsistent with the staid and far-too-familiar Yllarian architecture. "Huh."
He's about to follow up on that thought when there's a shout in the distance, and another. In the distance, but not the far distance: the Brotherhood has entered the ruins. More shouts now, from the left--they're being flanked. Daniel's not sure how big the complex is, but they have to find a place to hide, out of reach of the dogs. They don't have the stamina to play hide-and-seek with the Brotherhood for long. Not and keep evading the damned booby-traps set by the city's unknown builders.
"Okay, shit."
"I have an idea." Vala's face is pale, but she tugs him forward, heading across the small open plaza, stepping cautiously on the untrustworthy flagstones. Daniel pulls the zat out of his pocket as the shouts increase in volume; he finds it only vaguely reassuring that the Yllarians don't have radio technology. If there's enough of the Brotherhood here, they'll be caught eventually.
The next stone is one of the balanced ones: Vala weights it gingerly, then steps back to let it swing. Daniel catches a glimpse of nothingness beneath it, and then it settles back into place. "So?"
She stares at him meaningfully, then points down at the stone.
"Oh, no." They have no idea what's down there--stakes, snakes, mud pits, all sorts of nasty things. Daniel's worked at the SGC for far too long and he's seen too many mission reports to be sanguine about conditions in an old booby-trapped cave. He's not going down there; he folds his arms and glares at Vala.
She starts to fold her arms, winces, and pouts instead. But it seems half-hearted, and her eyes keep flickering over his shoulder, watching for the telltale flash of a yellow cloak. "Do we have any other options?" she hisses.
"No, but--" Daniel stops, raises a hand, and puts it over her mouth. She opens her eyes wide in inquiry, then nods as he pulls her down into a crouch.
"Capes?" she mouths soundlessly; he nods.
Now, of course, they have no choice: there is a Brother walking through the trees, his fire staff at the ready, not thirty yards away. He's not looking toward them, but almost any noise would get his attention. Daniel squats carefully and pushes down on the flagstone, his hands slick on its cool, smooth surface.
It tilts, soundlessly, as if it were oiled. Weird. The darkness below it is impenetrable, but it looks like there's enough room for them to fit inside. If they're careful. Daniel heaves a little harder and the other side swings up, just high enough. He raises an eyebrow at Vala, who bites her lip and swings her legs into the hole. There's a soft grunt and a rustle as she squirms backwards, dirt falling onto her face and hair.
It takes all his effort to keep the stone lifted, so Daniel can't help lower her in, and he realizes her sprained wrist is going to be a problem only when she suddenly lets go of the lip and disappears from view. He hears a thump, and she mutters something in Goa'uld about the thirteenth pit of Netu.
The Brother has been joined by a second one: they are waving their arms around, and pointing in various directions, clearly arguing about the search. Daniel grimaces and edges his feet into the opening. He has to switch around so he can push up on the slab instead of down, and it's damned heavy. One hand slips, and it lurches downward, nearly pinning him in place, half into the pit and half out.
"Daniel!" hisses Vala from below. Something grabs his foot, and he nearly cries out in alarm before realizing it has to be Vala.
One of the Brothers begins to turn. Daniel heaves desperately at the slab, shoving it upwards so he can swivel around and let himself fall into the darkness.
*
Daniel doesn't fall far, but he lands heavily, stumbling sideways into Vala with a grunt he tries to stifle. Before he's regained his balance, the slab has settled back into place. It's completely lightless in here.
He turns around cautiously, arms outspread. On two sides his fumbling hands touch cold smooth stone; the other walls are a crumbled mass of rubble and dirt, as if a tunnel entrance had collapsed at some point. The entire space is about the size of his bathroom, but the floor is uncertain with loose rock. He trips as a stone turns under his foot, and finds himself folded over Vala, her sharp elbow jutting into his stomach.
"Ooof," he manages softly. "Sorry. You okay?" Straightening is hard, in the darkness with the unstable surface. He finds himself pressed close against her, his front to her back. She's tall, but still shorter than he is: her hair catches in his face and he brushes it away.
"Fine," she says shortly, her voice muffled, and he realizes she's shaking. Tiny tremors, noticeable only because they're tangled together. He rests a hand cautiously on her shoulder.
