SG1: Undertow (3/10): Sam/Baal [PG-15]
Fandom: Stargate SG1
Pairing: Sam Carter/Baal
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,806
Written for: 10_fics
Table: #4
Prompt: #3, Touch
Summary: AU post-The Quest. Sam's late-night experiment session is interupted by Baal, who still wants her to help him defeat the Ori. Making a deal that means saving Daniel first, Sam finds herself onboard Baal's Al'kesh and in danger of breaking every rule in the book.
A barmy breeze ruffles Sam’s hair. She blinks strands out of her eyes and smiles at Daniel. Behind him, the event horizon ripples fitfully. Since his GDO is compromised, she hands over hers and wonders if the SGC have realised that she’s missing yet.
“You have to persuade Landry that I know what I’m doing,” she tells him. “Tell him it’s just like the Replicators or something.”
Daniel sighs. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“As much as I ever do,” she replies with a shrug. “I do think he’s telling the truth this time.”
“I hope for your sake that he is, otherwise things are going to get unpleasant.”
“He won’t hurt me.” She hopes she sounds more confident about that than she feels. “He could have done, Daniel. He could have killed me but he didn’t.”
“Because he needs you right now.” Daniel shakes his head. “But even if his motives are less self-centred, he’s still not considering what else you risk.”
Sam laughs. “Of course he isn’t! Baal couldn’t possibly think about someone other than himself, especially not a female Tau’ri. I know though and I think it’s worth it.”
Daniel glances over his shoulder at the Stargate, then looks at her. She knows what he’s going to say before he starts and examines the ground at her feet.
“You could just come back with me,” he says.
“Yeah, I could. But that would piss him off and potentially put the Earth in more danger. Besides that…” She waves a hand. “Look, I know having him as an ally is asking a bit much, but if I could persuade him to be neutral then there’d be one less threat.”
“Baal would only go for that if there was something in it for him,” Daniel says and she nods, accepting that point.
“Then we’ll have to figure out what we can offer him. I’d imagine he still has holdings in the companies he ran for the Trust.”
“The IOA would never go for that.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Not even if that meant we’d be safe from attack? I think they might be more accommodating than you think.”
A frown creases his forehead. “I’m worried about how much you’re thinking this through, Sam,” he confesses. “It sounds almost like you’re buying into his spin.”
“Hardly,” she scoffs. “This is Baal we’re talking about - I don’t really trust him further than I can throw him.” She remembers punching him and grins before sobering again. “But I know he’s poised to take out the Ori. If we do that and then manage to negotiate some kind of treaty, then we’ll have dealt with every current threat. You have to admit that’s something to aspire to, Daniel.”
“Except that we could never really trust Baal.” He adjusts his glasses and gives her a pointed look. “Not while that snake is in his head, anyway.”
Sam shivers. Half the time she forgets what Baal really is and the reminder is always a sharp shock. Folding her arms, she stares at the Gate.
“One thing at a time,” she says quietly. “You’d better go.”
Daniel nods and catches her in a tight embrace.
“Be careful.” His tone is very earnest. “And tell him that if he does hurt you, we’ll hunt him down and carve his symbiote out with a blunt knife.”
“Nice,” she says with a wince, than chuckles. “I’ll let him know.”
They hug for a moment longer, then Daniel steps away. Sam watches him walk to the Gate. He pauses just short and turns to wave at her. She lifts a hand in response. The event horizon swallows him, ripples and then the Gate disengages.
Sam stands near the DHD, chilled and aching. She scrubs away the smarting of her eyes and gulps down the lump in her throat. Baal is waiting, but she won’t be rushed in coming to terms with her decision. It won’t be long before Landry knows the truth and, while he’ll undoubtedly keep it from the IOA for the moment, there will be questions raised. She hopes that Daniel’s rescue and return will count for something.
Pacing, she wonders if she has done the… well not right, because she knows that on paper it isn’t, but she hopes that others will understand why, that the ends will justify the means. And she really hopes that Baal is telling the truth this time, determining to kill him if she discovers otherwise.
