A/N: Prompted by the word 'smooth' at StargateDrabbles.
Phony Matrimony
Chapter 2
Hers
It's entirely his fault really. She's familiar with planets like this, as Qetesh and somewhat afterwards. Knew it just as soon as they were surrounded after her taking a less than graceful tumble down a rather muddy slope and him, always the gallant gentlemen, shouting at her and then sliding down on his boot heels in chase.
"The hell happened, Vala?" Strong hands hooked under her arms, yanking her up out of a mud puddle and back onto her feet.
To the benefit of his character, he only grumbled slightly when she leaned against him, slopping mud from her uniform onto his. "I'm sorry, Darling, my footing was precarious."
"You hurt?" His hand remained cupped beneath her arm. Settled and supportive.
Mud caked to her jacket, the seat of her pants, inside her boots making them rather heavy. When she tugged her pigtails forward, they slapped against her neck, painting more mud. "Ugh." Stuck out her tongue and maneuvered rigidly from the slop. "Not as much as my clothing."
"Hey, you guys okay?" Daniel called from over the ledge she toppled from. While he appeared mildly concerned, he wore a hidden grin, at least entertained by her folly.
"Fine." Mitchell waved back, shouting again, close to her ear. "We'll meet you back at the clearing."
She pulled at single strands of hair, trying to strip the black of clay colored dirt. "I'm going to be washing this stuff out of my hair for weeks."
"Yeah, well—" he shook his boot free of mud, stepping up onto dry land, then reached for her, acting as an anchor. "Maybe you'll pay more attention next time."
"I was paying the perfect amount of attention." Took his hand despite the spat—a rather playful one. She's only been on his bad side a handful of times, and usually a bright grin or happy bounce clears him of his snit.
"You were talking to Sam about a hairdryer." Helped her up with a grunt, releasing her slimy hand.
"Hair curler, and if you ever had to put as much effort as I do into looking this presentable, then you'd hold entire dialogues on personal appliances as well." Her diatribe distracting her so much that she hardly noticed when his thumb drifted up to her cheek and smoothed away more mud.
Hardly.
By the time she did, the gesture was completed, leaving her no time to wallow in it.
He turned away from her, slinging his pack back over a shoulder with a smile—a different type of smile, one she's never seen him wear before. "Well the team does appreciate you looking that good."
Before she could seize the moment to open channels to further abstract flirtations, or personal touches, the bushes rustled around them, and suddenly there were people, upset people with barbaric weapons pointed at them.
He planted himself before her, stretching his body, maybe to appear more intimidating, but perhaps to protect her, and raised his hands up in a sign of surrender that hardly ever works.
Hardly.
Before they were invited to explain who they were, what they represented, and why they were on this thick mud jungle of a planet, one of the warriors bashed Mitchell on the side of the head, a deep red streaming out as he fell face first onto the hard terrain.
She ran to his unconscious form and rolled him over, rubbing the blood away from his face, but only ended up mixing mud near his open wound. A bit frantic, a bit scared. Didn't know what these planetary natives had in store for her but felt more concern for the man they bludgeoned into an unconscious state.
When she glanced back up, four sets of eyes stared at her. Beautiful green eyes set in against olive skin of the four women who knocked Mitchell unconscious, and in that moment she became immediately aware that this was her type of planet.
Mitchell remained unconscious during the trek back to their village, riding on the back of a sled made from a large sheet of tree back. The camp was simple, two dozen or so homes set up in a circle around a centralized fire pit. The huts were strong, and beautifully composed, and the village appeared safe and welcoming. The fire burning brightly, but wasn't violent, and a pig roasted over it, being rotated by another woman, with another cutting up a mixture of vegetables and fruits. Three little girls ran by them laughing, and two teenage girls sat on a stoop braiding each other's hair, giggling when they them drag him in.
They set him up in the medical tent and when the doctor rolled her eyes one of the women pointed to her. With a reserved sigh, the doctor saw to Mitchell's wound, treated it with a liquid of sorts and within seconds it appeared better.
The village welcomed her, offered her food and water, asked her questions about SGC, about their intentions, about Mitchell's intentions, but never her own. Trusted her implicitly from their first meeting and she's grateful she's not her old self, because it would be so easy to con them all.
