Author's note: Okay, here's the deal. This may not be the least bit in character and I apologize if it isn't. I'm not all that familiar with Cam and Vala, only recently discovering that I like them, and that I like them together. This was really just a way for me to play with them. I hope it is a little entertaining to someone else as well…

Awakenings

Places You Don't Wanna Go

"Mmm," the sleeping beauty moaned. "Just a little bit longer..."

She cuddled into his chest, nuzzling his bare skin with her delicate nose, rubbing her soft cheek against him. Her hand kneaded the flesh around his collar bone, sending chills through his body.

"Vala!" he hissed violently. He grabbed the hand that had begun to absently stroke his bare chest, driving his already muddled mind to distraction.

This time the utterance of her name succeeded in rousing her from sleep. Her large eyes opened wide, and when she looked up into his face she started with the recognition. The shock was unmistakable, flashing across her face like a bolt of lightening, and vanishing just as quickly. It was replaced by the typical, confident, never-phased-by-any-setback façade he had come to know so well. Not to mention be severely annoyed by on multiple occasions. The question was…Was he going to call her on it?

"Cam?" Vala let his name slip off her lips like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she was born to speak it, like she hadn't referred to him primarily by his family name since they'd first met. "Fancy meeting you here."

Right, sister. Like you're any more in control of this situation than I am. His head screamed at him to give up and return to unconsciousness once more. But he most definitely couldn't do that now. This was a crisis waiting to happen, already happened, was happening…all of the above.

"What the hell happened?" He asked her, hoping things weren't as they seemed, that perhaps she remembered more than he did, and that memory included some very good excuse for them being naked in bed together besides the conclusion his mind had already jumped to. Maybe their clothes had gotten soaking wet and they had to take them off and huddle for warmth. Maybe someone drugged them as part of a cruel prank. And maybe some dog had eaten their homework…

Lame excuses, all of them.

"Didn't your father ever explain to you?" she asked him, shifting against him so that she could see his face better. The movement of her smooth, warm skin against his body raised the hairs on the back of his neck and hastened the blood as it flowed through his veins and pounded at his aching temples. "Well, I suppose I'm as good as anyone to tell you the facts of life. You see, my dear lieutenant-colonel, when a man and a woman have certain feelings for each other, or in this case, too much what was it called? Oh yes, Vod-ka…oh! And takeela…and beer and lots and lots of wine…

"Vala" he growled her name in frustration for the third time that morning. Little to his knowledge, it was the twenty-second utterance of her name on his part in the past twenty-four hours, the loudest of which occurred at 3 am that morning but was not heard over the music and chatter filling the large house.

"What?" she asked in her 'innocent' voice. It was an obvious cover. He couldn't help but wonder what was going on inside her head, not that he could ever understand that, even without what had to be the worst headache anyone had experienced in the entire history of the galaxy.

Vala couldn't see his face clearly, and it bothered her, although the gruffness and annoyance in his voice was enough to let her know what he thought about the situation. It had come to her as a bit of a shock, but she had most definitely been in similar circumstances before. Waking up with little memory of previous events alongside naked-but-not-unattractive man. Yup. Definitely been here before. Did this make 17 or 18 times?

But this was different. This wasn't supposed to happen anymore, not that it was an entirely bad experience. She wasn't the same Vala that did those things, or got caught up in those situations. She had joined the Earthlings to try to become a, well, better person. Not that she didn't like who she was before. She just wanted something more stable out of life, namely friends, people she could count on…Would this incident cost her one such person?

If only she could see his face, his eyes, then she would know. She shifted, rolling off from him onto her side, supporting her head with her arm. He looked pissed, but Vala couldn't tell if it was entirely at-

"Oh, god! Don't do that!" Cameron exclaimed, closing his eyes tight. Not that the sight of her exposed, shapely breasts was unattractive…But it was most definitely unwelcome. This situation needed to end.

"Why?" Vala teased, but was slightly hurt by his reaction. "Is there something wrong with the way I look?"

"No," Cam replied, realizing how his reaction was taken, still trying to keep his eyes closed. "No. You look…It's just-"

"Then why are your eyes closed?!" she probed, putting on the air of being offended. If she could fool him into thinking he had hurt her feelings, forced him into concentrating on making amends to her, then he couldn't get angry at her for what had happened-well, what seemed most likely to have happened-the previous night.

"We shouldn't see each other like this," he supplied desperately. "We're team mates and whatnot."

"But I've seen Daniel naked and we're-"

"Whoa, whoa! Stop right there!" he cut her off. "One: I do not need that mental image right now. And Two: NO!"