It occurs to her after a while that she’s long overdue. Yet there’s no sign of Jaffa sent after her or even him. Should she take that as a positive sign? Is he willing to trust her that much? Sam stares up at the flawless blue sky. The Al’kesh is in orbit - or at least she assumes it is - so she’s hardly out of immediate reach. Unless he’s just gone and abandoned her here, which she wouldn’t put past him either. She pushes her shirt sleeve up and activates the call back device strapped to her wrist. The grassy plain disappears in a white flash.
She reconstructs in Baal’s private quarters. It takes her a second to get her bearings: instantaneous travel is something she’ll probably never get used to, but at least the room stays still. A small motion out of the corner of her eyes makes her turn.
Baal is sat cross-legged on his bed, apparently engrossed in the schematics that litter around him. His coat has been thrown over the bedframe and he’s just wearing the black trousers and sleeveless top, looking for all the world like a rogue SG member. She thinks that’s probably the point.
There’s a silver chain around his neck, tucked into his top. She sort of knows even before she plonks beside him and hooks it out with her little finger, so the dogtag doesn’t really surprise her. His brown eyes glitter with amusement. She rolls her and picks up a diagram.
“Whatchya doing?” she sing-songs in what she hopes is a very irritating way.
“Plotting to take over the world,” he replies dryly.
“Which one?”
He chuckles and takes the diagram from her, replacing it with another which she recognises as a scaled-down version of the Ancient weapon on Dakara. The level of intricacy startles her.
“Wow.”
“Wow?” he echoes. “I recreate that machine from projected memory and all you can say is ‘wow’?”
She gazes at the diagram. He hasn’t missed a thing and she’s suddenly very aware of just how intelligent he really is. Something else occurs and she jolts off the bed.
“You are the real Baal.”
He smiles slightly. “Or I implanted that particular memory in all my clones.”
She knows that’s not true. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you’d trust them with this level of detail. And you created them to find the Sangreal, didn’t you?”
“Amongst other things, yes.” He nods thoughtfully. “You’re right, about the clones. What difference does it make, though?”
Difference? Can he really sit there and ask her that?
“You tortured Jack,” she blurts, then wishes she hadn’t as his expression darkens.
“I did.” His voice is soft, his tone matter-of-fact. He folds his hands in his lap. “I’ve done a lot of things, Sam. Do you want to go through them all now? I’m not exactly sure what you’d want to do after that, but if it makes you feel better…”
Her mouth is hanging open. She shuts it and stalks away. Though he’s right and there is nothing to be achieved from raking over what’s passed between them, she’s not ready to just let it go. She doesn’t know what to do.
“Sam,” Baal says, firmer this time. “As much as I would like to indulge you in this, we don’t have the time. We’re back on the trail of the Ori mothership. You can throw things at me after we’ve dealt with that, if you still feel the need.”
She glares at him. He arches his eyebrows.
“I hate you,” she says, needing to get that on record. But she sits on the edge of the bed and takes the schematic he holds out for her.
“Would it help if I said the feeling was mutual?”
“No.” She tries to focus on the paper, but all she can see are lines and little sense. “It doesn’t.”
Baal sighs. Another diagram is waved under her nose. “Here, my Al’kesh could never power something the size of the Dakarian device, plus the Ori are… what do you even call them, DeAscended? Whatever. But they’re humanish, I suppose, meaning that recalibrating the device to wipe them out could affect considerably more than just their ships.”
Sam looks at diagram again. What he hasn’t said is as telling as what he has, and now the lines makes sense in terms of adjusting the device, but still… “It’s still not going to work,” she points out. “Or rather would work too well. We’d still end up killing innocent people.”
“Yes, I realised that almost immediately.”
“Then why bother redesigning it?”
“It gave me something to do.”
She blinks and looks up. He’s sat beside her and when had he moved so close? Her eyes meet his and everything just stops, frozen by those incredible brown eyes. There’s such depth, such… humanity in them that her breath catches and she can’t remember why she was mad at him. He smiles, properly, and the corners of his eyes crinkle, the depths warm and far too inviting. She coughs and tears her gaze away.