Five days of running, starvation, and people shooting at them, and now she's scared? Now she has time to be scared.
There's a shout above them, and the sound of boots stomping on hard stone carries clearly down into their cubbyhole. It sounds like dozens of Brothers are up there, and if they bring the dogs--
Vala shudders. "Daniel--" she whispers, barely loud enough for him to hear her.
He pats her shoulder, not above shuddering himself, truth be told. Of all the unpleasantnesses he's experienced since opening the Stargate, dealing with religious zealots is the worst. He's never been good with situations where reason has no foothold--this particular circumstance being one of them.
"They're going to burn us, Daniel..."
"No, they won't. I won't--" But he's broken that promise already, hasn't he?
They stand there, and somehow his arms find their way around her, so she's leaning against him, warm in the dank cold of the pit, cave, whatever it is. She doesn't shrug him off, as he half-expected she would--but that could make noise. The sound of the search above them continues, trails off, gains in volume again. From the sound of it, the Brotherhood has set up their center of operations in the middle of the plaza, no more than thirty feet away.
The pit smells of dirt and water, of cold stone and tree roots; but Vala's hair smells of dust, sweat, and a tiny hint of perfume. She smells alive. He wonders again what those tiny pots contain, and almost draws breath to ask, when she twists in his arms, swiveling around to face him. He drops his arms as she turns, but she hooks her arms behind his back, tucking herself in under his chin.
"Well," she says softly after a moment, as his eyes search the darkness fruitlessly. "This is cozy." There's a wicked smile curled into those words, and he can't help but roll his eyes. She pats his ass; Daniel twitches, but there's not much he can do without making any noise.
Which is, of course, when the buzzing starts.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttt, it sounds. It's very soft--at first. But as Daniel stands in stunned disbelief, the pitch, and the volume, begin to climb.
"What is it?" he whispers, and she shakes her head, pushing him away to grab at her pack. He stumbles back against the wall and bats at his radio, but it's not that.
There's nothing in his pack or in the pockets of his vest that could be making the noise, and now that he's a little ways away from her, he realizes the sound is definitely coming from her. From the sound of it, she's realized this as well--but the pitch, and the volume, of the buzzing is beginning to increase. And the Brotherhood are still there, not fifteen feet above their heads, walking around with their yellow capes and their nasty firebolt-throwing-staves.
"Where, where?" Vala mutters, and rips open a velcro tab: Daniel winces.
The sound is still climbing. Desperate, Daniel lunges forward and grabs her: one hand lands on her shoulder, the other on her breast.
He'd apologize, except there's something under his hand that really shouldn't be. It's been a while, but he's pretty sure women's breasts aren't hard.
She begins to squawk: the hand on her shoulder gets shifted to her mouth, muffling her outrage. The other dives into her jacket. It's there: tucked between her corset and the BDU jacket is something palm-sized: hard, smooth, and buzzing. He yanks it out and begins fumbling with it.
"It's the damned Icon," he mutters in her ear. "How do I turn it off?"
She grabs hold of his elbow and fumbles her hand down to his, where he's clutching the Icon, stabbing at it randomly with a stiff finger.
"I don't know!" Vala tries to take it out of his hand, but he's not letting it go, and just squeezes it tighter. "I didn't know you could turn it on!"
She gets her small nimble fingers inside his, so they're both clinging to it, squeezing and pressing at the enamel panels--and the volume drops.
"Wha?" Daniel mutters. He moves a finger tentatively, brushing against one of hers, and the sound drops a little lower. He lifts it off the surface of the artifact and the volume goes up again. "Don't let go."
"No, really?" she murmurs, and giggles a little under her breath.
Bending his head close to her ear, he says softly, "It likes it when we're both touching it, and each other. I think it must have sensors--"
"Well, we can do that," she replies into his chin.
They stand there in relieved silence for no more than a minute, hands entwined, and then Daniel swears miserably into her hair. The noise level is beginning to climb again.
Vala huffs in frustration. "More touching?"
