A/N: Just a friendly reminder that each chapter is a different timeline and don't really pertain to each other beside carrying on motifs and such.
Two Blue Lines
Chapter 1
Brambles
1.
It is bad timing. That's all it is.
It's been a bad day. They destroyed their mission. Instead of a simple artifact extraction, they ended up upsetting an entire world of unruly natives, who quickly graduated from angry fist shaking to chucking barbarous balls at them. Thorny brambles the size of golf balls that looked to be made of metal and plant material. Sap stuck them to their skin and as they ran for the stargate the friction caused the little spineys to embed in their skin like cacti. Dr. Lam spent the better part of an hour pulling them out of Muscles, who heroically took the brunt but came through the gate looking like a porcupine.
"Your temperature's a bit high." Dr. Lam retrieves the thermometer from her mouth and double checks the numbers, shaking the device not happy with the results.
"My kind tend to run a bit hot sometimes." A flat out lie of course. A better excuse would have been that they were just running for their lives from bramble hurling hooligans, but her brain hasn't been in the best working order lately.
"Really." The doctor is not impressed, but she doesn't call her bluff. Simply hands the thermometer to the nurse who disinfects it, then adds with slight irritation, "it's never happened before."
"Perhaps the mission just exacerbated my temperature." Swings her jacket on from where it lays over the back of a chair, and now the good doctor's starting to become suspicious.
She sets her clipboard on the seat of the chair and squints her eyes as if she has x-ray vision to discern the problem, she doesn't have x-ray vision, does she? "Something you'd like to tell me, Vala?"
"What?" Zips up the jacket below her breasts and her issued black top a bit crusty with bramble blood.
"Anything you'd like to discuss confidentially?"
"Not particularly." Pulls out one of her pigtails remembering far too late that there are brambles latching on and tangled in her hair. One cuts at the pad of her finger and she quickly stifles the blood in mouth.
"Want a bandage for that?" Dr. Lam calls after her as she strides towards the door hoping to get out of the white room where she awakens far too often.
"It's fine."
"Of course it is." The doctor snatches her file from the chair and makes a mark while mumbling, "why do I even bother with these guys."
She has to catch him before he ducks out for the night. He has a date with a girl he's been seeing for the last month, she thinks her name is Annie or Abby. From what he's told her she's a very nice country girl who likes horses and haystacks and she thinks there's an innuendo in that sentence, but she's searched forever and cannot find it.
Knows about him and his innuendos now because ever since their collision at, and after, the bar a few months ago it has become a regular occurrence. Not like they mark it on calendars, but they have code words, facial ticks to let each other know if they need the company. If he can sign her out for 'driving' classes which sometime end in the backseat of his jeep and sometimes end the next morning because he makes it hard for her to leave. Not that she wants to leave, just he's snuggly and warm and it's a nice change from being stuck in her cold dorm. She's almost got him to the point where he might give Cupcake Battles a watch, but he always pulls her back from sitting on the end bed and his fingers and mouth are very persuasive.
The sex, the intimate interactions have slowed down a bit with the addition of Andie or Addie in his life. He's starting to become a little serious with her and the gentleman that he is, he took the time to explain how their accommodations had changed and she understood immediately. They haven't had sex in two weeks, but their professional relationship hasn't lacked in any way and if anything, they're closer friends than they were before. They've garnered each other's trust and she's more thankful to have him as a friend then a partner.
But it was too easy, and she knew it was too easy at the time, that the other sock had to drop. So she waited and nothing happened. They went on missions and laughed as a team and played basketball. Sam wrote computer code and Daniel wrote the tragedies of ancient artifacts. Muscles hefted her up to reach into a tree to retrieve an apple and she was pelted in the back of the head with the first bramble. That really wasn't the problem. The temperature raise was the problem. The voracious hunger that required her to need the apple was the problem. The sex sometime in the last three months was the problem.
"Cameron." Beckons him from the door of his office. He has his overnight bag ready, remembers him vaguely saying something about taking Amy or Allie to a swanky hotel and the only thing she was jealous of was the idea of Cupcake Battles on a big screen tv.