“So when you get bored you redesign Ancient devices?”
Her voice sounds odd to her own ears - strained and rather croaky. God knows what he thinks, if he even realises that… Oh crap, she’s not. She is not attracted to him. He’s Baal. He’s the Goa’uld that tortured Jack, who has put her life in danger time and again. She needs to remember that.
“When I’m not tweaking human technology,” he admits, then gives a rueful laugh. “There’s not much to do once one has given up trying to rule the galaxy. So much time on my hands.”
“Oh, how utterly dreadful for you.”
“It is very tedious.” His fingers brush her hand as he reclaims the schematics for the altered device. She clamps down on the shiver that threatens at that ghosting touch. “So that’s not really what I have in mind,” he adds. “Unless I do decide to wipe the galaxy and start over.”
“You wouldn’t!” she gasps and he grins wickedly, making her realise she’s just been had. “Baal!”
He chuckles and his smile tempers to a less predatory one. “No, probably not. I don’t have any desire to be a true God. It sounds too much like work.”
“You’re a terrible person, you know that right?”
“Of course,” he says airily. “I know everything.”
Sam has to laugh; he’s so incorrigible, so purely egocentric, that she’s amused despite herself. She shakes her head.
“Do you know how we’re going to take out the Ori without destroying half the galaxy?” she asks pointedly.
“You do.” He hands her yet another sheet. This one she recognises immediately and looks up at him. “I have a very good memory,” he explains. “Though it needed adapting so that the Al’kesh can power it.”
She traces the lines, frowns. “This isn’t right,” she notes. “I designed it to run off a combination of human and Ancient power cells. If you run it like this, from the Al’kesh, you’ll burn out the capacitors.” She leans across his legs to pluck out the schematics for the existing weapon. “Here, we need to merge the two, take that capacitor and put it in there. You’re probably going to have to reprogram the protocols as well.”
Sam stops when she realises that Baal has said nothing for several minutes. Looking up, she finds him watching her with a small smile on his face.
“What?” she says defensively. “I gather this is why I’m here.”
“Yes, but I’d forgotten how animated you get when you’re figuring something out.” He reaches out and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You know, I’m jealous of my clone, that he got to spend time with you in the flesh, rather than via a hologram.”
Her cheeks heat and she shifts away from his hand. He drops it to the bed, his expression not changing in the slightest.
“You shouldn’t,” she says. “I hit him.”
Baal barks a laugh that makes her jump a mile: she’s never heard him actually laugh, it’s always been that derisive little chuckle. She stares at him. He just grins.
“Did you really? And why was that?”
“He insulted my intelligence and was generally obnoxious.”
She glances down at her knuckles. Baal captures her hand and examines it, amusement flickering over his mouth and around his eyes.
“How dare he,” he murmurs and lifts her knuckles to his mouth.
His lips are soft, the kiss light. His eyes never leave hers. Sam watches him, feels the warmth of his breath feather over her skin. Her throat is thick, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She wants to pull away but her arm isn’t responding to the frantic signals from her brain.
Baal straightens and releases her hand. His touch lingers on her skin, in her veins, burning like fire and obliterating all thought. She stares into his eyes, transfixed. She manages to swallow and clears her throat. Opens her mouth to tell him to back the fuck off.
Instead, what she says is, “Baal.”
A dark flare lights his eyes, but it’s not the stir of the symbiote, rather the flicker of a male human reaction and God but it stirs something inside her. I can’t, she thinks desperately. I can’t possibly find him attractive, can’t possibly want him.
“Samantha,” he says. It’s soft, gentle. Warm. There is no way he should be allowed to say her name like that, but he does and it makes her tremble.
She closes her eyes, twists her head away for good measure. “Don’t,” she begs. She doesn’t want this. She wants it more than anything else. Tears slip down her cheeks. “I…”
The denial won’t come. It’s screamed in her head, an endless chant of nonononono, but there’s a cold emptiness inside that is gravitating towards his warmth, despite everything. He still hasn’t moved, hasn’t claimed his advantage. She wonders why and looks at him again.