In answer, he detaches one hand from the artifact and pats his way up her arm until it comes to rest on the bare skin of her neck--and the tone dips again, falling almost to silence. "More touching," he confirms. Bare skin only, no less. Whatever they do, it only lasts for a little while before the artifact becomes impatient and demands action. If he could only figure out how to turn it off entirely--but that isn't going to happen in the darkness, with the Brotherhood waiting about overhead. They can't even take the risk of zatting it--zats are quieter than firearms, but far from silent.
It becomes a dance of sorts: cautious movements, a finger drawn carefully along the other's skin, a chin brushed across the other's cheek, followed by a long pause until the buzz starts climbing again. Just moving isn't enough, though--the artifact is too smart for that. It wants more. New skin, more movement. Daniel begins to suspect there's an AI at work; again, not something they can actually deal with, under the circumstances. They don't even have a light.
The footsteps continue above their heads, accompanied by the occasional shout of alarm. Daniel guesses the Brotherhood is running afoul of the city-builders' booby-traps, not that it's helping at the moment. He's trying to think about that, trying to keep focused on the danger, because it's getting hard to remember that they're at risk for their lives. Vala has her lips pressed to his neck, one hand pushed up under his shirt, her other hand tangled with his on the artifact. His cheek is brushing her ear, his hand cautiously stroking along her neck.
They're running out of skin.
"Bzzzzt," says the artifact demandingly.
Vala drops the hand she has on his back. The buzz gets louder.
"Vala!" What are you doing? he begins to ask, but the quiet click of snaps opening stops him.
"Why Daniel--you're not shy, are you?" The words are expected, but there's a tremor underneath them, one that hasn't gone away since they've been trapped in here. She moves against him, her shoulders shifting as she struggles, he assumes, out of her jacket. "Help me," she demands. "Do it fast so we don't have to do it again--"
Oh, right. Every time they have to let go of one another to take something off is another chance for the artifact to get louder.
Getting Daniel out of his tac vest and t-shirt isn't too difficult, but Vala's corset has too many straps, and they're at one point reduced to pulling it over her head fast, like a Band-Aid coming off. Finally they're gasping, hands locked together once more about the artifact, and naked from the waist up.
The buzzing had begun to approach dangerous levels, but as Daniel puts a finger cautiously on Vala's collarbone and slides it sideways, the artifact settles down, humming in what he imagines as satisfaction. "We're not getting out of this, are we?" he says in the softest tone he can manage. The air in the pit has suddenly warmed, or they've used up all the oxygen, he's not sure.
"Well, we could try," she whispers, and bites his shoulder lightly, making him jump and the artifact positively purr. "But it's much more fun this way, don't you think?"
She's not wrong; so he groans, and pulls her head to his. Her lips, which have smirked and pouted and driven him mad with frustration for weeks, are warm, a little chapped, and just as lush as he imagined. Not that he's been imagining them. Much. He lets his fingers smooth along the soft skin of her shoulder, and slide down her back to her waist. He's not eager for too much, yet. "Slow," he reminds her, not yet touching her anywhere else.
She sighs. "Oh, if you insist," but stiffens when a loud thump and a cry of rage echo down from the surface. "Might be a while..."
They draw it out as long as they can, and Daniel isn't sure how much of that is intentional anticipation, and how much is awareness that at some point there won't be any more they can do to keep the artifact silent--and the Brotherhood are still there. They have only been trapped here for about forty minutes. SGC search operations he's been involved in can last for days. He doesn't mention this.
He's pretty sure the oxygen is actually getting thin, because every moment begins to attenuate, the buzzing of the artifact and the hammering of his pulse making his head swim. The only thing that matters is the way the skin under her ear tastes on his tongue; the way her nipples stiffen when he brushes his palm across them slowly; her rasping breath in his ear. Each touch is gingerly contained, sustained as long as they can withstand it, traded one for the next. She balances delicately, her left hand locked in his right around the artifact, and licks a stripe down his chest to his navel; he returns the favor with a series of kisses along her jawline and down her neck to her collarbone, which he sucks on until she emits a low moan.
The artifact is less patient than he is, though, and the sense of urgency begins to return. They have stopped talking, communicating in gasped breaths and touches instead. When he reaches down with an unsteady hand to unsnap her BDU trousers, she nods enthusiastically, and uses her free hand to help him, kicking the pants down around her ankles. She's still yanking at them, trying to pull one of her boots up through the leg, while he opens his own trousers.
