-Night time -
She made it easy for him. When he comes upstairs, after far more time than you would expect it to take for someone to get dressed, she's on the far side of the bed, turned toward the wall.
He climbs into the other side of the bed, thinking that she might already be asleep.
"Did I take the wrong side?" she asks softly.
"It's fine."
"What side of the bed did your wife sleep on?" she asks.
"We didn't have beds on Abydos," he says.
"You still had sides," she points out.
"I don't know, we mostly slept a little tangled together," he says awkwardly.
There is a long pause, "Do you have enough blankets?" she asks.
"I'm good," he mutters, turning toward the other wall and regulating his breathing so it sounds like he is asleep.
She tries to slow her breath down to meet his. In the silence of the night, their breath mingles together in a way which warms both of their souls. Not that they would be willing to admit that to anyone.
-Snuggly-
He wakes up to find himself wrapped around Vala. She fits, even better than his wife ever did. It's like every dent in him was made for a curve in her, and vice versa, but one of her dents still unfulfilled. He allows himself one slow inhale of her sent before he moves over onto his side of the bed.
She pretends to wake up then. She's been awake for a quarter of an hour. Too scared to move and shatter the security that being in his arms has afforded her. She needed to feel safe right now.
"Ah… sorry," he mutters.
"No problem, we were asleep," she lies.
"I'd say we should get another bed, but it's not like there is room. Especially when we get a cradle up here," he says, looking around the small room, "I hope you feel safe with me."
The first honest words of the morning slip from her mouth, "Always with you, Danyel.
She wants to light a fire, and make him breakfast, but the sight of the greasy stove makes her run outside to lose her dinner from last night. When she comes back, he's scrubbing.
"You don't have to do that," she tells him.
"We may be on a planet that separates all tasks into men's and women's tasks, but I don't. Why don't you go upstairs until I finish this? Morning sickness has got to be awful."
"It really is," she says.
"But you get to feel a baby growing inside of your body," he says.
"Not really yet. I think right now all that is happening is a tiny bundle of cells is hijacking my blood stream to use it for its own."
"Can I?" he asks, looking at her stomach.
"There won't be anything to feel for a while yet," she says, slightly offended.
"Right," he says, turning and starting to scrub.
She grabs his hand, and places it on top of her stomach. He grins. Then he sighs. "I should have told you before. Sha're and I… we tried to have a kid for almost a year."
"You don't think you can have kids?" she asks him.
"I think this one might be as close as I ever get."
Her bottom lip quivers, "I'm going to have it call you 'Daddy', even after we get back to Earth. I'll make sure… you have something to do with the kid even then."
"Thanks," he says, grinning, with his hand still on her stomach.
"Should we clean together?" she asks, grabbing a rag and soaking it in the water basin.
"Right, yeah," he says, glad for a distraction from his emotions. He grabs another rag, and begins to scrub the stove with vigor.
-It's just biology-
Sleeping as two tangled together into one became the norm. They stopped blushing at it. They stopped pretending it wasn't going to happen again. It just was.
The problem with all of this was that there were no cold showers (or any showers) in the village. Also, there was not a private place to… ahem… take care of yourself. So day after day, the tension of sleeping with parts so close to a beautiful person began to wear on them.
One day, they were both lying on separate sides of the bed when suddenly Daniel rolls over. "Ok, so sex is a basic biological need, right?"
"I've been trying to explain that to you ever since we met," Vala says, rolling toward him again.
"You've got hormones. You're pregnant. You need this even more than the average person," he continues.
"Well, excuse me, when exactly is the last time that you've had sex? I think we both need it pretty badly," she defends.
"Ok, point taken. What I was trying to say is, it doesn't have to mean anything? Right? I mean, we can just have sex, and be friends who raise a baby, and that's it, right? That's all it has to be."
"Right," Vala nods, trying to hide the aching in her heart.
"If you don't want this… if it's over the line," he says insecurely, while reaching out and touching the side of her face.
"I wasn't exactly looking forward to a life of celibacy. I mean, if we weren't doing it, and this is certainly not a place to have an affair, so… if we don't get out, it would mean never again."
"I really hadn't thought of that," he says.
"Until we got to Earth," she adds.
"Right," he says. Even though they both know that that is never going to happen.
"Is it ok if we kiss?" he asks.