His jaw is clenched, the tightness silent testimony to the amount of control he’s imposing on himself. His eyes are almost black with lust, yet he tilts his head at her teary stare, one eyebrow quirking. And though he doesn’t say anything, she can hear the question anyway.
Knowing that he will ask is what undoes her. “Yes,” she whispers, damning herself.
The mattress shifts under Baal’s weight. She watches him gather up the schematics, his movements steady and unrushed. He clears the bed and she gulps at the implication. Yet he doesn’t grab her like she expects him to, doesn’t just shove her down to take what he wants. Instead he walks around the bed to where she’s sat and holds out a hand.
“Please,” he says and she can’t refuse an actual request. She lets him draw her to her feet. He murmurs her name and caresses her arms. There’s a tremble and it takes her a moment to realise that it’s not her and that his hands are shaking: only slightly, but enough. She lifts curious eyes to his face.
“Baal?”
“You are remarkably unintelligent,” he says, but the fondness of his tone takes some of the sting from his words. “I may have done many things, but bedding every female Tau’ri I come across is not one of them. I am more… particular.”
“So I’m… special?” she asks, genuinely curious. She’s always known there was some attraction from his side of things, but had put it down to wanting something he shouldn’t have. Much as it was with her. Being singled out hadn’t occurred to her. “Somehow worthy of your divine attention?”
“Don’t trifle with me, Sam,” Baal warns. “I’d rather not have to prove how foolish that would be.”
She glares at him, furious that she finds him so attractive. “That’s quite a line you have, Baal. I’m surprised more females don’t fall for it.”
His eyes narrow and her heart doubles its pace: she is on dangerous ground, but he either wants her in his bed or dead. He can’t have… Oh, wait, yes he can. She bites her bottom lip. Crap.
“You,” he says and pulls her closer. His body is hard and unforgiving. “Talk too much.”
And silences anything else she would say by covering her mouth with his.
Pairing: Sam Carter/Baal
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,806
Written for: 10_fics
Table: #4
Prompt: #3, Touch
Summary: AU post-The Quest. Sam's late-night experiment session is interupted by Baal, who still wants her to help him defeat the Ori. Making a deal that means saving Daniel first, Sam finds herself onboard Baal's Al'kesh and in danger of breaking every rule in the book.
A barmy breeze ruffles Sam’s hair. She blinks strands out of her eyes and smiles at Daniel. Behind him, the event horizon ripples fitfully. Since his GDO is compromised, she hands over hers and wonders if the SGC have realised that she’s missing yet.
“You have to persuade Landry that I know what I’m doing,” she tells him. “Tell him it’s just like the Replicators or something.”
Daniel sighs. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“As much as I ever do,” she replies with a shrug. “I do think he’s telling the truth this time.”
“I hope for your sake that he is, otherwise things are going to get unpleasant.”
“He won’t hurt me.” She hopes she sounds more confident about that than she feels. “He could have done, Daniel. He could have killed me but he didn’t.”
“Because he needs you right now.” Daniel shakes his head. “But even if his motives are less self-centred, he’s still not considering what else you risk.”
Sam laughs. “Of course he isn’t! Baal couldn’t possibly think about someone other than himself, especially not a female Tau’ri. I know though and I think it’s worth it.”
Daniel glances over his shoulder at the Stargate, then looks at her. She knows what he’s going to say before he starts and examines the ground at her feet.
“You could just come back with me,” he says.
“Yeah, I could. But that would piss him off and potentially put the Earth in more danger. Besides that…” She waves a hand. “Look, I know having him as an ally is asking a bit much, but if I could persuade him to be neutral then there’d be one less threat.”
“Baal would only go for that if there was something in it for him,” Daniel says and she nods, accepting that point.
“Then we’ll have to figure out what we can offer him. I’d imagine he still has holdings in the companies he ran for the Trust.”