"Hey Princess." Doesn't glance up from where he's double checking mission reports, making sure all the fine details are in order, probably not concerning how his pants got caught on a rather unruly thorn bush and how he almost lost them for the third time. "What's up."
"I need to talk to you."
His lips pull into one of indecision, not a smile or frown just a moot face. "I'm on my way out, can this wait until Monday?"
And normally she'd let him have his marvelous weekend and wait to burst his bubble, bad choice of words, on Monday, but this is the third time something like this has come up and she simply can't leave it any longer or he'll know when they all know. "It's very important and it will be very brief."
It's enough. He nods satisfied with her half-plea trusting her wager and holding the door open for her to scoot into his office. When she slips passed him his adept fingers tug a bramble painlessly from her mess of hair. "Got some souvenirs."
"More than you know." This isn't how she envisioned it, none of it is. Thought he'd be sitting down because he's the type that might faint. Daniel would faint.
"What do you mean?"
He shuts the door behind him and she's dives head first as she always has, yanks the bandy off clean and proper. "I'm pregnant."
The color drains from his face for a moment and his eyes blink and she knows he can't see anything because she couldn't, not after she found out from a helpful little test that turned blue and ruined her life a bit. "You're—I'm sorry did you say pregnant?"
"I did."
"It's mine for sure?" Not meant to be scandalous or serpent-tongued, just a natural question as they've both been seeing other people in the last months.
"I've been with other men, but not enough to get pregnant."
"Oh. Oh yeah. Okay." He keeps nodding and she thinks that his head might actually unhinge from his neck.
"Would you like to sit down?'
"No. No. I think I need to keep standing." His eyes stare into the corner of the room and when she traces his sightline she finds he's staring at the American flag. Is this a military thing or a Mitchell thing? His voice cracks at this next question. "Are you keeping it?"
"I—um—I hadn't thought that far ahead actually." Turns away from him even thought she knows he's not looking directly at her. "I thought you deserved the right to know first."
"I—uh—I appreciate that." Something snaps within him; his eyes unhook from the flag and seek her out. "Jeez, what am I even thinking. How are you feeling?"
"I'm alright." And with that their relationship rebalances. He starts plucking out more brambles from her hair and setting them on his desk. The gentle tug giving her small shivers. "Dr. Lam said my temperature is a tad high."
Then his large hand covers her dirt smudged forehead, and he waits as if he'll be able to tell her temperature to a fifth of a degree. "Not that high, Cameron."
"I know—I just—why didn't you say anything, you could have been hurt."
"Now, now, don't start with that talk." Wiggles her eyebrows underneath his hand until he removes it.
"You're right. You're rig—I just want you to be healthy and safe."
"But you've always wanted that."
"Yeah but now I kind of want it more."
Now he flat out stares at her and she can see the stars forming in behind his eyes. She hasn't decided on whether to keep the baby or not, probably told him about it so his reaction would sway her, and now that it's overly positive she's a bit disappointed because choosing to abort the baby is going to be markedly harder now. "Don't you have a date, Darling?"
"I'll cancel it." Answers almost before her sentence is finished, then blinks and realizes his intensity, knows he'll scare her off. "If you want to talk, I'll cancel it."
"It's nothing that can't wait for a little later." When he doesn't seem satiated by her answer she adds, "I still fit into all my clothes, we have plenty of time."
"Alright." The nods are back, and he slings his overnight bag over his arm. There are eight brambles on the corner of his desk. "Alright." He places a hand on the small of her back directing her to the door and his temperature is higher than hers. "Alright."
"Something else on your mind?" Pauses at the door before he opens it for her, ever a gentleman, and fixes the collar of his dress shirt and suit jacket so they fit together.
"Just—I want to say—but I don't want it to come off as cliché or—"
"Darling, it's me." Presses down on the shoulder of his jacket to iron out any wrinkles she made. "I'm not easily offended, say what you mean."
Her smile encourages him, and he nods a final time. "I just want you to know that I'm here—for—for whatever you need, and I feel like shit that this happened."
"It's no one's fault." She nods and feels oddly emotional while he picks a final bramble from her hair. "Just bad timing."