"Um," he mutters in frustration, and pauses, while the artifact buzzes in his hand. With only one free hand each, standing up seems like a bad idea, even if his back could take it--which, after sleeping on the ground for five days, it probably can't. Vala grunts in triumph and rises, apparently de-pantsed.
She somehow senses his uncertainty and leans forward to plant a smacking kiss on his chest, then swings him around so he's standing where she was. When he doesn't do anything, she sighs--he can absolutely see the eyebrow arch in annoyance--and pushes him gently backward. His calves hit something, and he realizes there's a ledge there, part of the crumbled side wall with a level surface at about knee level.
Perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, but for this? More than adequate.
Daniel pushes at his trousers and his shorts; it's a delicate production with only one hand. Vala snickers softly, but uses her free hand to help--when she touches his cock he sucks in a startled breath and the artifact falls almost completely silent. They pause, startled: maybe it's done?
But it's not; only a few seconds later it starts up again. So he settles down on the stone, which is sharp-edged and cold under his ass. His left hand, fumbling around for something to lean against, comes down on something that clatters suddenly as it falls off the ledge onto the floor below. Doesn't matter what it is--he brushes impatiently at the rest of the debris, ignoring the suspicion that it's not random vegetative debris, and certainly not stones.
Vala climbs into his lap, panting hot into his face, and he's suddenly thrown back to that first meeting on the Prometheus, when she beat him up and kissed him and he wanted nothing better than to stuff her out the nearest airlock. He kisses her again and then hesitates as she hooks one arm around his neck. "Ah, do we need--"
"No, I spoke to your lovely physician some time ago," she whispers into his lips, and eases down onto him, wet and ready. "Your people have remarkable foresight." Then she locks her legs around him and begins to rock. Slowly.
"You're trying to kill me, aren't you," he mutters; but she just snorts, and nibbles on his throat. He brings their interlocked hands, nearly numb with the tension of keeping the artifact silent, to his mouth and bites gently at her wrist. She pulses once around him in response, and he groans.
She rocks, and he thrusts shallowly, his braced feet cold on the stone floor. Matching her, falling into rhythm and then out again, trying to make it last. It's been a long time for him--not that he'll admit it to her--and he suspects he's not going to last nearly as long as he needs to. He tries to stall, tries to think of something that will hold off the climax that he feels building, but his brain is fuzzy and fractured, and she feels--god, she feels good. Soft and wet and hard and firm, clenching and releasing around him, hot breathes puffing against his neck, his chest, his face. Even the thought of fiery death isn't going to keep him from exploding into her.
Speaking of which: he lifts his head to listen.
"Are you ignoring me?" demands Vala in a quietly outraged voice.
Daniel puts a hand over her mouth: she licks his palm and he shudders, but stays focused, concentrating. He's right--the voices on the surface have all died away, the footsteps are silent. Either the Brotherhood are preparing an elaborate trap, or they've actually left.
Vala has stilled as well, and she presses her breasts against his chest, leaning forward to peer upwards into the darkness. "They're gone?"
"I think so," he says cautiously.
"Good," she replies. "Then I can do this--" And she rears up and then grinds down onto him, simultaneously clenching her muscles in a wave.
It's exactly the sort of thing she would do, after all, but he'd forgotten who he was dealing with. He comes with a choked cry, hips bucking uncontrollably; only when he reaches down and is swatted away for his trouble does he realize she'd climaxed as well. He missed it, and he wonders with a disturbing amount of disappointment whether he'll ever get to witness it in the light.
She sighs and sags forward onto him, kissing him lazily, with just enough tongue to remind him who's in charge. Her breasts are soft against his chest, still tempting despite his exhaustion. But she's a thief and a liar, and they wouldn't be trapped here if she hadn't stolen the Icon.
He kisses her back anyway, and then drops his head against the wall behind them. He figures they've got about two minutes before the damned artifact goes off again. At least with the Brotherhood gone it won't kill them.
Which is precisely the moment when the radio crackles. "SG-One-Niner to Doctor Jackson, come in."
*
"How long did they say they'd be?" Vala asks again, three minutes after the last time she asked.