“The IOA would never go for that.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Not even if that meant we’d be safe from attack? I think they might be more accommodating than you think.”
A frown creases his forehead. “I’m worried about how much you’re thinking this through, Sam,” he confesses. “It sounds almost like you’re buying into his spin.”
“Hardly,” she scoffs. “This is Baal we’re talking about - I don’t really trust him further than I can throw him.” She remembers punching him and grins before sobering again. “But I know he’s poised to take out the Ori. If we do that and then manage to negotiate some kind of treaty, then we’ll have dealt with every current threat. You have to admit that’s something to aspire to, Daniel.”
“Except that we could never really trust Baal.” He adjusts his glasses and gives her a pointed look. “Not while that snake is in his head, anyway.”
Sam shivers. Half the time she forgets what Baal really is and the reminder is always a sharp shock. Folding her arms, she stares at the Gate.
“One thing at a time,” she says quietly. “You’d better go.”
Daniel nods and catches her in a tight embrace.
“Be careful.” His tone is very earnest. “And tell him that if he does hurt you, we’ll hunt him down and carve his symbiote out with a blunt knife.”
“Nice,” she says with a wince, than chuckles. “I’ll let him know.”
They hug for a moment longer, then Daniel steps away. Sam watches him walk to the Gate. He pauses just short and turns to wave at her. She lifts a hand in response. The event horizon swallows him, ripples and then the Gate disengages.
Sam stands near the DHD, chilled and aching. She scrubs away the smarting of her eyes and gulps down the lump in her throat. Baal is waiting, but she won’t be rushed in coming to terms with her decision. It won’t be long before Landry knows the truth and, while he’ll undoubtedly keep it from the IOA for the moment, there will be questions raised. She hopes that Daniel’s rescue and return will count for something.
Pacing, she wonders if she has done the… well not right, because she knows that on paper it isn’t, but she hopes that others will understand why, that the ends will justify the means. And she really hopes that Baal is telling the truth this time, determining to kill him if she discovers otherwise.
It occurs to her after a while that she’s long overdue. Yet there’s no sign of Jaffa sent after her or even him. Should she take that as a positive sign? Is he willing to trust her that much? Sam stares up at the flawless blue sky. The Al’kesh is in orbit - or at least she assumes it is - so she’s hardly out of immediate reach. Unless he’s just gone and abandoned her here, which she wouldn’t put past him either. She pushes her shirt sleeve up and activates the call back device strapped to her wrist. The grassy plain disappears in a white flash.
She reconstructs in Baal’s private quarters. It takes her a second to get her bearings: instantaneous travel is something she’ll probably never get used to, but at least the room stays still. A small motion out of the corner of her eyes makes her turn.
Baal is sat cross-legged on his bed, apparently engrossed in the schematics that litter around him. His coat has been thrown over the bedframe and he’s just wearing the black trousers and sleeveless top, looking for all the world like a rogue SG member. She thinks that’s probably the point.
There’s a silver chain around his neck, tucked into his top. She sort of knows even before she plonks beside him and hooks it out with her little finger, so the dogtag doesn’t really surprise her. His brown eyes glitter with amusement. She rolls her and picks up a diagram.
“Whatchya doing?” she sing-songs in what she hopes is a very irritating way.
“Plotting to take over the world,” he replies dryly.
“Which one?”
He chuckles and takes the diagram from her, replacing it with another which she recognises as a scaled-down version of the Ancient weapon on Dakara. The level of intricacy startles her.
“Wow.”
“Wow?” he echoes. “I recreate that machine from projected memory and all you can say is ‘wow’?”
She gazes at the diagram. He hasn’t missed a thing and she’s suddenly very aware of just how intelligent he really is. Something else occurs and she jolts off the bed.
“You are the real Baal.”
He smiles slightly. “Or I implanted that particular memory in all my clones.”
She knows that’s not true. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you’d trust them with this level of detail. And you created them to find the Sangreal, didn’t you?”
“Amongst other things, yes.” He nods thoughtfully. “You’re right, about the clones. What difference does it make, though?”