She nods her head. He leans forward - an inch away from her lips - a centimeter. They touch, and it's like a handshake. The handshake becomes a dance. Soon, the tongues enter the waltz as well.
She pulls away, breathless, "My God, Dr. Jackson, you are good with the tongue."
"Well, you know I am a linguist," he says, blushing. "Do you want to go another round with the kissing first, or are you ready to start letting me shed your clothes?"
"Daniel, we decided to have sex. You don't have to ask me about every little thing."
"I believe in affirmative consent. That means I think I do have to ask you about every little thing."
"I'm not that fragile, Danyel."
"I had a feminist as an advisor for one of my degrees. This is so not about you."
"It kind of takes the magic out of it, doesn't it?"
"Dirty talk," he says, with a raised eyebrow.
"Mother, may I," she retorts.
"Oh, we'll see about that," he says. He places his hand between her legs, not quite touching, but close enough that her skin can feel him anyway.
She waits.
"Do you want anything?" he asks with the calm of a waiter trying to take an order.
"For God's sake, touch me!" she exclaims.
He complies in a way that makes her toe curl.
"Mother, may I?" he asks with eyebrow raised.
"Bragger," she manages to grunt out, although she's almost beyond talking.
"The other nice thing about this is you get to order me around. If I like what you say, I do it. If I don't like what you say, I don't," he says with a grin on his face.
"Put your lips where your thumb is," she rasps.
"I thought you'd never ask," he says, quickly disappearing below her nightgown.
-It's just biology Part II-
Exhausted and immobile, they lay apart from one another in the bed. There is no way that they are going to touch. You can convince yourself that the person you're sleeping with doesn't mean anything to you. It's a little harder to do that with someone you sleep with, and then spend the whole night cuddling.
"Are you ok?" he asks softly.
"Yeah," she mutters. She just had the best sex of her life. Of course she's fine. Only… Daniel is so far away right now. Like, half a bed away. How silly for two adults to be curled up in a ¼ of a bed each, with half of it stretching empty between them, when a few seconds ago they were doing all of that.
He knows it's a lie. He even knows what's wrong with her. He spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like if he got Sha're back from the Goa'uld, and Vala was with a Goa'uld for more years than his wife was. He almost asks her about her time with the Goa'uld. Almost tries to get her to share about the trauma. But he knows she won't right now. Right now, those questions are only going to make her angry. So instead he gets clever, "You know, if we're strictly concerned about biology, there is something else we should consider."
"What's that?" she asks.
"When you have sex, this chemical in your brain is released that makes you want to cuddle."
"Yeah?" she asks.
He nods his head, holding his arm out, and she slides over and enters into its protection. A deep sigh comes out of her as she closes her eyes. He kisses her forehead, right by the hairline, and he forgets to ask her permission. For the first time, Vala allows herself to pretend that this is a real marriage. It's risky to do that, but all the good things in life are risky.
-Confessions-
During the day Vala alternates between scrubbing a house that badly needs to be cleaned, and making blankets and whatnot to make the house more comfortable. Daniel mostly works on the carpentry that is his business. Sometimes, though, he knits something for the house, because he's better at it than her.
The long and short of it is, they spend most of their days sitting in uncomfortable chairs, working and talking to one another.
There are no TV shows and few local events or weather changes to talk about, so it isn't long until they start to talk about the past. She tells him about her father, and step-mother, and the man she killed when she was twelve and he tried to rape her. She doesn't even try to turn it into a joke. She tells him about how he threw up, and how she cried. And how she almost didn't run away. How she thought about staying put until the police of her world came to put her to death.
She tells him about her time as a Goa'uld and how powerless she felt when her body would not obey her commands. She tells him about how she is still woken up by nightmares that it is all going to happen again, that these nightmares come a lot more often than she would like to admit.
He tells her about her parents, and how they died. He tells about foster family after foster family, and mostly about the feeling that he didn't belong. He talks about when he joined the Stargate program, and about how it was the first time that he ever felt like he belonged anywhere.
"I would love to feel like I belonged," she whispers.
"You're part of the Stargate program now," he tells her.
"Not really. Not officially," she protests.
"Well, we'll fix that when we get back."
They both keep pretending that they are going to find a way back, even though both of them have stopped doing anything about it. They both play as if their marriage is not real, but on some level, they are both aware that that is a lie.