Instead, she eats the deliciously prepared meat, and a fruit that tastes like those Earth berries, the ones with many segments, and listens as someone softly strums a stringed instrument.
The trio of little girls point to her hair, and then start to segment their hair in the same manner, and she tries not to think of Adria, of simultaneously wanting and not wanting a child that was never hers, of not getting to weave her finger through soft black locks not her own, and pigtail someone else's hair.
The woman closest to her at the fire, places a hand onto her knee, brows knitting in concern. "You are in pain."
Only then does she realize she's let her eyes grow glassy with tears. She shakes her head, blinking them away and puts on a smile. "No, no. Just thinking."
The woman doesn't ask further questions, or prod into her past, or demand an answer for anything. Just nods, soft and hypnotic, and allows a small grin to bloom. "You are covered in mud."
"Yes." She laughs, half-snorts half-sobs, something so raw, so unedited, but just wipes a hand at her eyes, hoping for no further discussion. "I fell down the side of that hill."
Again, the woman nods, slow, comprehending. "Would you like me to show you to the hot springs?"
She has never said yes quicker in her life.
The hot springs are lovely, fantastic, welcoming, she can't concentrate hard enough to think of the perfect descriptor, all she knows is it's exactly what she needs. They're hot, but not hot enough to make her sweat or feel unclean after being clean. Little geysers of bubbles shoot out from between warm rocks to massage at her limbs, at the bruises she discovered while getting undressed, shoving her dirty clothes into a basket for one of the women to wash. She didn't ask, for any of this, but they're so obliging.
Her mind flits briefly, while her body bobs in the lulling motion of the spring, to the last time someone welcomed her to their village. It was a mountain. She was kept underground until her skin grew to such a luminescent white, that they allowed her on missions. Flight risk was what they called her, and she thought it was so idiotic because how could she ever fly a Tau'ri aircraft?
Wiggling her toes against a bubble jet feels as if someone is massaging her feet, back when she was Qetesh her foot muscles cramped and cried and strained from all the ornate and awkwardly crafted footwear, from the heavy metal used for her battle suit, or the highest of heels in her pageantry boots. She always had one slave assigned just to be ready to rub her feet.
Dipping her head underwater, she threads her fingers through her hair, no longer divided into pigtails, and massages the grit from them. The water white with agitation briefly turns a pale brown around her before bursting away and she allows herself two more deep breathes to sigh with contentment, before pulling her body from the water.
Her skin is flushed and pink and as she runs a towel through her hair, she appreciates her surroundings for the first time. A verdant jungle with lush plant life from thick leaved trees to creeping vines and beautiful bright pockets of flowers. There are animals calling, perhaps birds or akin to them, lilting songs of whistles and whines barely audible over the constant bubbling of the spring.
She stretches, drying off her arms, her stomach, her legs, and as she's bending back up she hears the familiar rustling the bushes, expecting it to be one of the women with some clean clothes, or at least her pack, because she's forgotten it in the medical tent with Mitchell.
But it's not the woman, or any woman, it's the only man she's seen since arriving.
It's him.
Doesn't know who is more surprised but knows who's more mortified and it's not her. In her lifetime, her body has been used against her so many times that she's come to not only appreciate it but flaunt it. If Qetesh had no problem parading around a body that didn't even belong to her, what problem should she have when it's her own.
He croaks out a noise, not quite a squeal, and not really a shriek, more of a yelling huff and then immediately pivots on the spot, eyes stapled to the grassy terrain, "Vala, what in the ever-loving hell are—"
"Problem, Darling?" Doesn't change her tone or her sense of serenity, just continues to towel off.
"Yeah, put on some clothes."
"I would, but I don't have any change of clothes."
Leans over again, not to towel off because she knows he's going to peek.
Sure, he's a man, and statistically most men are prone to give a little peek, but he's Mitchell, and she's her, and there's this weird thing between him where she likes to play basketball with him because she likes the way he smells when he sweats and he likes to watch her put lip gloss on before they go out to a bar as a team.
Both unspoken to each other, but the other is by far aware.
