Title: Once More Before I Die

Author: spacegypsy1

Rating: K+

Category: Romance/Friendship

Pairings: Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran

Characters: Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran

Spoilers/Timeline: No spoiler/No specific timeline

Word Count: 1000 Chapter Count: One shot Complete.

Synopsis: A kiss, he just wanted one kiss before the end came.

~0o0~

Imminent death is not a place I've never been before. This time, however, I have one major regret and it keeps me from leaving this life with the calm acceptance I've prepared for as a member of SG-1.

We're trapped, Vala and I. In a very uncomfortable position. My mouth hovers much too close to hers. I feel her breath brush across my lips. Darkness wraps around us like a foul blanket. It's difficult to move in the cold, damp, small space.

Not kissing her apparently is out of the question even though the end hangs over us tauntingly. I should warn her... about the kiss not the dying part. No sense in that, she's convinced we'll be rescued, or so she pretends.

We both are confident our friends are on their way – per our most recent radio contact prior to being dumped here. Problem is the water that just minutes ago was lapping at my ankles is nearly up to my knees. Time is running out.

I spoke. My voice was rough with dread of the dire situation and excited at the prospect of kissing her. Something I should have done long ago. Long, long ago. I cleared my throat. "Vala?"

"Yes, Daniel?"

She sounded bored, indifferent... but I knew she was covering up her fear.

"I'm going to kiss you." I rushed it out before I stopped myself.

"Now, Daniel?"

Again, her voice betrayed her bravado.

"Yep."

"Oh, well. I suppose it's fine, seeing as a girl has to get it while she can."

"Yep." At this point I couldn't think of anything else to say. I tilted my head to one side, and though I cannot actually see her, I knew she tilted hers the opposite direction.

I certainly wasn't going to waste this kiss by being tender or gentle. I swooped in like a vulture, landing right on my target with precision, taking her mouth with abandon. She tasted like the cherries she'd pulled from the abundant stash in her pack and gobbled down not long after we'd arrived.

Never expecting the heat and moist sweetness I nearly groaned. I found myself enthralled by her response losing all sense of time and place. I somehow managed to get my arms up, (though still locked tight to my body) and my hands one on each side of her face. She fought my tongue for dominance, but I wasn't about to let go of the upper hand...er tongue...whatever. We both moaned.

She kissed with all the brazenness and sexual aggression of the early Vala Mal Doran. I loved it! I never wanted to stop kissing her, that is until I got so aroused that breathing was nearly impossible.

With a reluctant gasp of breath I let go, pulling my ravenous mouth from hers. My head went back mere inches seeing as we were stuck in some kind of cylindrical stone contraption with barely enough room for one, let alone two.

Pitch blackness accentuated her already throaty rasp. "Why'd you stop?"

Her dreamy, deep voice didn't help my condition.

Of course Vala didn't see my eyebrows shoot upwards. "Er... the truth? That kiss turned me on and since we're..." Again I gasped, this time out of sheer reaction to sexual stimulation. "Holy buckets, Vala! Not here!" I grabbed her wrist, the one she'd wedged between our bodies, and pulled her hand away.

Her huff of indignation actually echoed. "There will, quite possibly, not be any other 'here', ever. And are you saying, Daniel, that if not here you wouldn't have objected? And be careful with the answer because when they pull our bodies out of this tube from hell, you just might be missing a key part!"

Was she angry? I could hear her teeth grinding. How is that she always manages to confuse me? "Wha...wha...What!"

"You kissed me because you felt safe in that that is all you had to accomplish? Just a kiss? That, darling, was not a kiss. That was an invitation. A promise of better, bigger, harder things to come. A blatant, sexual, hot, overwhelmingly arousing, makes my breasts ache, and my neither... never... net..."

"Nether."

"Yes! Nether regions weep with want. And if no one comes to rescue us, then I don't want to die without what you promised with that kiss. And by the way, that kiss is proof that you are madly, deeply, amazingly, profoundly in love with me!"

"Oh." I mumbled, my mouth already back in action with hers. I let her hands roam, and joined in the roaming. I attempted to get to things I'd wanted to touch for some time now.

I mean really? What difference can it make? There's no way to accomplish much of anything. And the water has risen to a point that the arousal I'd experienced has subsided in the chilled water that laps... let's just say at my hips. Mouth all twisted up with hers, fumbling around with my hands I tried to say a few last words here and there, "I'm sorry... I never... had the chance to..."

Light flooded the stone cylinder.

"Jackson? Vala?"

Ducking her head and squeezing her eyes shut against the light, Vala snapped, "Just a minute, Cameron!" Then she turned her face into the side of my jaw, asking, "Chance to what?"

I tucked my face into the crook of her neck nibbling my way upwards towards her mouth as I confessed, happily, "To say I love you. I want you. I need you. Crave you. Adore..." I couldn't speak further with my mouth full of her tongue.

~END