Difference? Can he really sit there and ask her that?
“You tortured Jack,” she blurts, then wishes she hadn’t as his expression darkens.
“I did.” His voice is soft, his tone matter-of-fact. He folds his hands in his lap. “I’ve done a lot of things, Sam. Do you want to go through them all now? I’m not exactly sure what you’d want to do after that, but if it makes you feel better…”
Her mouth is hanging open. She shuts it and stalks away. Though he’s right and there is nothing to be achieved from raking over what’s passed between them, she’s not ready to just let it go. She doesn’t know what to do.
“Sam,” Baal says, firmer this time. “As much as I would like to indulge you in this, we don’t have the time. We’re back on the trail of the Ori mothership. You can throw things at me after we’ve dealt with that, if you still feel the need.”
She glares at him. He arches his eyebrows.
“I hate you,” she says, needing to get that on record. But she sits on the edge of the bed and takes the schematic he holds out for her.
“Would it help if I said the feeling was mutual?”
“No.” She tries to focus on the paper, but all she can see are lines and little sense. “It doesn’t.”
Baal sighs. Another diagram is waved under her nose. “Here, my Al’kesh could never power something the size of the Dakarian device, plus the Ori are… what do you even call them, DeAscended? Whatever. But they’re humanish, I suppose, meaning that recalibrating the device to wipe them out could affect considerably more than just their ships.”
Sam looks at diagram again. What he hasn’t said is as telling as what he has, and now the lines makes sense in terms of adjusting the device, but still… “It’s still not going to work,” she points out. “Or rather would work too well. We’d still end up killing innocent people.”
“Yes, I realised that almost immediately.”
“Then why bother redesigning it?”
“It gave me something to do.”
She blinks and looks up. He’s sat beside her and when had he moved so close? Her eyes meet his and everything just stops, frozen by those incredible brown eyes. There’s such depth, such… humanity in them that her breath catches and she can’t remember why she was mad at him. He smiles, properly, and the corners of his eyes crinkle, the depths warm and far too inviting. She coughs and tears her gaze away.
“So when you get bored you redesign Ancient devices?”
Her voice sounds odd to her own ears - strained and rather croaky. God knows what he thinks, if he even realises that… Oh crap, she’s not. She is not attracted to him. He’s Baal. He’s the Goa’uld that tortured Jack, who has put her life in danger time and again. She needs to remember that.
“When I’m not tweaking human technology,” he admits, then gives a rueful laugh. “There’s not much to do once one has given up trying to rule the galaxy. So much time on my hands.”
“Oh, how utterly dreadful for you.”
“It is very tedious.” His fingers brush her hand as he reclaims the schematics for the altered device. She clamps down on the shiver that threatens at that ghosting touch. “So that’s not really what I have in mind,” he adds. “Unless I do decide to wipe the galaxy and start over.”
“You wouldn’t!” she gasps and he grins wickedly, making her realise she’s just been had. “Baal!”
He chuckles and his smile tempers to a less predatory one. “No, probably not. I don’t have any desire to be a true God. It sounds too much like work.”
“You’re a terrible person, you know that right?”
“Of course,” he says airily. “I know everything.”
Sam has to laugh; he’s so incorrigible, so purely egocentric, that she’s amused despite herself. She shakes her head.
“Do you know how we’re going to take out the Ori without destroying half the galaxy?” she asks pointedly.
“You do.” He hands her yet another sheet. This one she recognises immediately and looks up at him. “I have a very good memory,” he explains. “Though it needed adapting so that the Al’kesh can power it.”
She traces the lines, frowns. “This isn’t right,” she notes. “I designed it to run off a combination of human and Ancient power cells. If you run it like this, from the Al’kesh, you’ll burn out the capacitors.” She leans across his legs to pluck out the schematics for the existing weapon. “Here, we need to merge the two, take that capacitor and put it in there. You’re probably going to have to reprogram the protocols as well.”
Sam stops when she realises that Baal has said nothing for several minutes. Looking up, she finds him watching her with a small smile on his face.