It's dark enough for Daniel to roll his eyes without getting caught, but he can't argue with her impatience. The last time he was this filthy was probably after the mission to Netu, and while this trip is an improvement over that one--he didn't get any sex on Netu, for one thing, and this time none of his team was tortured--he's beginning to fantasize about the sauna in the Marines' locker room on Level 25. SG-1 has its own locker room, but Jack always bitched about the fact that they didn't have their own sauna.
"You heard Mitchell," says Daniel, shifting uncomfortably on the uneven ground. "They have a lot of teams to bring back in, and he wasn't sure when they'd get to us." They are squatting in the brush at the top of the ridge above the Stargate, having spent the previous eighteen hours moving with uttermost care in a loop back to their starting point. While Daniel is almost certain the Icon was only activated by exposure to some buried Ancient device in the ruins--he has a theory about early human settlers driving out a native race who had been in contact with the Ancients--Vala is taking no chances, and the Icon is carefully wrapped in several layers at the bottom of Daniel's pack. Vala also insisted Daniel sacrifice his BDU jacket for the cause, and the temperature has dropped noticeably since the afternoon. He therefore doesn't move away when she presses closer to his side, welcoming her warmth. "I'm pretty sure it should be soon."
But when a hand slides under his t-shirt, he twitches. "Vala..."
"What? No one is going to see us up here!" Her hand stills, though, and she pulls it out, hooking her thumb through his belt-loop instead.
He fumbles for something to say, maybe even the truth. If he can figure out what that is. "We, I, well--I just. I don't think--"
"You wish we hadn't had sex!" The outrage is mostly feigned, but after five days of round-the-clock companionship, Daniel can hear the tiny thread of hurt in her voice.
"No. No, I don't," he says, feeling his way along. "I just--it's. We're on the same team, at least sort of. And the Air Force--" He stops. Playing the fraternization card is a cheat, and she deserves better than that. He's lost count of how many times they saved each other's lives in the last week.
He frees a hand and wraps it around her waist, pulling her close, tilting his head so her hair tickles his lips. "You're a liar and a thief," he says into that dark cloud. "And I don't like you all that much."
Her breath puffs against his neck as she turns her head; her hand flattens against his hip and strokes back and forth. Daniel keeps his eyes open, watching through the brambles for the blue flash of an establishing wormhole, or the torches of the Brotherhood. "That's it?" Vala asks when he doesn't anything else. "That's your reason for not having sex again?"
"Well..."
"That's stupid! We had fun, didn't we?"
"I shouldn't even be here," he finally whispers. "I should be on Atlantis, and if it weren't for you--and me--" he adds ruefully, "there wouldn't be an Ori threat, and those people on P8X-412 wouldn't have lost their freedom, and none of this would have happened."
There's a baffled silence. Daniel has to admit it doesn't make a lot of sense. But he just can't. He doesn't regret having sex with Vala in the ruins--it was good, and it did save their lives. But it wasn't something he would have chosen to do. Not yet, anyway, to be honest. The choice was taken away from him, the way so many other choices have been taken away from him, since he first walked through the Stargate.
This he has a choice about.
He presses a kiss to Vala's temple, and reaches around to detach her from his hip. She snorts with disgust, but drops her hand. She does not, however, move away; her warm body presses against his, her hands picking at the material of her jacket. Daniel feels her body relax, and his shoulders drop in turn.
"You Tau'ri really are stupid, aren't you?"
"Well, you have to admit, the two of us together aren't exactly doing wonderful things for the galaxy at large. Or the universe, even."
"I suppose." He can positively hear her pouting, but there's no time to argue it now, because a mile down the valley he sees the vivid bloom of a wormhole forming.
As he pulls her to her feet and turns on his radio, he stops before slinging his pack onto his back. "Vala, I--"
"Daniel, I understand." There's a flash as she faces him, the dim light reflecting off her broad smile. "I promise not to tease you." He nods his thanks and toggles the broadcast switch of the radio. "Much."
END
I know a girl mess with your mind
She'll come to you in the summer sometime
She'll talk about things you don't understand
You better keep to the matters at hand
Before the whole damn thing unwinds.
--John Hiatt, "Georgia Rae"