"But you said-"

"NO!"

"I just thought that the circumstances were similar and-"

"NO WAY!"

"And it might have some bearing-"

"I'm not listening!"

He began humming some tune unfamiliar to Vala, who allowed herself some small sigh of relief. She had him on the defensive, thinking about other things than yelling at her for her promiscuity.

Cameron continued humming the theme to Bonanza for several minutes even after he felt the mattress move and a wave of cold air turn his skin to gooseflesh, informing him that Vala had left the bed. He finally stopped and risked opening his eyes a crack, hoping that it was enough time for her to dress. The relief that her naked body was no longer teasing his fatigued mind lasted only a moment before he sat bolt upright in bed, barely keeping himself from leaping out of it.

Instead of doing the sensible thing, and putting on the little black dress she had adorned the previous day, Vala had used his white dress shirt to cover her curvaceous and supple figure. Unfortunately for Cameron's mixed-up mind, her long slender legs were still mostly exposed, drawing his attention in particular to where the hem of his shirt caressed her upper thigh as she stood before him fidgeting with the rumpled garment in an uncharacteristically shy manner.

"What are you wearing?!" Cam asked, as if he hadn't recognized his shirt immediately.

"Your shirt," Vala said, regaining her confidence in a reaction to his scolding voice. "And I think it rather becomes me, actually."

She spun around, flashing him just a taste of her smooth, round bottom. The images that popped into his head could have been memories or dreams, maybe even fantasies, but either way they caused his heart to beat faster and his breath to catch in his throat. This was too much to handle at the moment.

"Wait, stop!" he barked an order at her, causing her to freeze instantaneously, her back to him. "Stay right there."

"What is it?!" She asked nervously. There was nothing worse than bugs, particularly Earth bugs. You never knew where you stood with them. In the rest of the galaxy, it was easy enough. Big bugs with scary fangs were bad. Little glowing, happy bugs were (for the most part) friendly or at least decent enough to let you know right away if they weren't. But there seemed to be no such rules with Earth insects… "Is it a…spider?"

"No," Cam replied, hurrying out of bed and grabbing his pants where they lay haphazardly in a pile in the corner of the room. "But don't move!"

He threw them on and zipped them up as fast as he could, bar injury. Being at least half-dressed made him feel that much better. There was nothing worse than facing an unsettling situation naked and vulnerable.

"Don't tell me it's one of those, what was it called, camule spiders," Vala said still panicking about why he had told her to stand still. "Because I saw something about them on the television. There was this man who fell asleep outside and woke up the next morning with half of his face gone! And he didn't even feel the spider gnawing away at his face because of the venom that it secre-"

"Vala, there's no spider," he said, beginning to laugh. Lord, he needed to laugh at the bizarre situation he was in, or else his head might explode. "Camel spiders don't even live in this part of the world."

"Well, how was I to know that?!" She retorted, still unnerved by the idea of a hairy, eight-legged insect feasting on her face while she slept peacefully dreaming of gold and jewels and scantily-clad menservants. Something dawned on her, pushing nightmares of flesh eating spiders from her fretting mind. "Hey! Why'd you tell me to stand still then?"

Vala spun around to face her lov-uh…Mitchell. He was standing a few feet in front of her, adorning his pants but nothing else, besides a wide grin, which changed to a frown as he noticed her eyes traveling over the entirety of him. She let a slow breath out, as her mind drank in his figure. It wasn't as if she hadn't noticed his rather alluring physique before, but the thought that she might have had him…

She had to get out of there! Her thoughts were going places she was certain would only make things worse. She whipped around and made a mad dash for the door.

A/N: So yeah…There you go…This chapter was longer as promised, but rather pointless now that I think about it. But I had fun writing it (in a block with a whole bunch more that probably needs rethinking). I wanted to post this simultaneously with the next section of its companion, but I got slightly stuck with it, so I decided to post this before it stagnated.

A/N2: Questions I had while writing this (result of my snap assumptions/being pulled along by narrative, followed by subsequent severe self-doubt): 1. Is Mitchell's rank actually that of lieutenant-colonel? 2. Is my assumption of Vala's motivations for joining the team erroneous or way obvious/already have been stated in the show and I'm just not "in the know"? 3. I know there was comment that Vala handles her liquor very well, but would she still get plastered if she drank enough of our weak 'earth' alcohol? 4. Am I portraying Cam as too childish? 5. Would Vala be afraid of spiders? 6. Where the hell am I going with this?!