“What?” she says defensively. “I gather this is why I’m here.”
“Yes, but I’d forgotten how animated you get when you’re figuring something out.” He reaches out and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You know, I’m jealous of my clone, that he got to spend time with you in the flesh, rather than via a hologram.”
Her cheeks heat and she shifts away from his hand. He drops it to the bed, his expression not changing in the slightest.
“You shouldn’t,” she says. “I hit him.”
Baal barks a laugh that makes her jump a mile: she’s never heard him actually laugh, it’s always been that derisive little chuckle. She stares at him. He just grins.
“Did you really? And why was that?”
“He insulted my intelligence and was generally obnoxious.”
She glances down at her knuckles. Baal captures her hand and examines it, amusement flickering over his mouth and around his eyes.
“How dare he,” he murmurs and lifts her knuckles to his mouth.
His lips are soft, the kiss light. His eyes never leave hers. Sam watches him, feels the warmth of his breath feather over her skin. Her throat is thick, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She wants to pull away but her arm isn’t responding to the frantic signals from her brain.
Baal straightens and releases her hand. His touch lingers on her skin, in her veins, burning like fire and obliterating all thought. She stares into his eyes, transfixed. She manages to swallow and clears her throat. Opens her mouth to tell him to back the fuck off.
Instead, what she says is, “Baal.”
A dark flare lights his eyes, but it’s not the stir of the symbiote, rather the flicker of a male human reaction and God but it stirs something inside her. I can’t, she thinks desperately. I can’t possibly find him attractive, can’t possibly want him.
“Samantha,” he says. It’s soft, gentle. Warm. There is no way he should be allowed to say her name like that, but he does and it makes her tremble.
She closes her eyes, twists her head away for good measure. “Don’t,” she begs. She doesn’t want this. She wants it more than anything else. Tears slip down her cheeks. “I…”
The denial won’t come. It’s screamed in her head, an endless chant of nonononono, but there’s a cold emptiness inside that is gravitating towards his warmth, despite everything. He still hasn’t moved, hasn’t claimed his advantage. She wonders why and looks at him again.
His jaw is clenched, the tightness silent testimony to the amount of control he’s imposing on himself. His eyes are almost black with lust, yet he tilts his head at her teary stare, one eyebrow quirking. And though he doesn’t say anything, she can hear the question anyway.
Knowing that he will ask is what undoes her. “Yes,” she whispers, damning herself.
The mattress shifts under Baal’s weight. She watches him gather up the schematics, his movements steady and unrushed. He clears the bed and she gulps at the implication. Yet he doesn’t grab her like she expects him to, doesn’t just shove her down to take what he wants. Instead he walks around the bed to where she’s sat and holds out a hand.
“Please,” he says and she can’t refuse an actual request. She lets him draw her to her feet. He murmurs her name and caresses her arms. There’s a tremble and it takes her a moment to realise that it’s not her and that his hands are shaking: only slightly, but enough. She lifts curious eyes to his face.
“Baal?”
“You are remarkably unintelligent,” he says, but the fondness of his tone takes some of the sting from his words. “I may have done many things, but bedding every female Tau’ri I come across is not one of them. I am more… particular.”
“So I’m… special?” she asks, genuinely curious. She’s always known there was some attraction from his side of things, but had put it down to wanting something he shouldn’t have. Much as it was with her. Being singled out hadn’t occurred to her. “Somehow worthy of your divine attention?”
“Don’t trifle with me, Sam,” Baal warns. “I’d rather not have to prove how foolish that would be.”
She glares at him, furious that she finds him so attractive. “That’s quite a line you have, Baal. I’m surprised more females don’t fall for it.”
His eyes narrow and her heart doubles its pace: she is on dangerous ground, but he either wants her in his bed or dead. He can’t have… Oh, wait, yes he can. She bites her bottom lip. Crap.
“You,” he says and pulls her closer. His body is hard and unforgiving. “Talk too much.”
And silences anything else she would say by covering her mouth with his.