Her mud cracked pack plops to the ground before her without him even cracking a lid. "Now you do."
She hums, nudging at the pack with her pointed foot, and playing with the end of her hair falling just over her breasts. "May I remind you that you were the one who waltzed in on me—"
"Yeah, because these women want to kill me."
Bends again, unzipping her pack and finding her spare set of clothes—minus a jacket that is still saturated with mud and in the hands of one of the kind women. "Really?"
In a blink, his eyes flash to her over his shoulder, and then abandon her still nude form just as swiftly, and red begins to creep into his cheeks. "Yes."
She shrugs, tugging on the plain black tank, and then shimmying up a pair of panties. "They don't want to kill me."
"How niiii—" his words turn into a yell as, without any rustling at all, half a dozen women pop up behind him, one leans forward, swiping at his legs with the blunt end of a spear. His knees give way and he topples forward, smashing into the ground, a bit too dazed to do anything immediately.
Too dazed to see the woman wind back her arms behind her head to deliver another blow, one that could possibly kill him
"Please don't." Extends her arm and takes a small step, the grass tickling the pads of her feet. "I don't believe his brain can handle another blow."
He grunts something akin to gratitude but sounds more sarcastic than anything.
The woman narrows her eyes, lowering her weapon with caution. "He has wronged you."
"What?' he asks between staggered coughs while trying to catch his breath, the last cough might be a huff of disillusionment. He crawls forward, towards her, and the woman rotates her spear quickly, stopping just shy of ramming the serrated edge through his calf, instead just piercing his BDU pants. His movement halts and he half turns, still covered in mud from the earlier adventure, and holds his hands up in the same surrender that didn't work the first time. "Okay. Okay."
She crouches beside him, bare knees inches from his face, his breath cooling the skin still damp from her soak. "How has he wronged me?"
"He placed you in peril earlier." The woman's sentence is curt as if it is common knowledge.
Mitchell moves to argue, but she lays a hand on his shoulder in a distraction, in silence. His muscles tighten at her touch. "How?"
"From you descent down the hill."
"Oh Darling, he didn't push me, I fell." He points at her as she speaks and nods, proud in agreement.
"That may be, but in unions, the protector must always walk the outer path to deter such dangers from his beloved."
Hears his mouth open for another correction, one that he doesn't need to make, one that will harm them both, and her hand taps at his cheek three times using more strength than grace.
When he grunts in irritation at her, the woman's eyes narrow further. "You are unionized, are you not?"
Neither of them answers quick enough and now the other women are pulling out spears, clubs, and other weapons as the first continues, "If you are not unionized his touch of you is punishable by his own death. To gaze upon your disrobed form, to violate your honor in such a way, is only cured through his measured evisceration during the three full moons."
Views his shoulder muscles tensing again, and has he shoves at the ground to scramble back, she crouches beside him again, closer this time, her knees slanting sideways into his chest as she rubs her cheek to his.
He freezes quicker than when threatened by their weapons.
"Oh, unionized. Yes, he's my husband, lovable and clumsy as a loyal canine." She scratches her hand through his dry mud dusted hair and stifles a snort at the expression of utter confusion on his face. She kisses his lips quickly, and then stands, hauling him up with her, strategically placing his large, rough hand on her bare thigh as a sign of intimacy. "We're newlyweds."
That he understands, perhaps remembering when the tables were switched, and she was ready to trek out into a dark jungle on her own rather than be molested by ogling and masticated by sexual fantasies.
She's had enough of that for a life time.
His arm drops to circle her waist and he tugs her into an embrace, pecking her temple. "Got married in Vegas a few months ago. We met at work."
She knows why she did it, acting in the façade of their second marriage together. The role was easy enough to fulfill, with light touches and snuggling while the women laughed. They ate a final supper together before trekking back through the gate just before the SG-1 search party disembarked.
It wasn't because she kept him alive as he had done for her, but for the way he shrugged off his sullied jacket when she shivered next to him at dinner, and held it for her to shove her arms through, the way he watched the door to a hut all night ensuring no men live out their sordid whims, the way the firelight danced over them as she curled against his chest and heard his heartbeat regulate, felt his muscles lax.
How when she grinned up at him, he grinned back.