Disclaimer: All is of Terry Pratchett.
This is set sometime after the book. A year or two, maybe. One of my versions of how Mal and Polly might have hooked up.
She'd come in here for something. She knew she had. But what had it been? Corporal Polly Perks stumbled around in the darkness that was the officers' rec room (a storage tent with a ping pong table) in the encampment, falling over various things and feeling very vexed with the world in general. Especially her fellow corporal, Mal. But that was normal. This was about something else…tea bags? Noodles? String?
"Watch out for that bottle," a suave voice immediately behind her said. Polly shrieked and tripped over the bottle, landing in what felt in the dark like a series of well-placed boxes. Glowing eyes watched her calmly, and there was just enough moonlight through the thin tent material to discern Mal's pale skin from the shadows.
"Your grace continues to entertain me, Corporal." Mal continued. Even though she couldn't see very well in the night nor particularly wanted to, Polly just knew that Mal was smirking.
"I'm glad. It's nice to believe that I'm of some entertainment for you. It's not like we're in the army or anything." She gasped.
"Oh, yes, I forgot," Mal replied sarcastically. "We're not allowed to have any fun in the army. My fault. What are you going to do about it? I've clearly broken regulations."
Polly didn't walk into that trap. She struggled to her feet in the darkness instead, deliberately ignoring the pale hand Mal held out to help her.
Mal changed topics.
"Were you rearranging the rec room one inconveniently placed bottle at a time for a reason?"
"I came in here for something," Polly grumbled, still trying to regain some sense of dignity and direction, "Forgot what."
"Oh dear. Because of me?" Mal didn't sound concerned. It looked, from the light of her silhouette, as though she were checking her nails nonchalantly. Polly repressed the desire to slug her vampire companion.
"No, not because of you. It wasn't important anyway, I think. So…I'll just be going back to bed now."
Mal shrugged. Polly paused by the tent flap.
"You should too." She hinted. Mal didn't move for a second.
"I've forgotten something in here too," she decided finally. Polly raised an eyebrow in response, but Mal didn't explain herself. She started digging amongst the mess of half-packed items the various officers of the company had brought, throwing things over her shoulders. The moon came out from behind clouds so that identifying the things strewn about was easier for Polly. She saw that the bottle she'd tripped over had a label for something with apples in it. Well, mostly apples.
Polly was too tired not to play along.
"What did you forget then?"
"Hmm?" Mal said, suddenly standing up and facing Polly. She hadn't realized she'd been moving towards Mal the whole time until she was standing right there, looking just slightly downwards, into Mal's dark eyes.
Time stopped, and the moon shone brighter through the filthy tent. She noticed how Mal's black hair wasn't brushed for once, meaning she hadn't been awake- or cognizant, whatever it was that implied sleep for vampires- long. Her own curls were unbrushable by this point, a shoulder-length frizzled blonde mess on her head. Vampires have amazing eyes. Very attractive, Polly's more open-minded side decided.
"Are we going to have a moment?" she asked, so that the moment would be safely ruined and she could regain confidence in herself. It worked. Time started up again, and Mal looked slightly less ethereal. It disturbed her that not she'd thought of her friend like that, but that it had come so naturally. Mal shrugged again, a little less fluid.
"I'd love to, but I'm not sure if it would be alright for you."
Polly tried to ignore the implications of that.
"How not?"
"The last time I was…entangled with somebody, they died. Just like everyone before them. One of the side effects of being involved with a vampire; your lifespan is much shorter."
"Shorter than being in a backwoods army under negotiable direction?" Polly was split in two. Part of her was screaming how crazy this was, her being even near a vampire, let alone entertaining lurid thoughts about relationships with one, and the other part was telling the first part to shut up. It did, much to Polly's chagrin.
"Much more so," Mal smiled ruefully. "I'm not sure a ribbon would be able to stop me if I got…carried away."
"If nothing else, a bag of Klatch's finest to the skull usually seems to do the trick," Polly countered. Mal sighed, either as a laugh that couldn't be heard or an honest sigh.
"That'll have to do. Do you happen to have any on hand?" she asked. Polly mentally backtracked to when she'd unpacked her sack for the week.
"I think…I was forgetting the can opener." She said, surprised. Mal froze, then tilted her head slightly and frowned.
"Sorry, um. Yes. I have coffee. Lots of it. Bags."
The Black Ribboner nodded slowly.
"That settles it. We'll grab your can opener and go…fraternize."
Polly tried not to blush, but found that the warmth spreading through her made resistance impossible. She stumbled over to a box marked cutlery, plunged her bare hand in, and came out with a rustic can opener. Mal took her other arm into hers and they left the rec tent for their own shared standard-issue tent, where the rest of the night was spent in sweet fraternization and a few recruits within whispering distance spent the night staring straight upward uncomfortably with various degrees of flushed faces at what they were hearing.