Bring it all Back
Chapter 9
Pollen
Neither Daniel will leave. Landry's offered them packages and pay raises and staterooms and the literal boundless knowledge of Atlantis that a single Daniel once hung his cap on as a dream, but now neither of the stubborn assholes want to leave because it's giving up being the real Daniel. Instead they share the office, are neighbors in dorm rooms and oddly enough in an apartment building and are partners in annoying the ever-living crap out of him every day.
The only good thing to come out of this is that he no longer has to free up another SGC member to accompany Daniel on his stargate flights of fancy. Instead they use the buddy system and travel together. He's sure one day off-world Second Daniel will try to kill First Daniel, but that will only change the number of Daniels back to normal.
Right now, they're all on a mission to P3Y-177, a weird border planet that is supposedly uninhabited, but the MALF reported enough oxygen to sustain life and a working ecosystem. Sam's finally been released from her Atlantean hold and it's her first mission back on the team. The team which now is Teal'c, Sam, Vala, and two Daniels. He doesn't get to go. He's still shift coordinator at this McDonalds and never gets to hang around with the old crew anymore.
Instead he sulks around and waits for updates. Second Daniel is eating too much, First Daniel had to stop for three restroom breaks in just as many hours, a coconut like fruit fell onto Teal'c's head, the river is naturally purple because of a weird type of algae, there are plant spores in the air all the time like yellow snow without the dog pee, and Sam is nostalgic for Atlantis.
They return the next day salted in tiny little yellow flower buds that break down into smaller flower buds, kind of like a piece of cauliflower. They stream by him kindergarten single-file style and he tugs Sam aside at the end.
"How'd the first mission back go?" He dusts some pollen off her shoulder and the stuff smears against her jacket. By the look on her face, she already knew this.
"Two of them are too much, Cam."
"Yeah, but at least he's getting socialization." She rolls her eyes, tired, sticky, smelly, and by the way she brushes by Teal'c in the doorway after debriefing, which took twice as long with twice as many Daniel rambles, entirely fed up with the men on this team.
Vala is waiting for him in his room that night, entirely not fed up with at least one man on the team, and pounces on him after the door shuts. Her legs wrap around hips and she tilts his head up to crash her mouth against his.
"Miss me, baby?" He slides his hands along her thighs and around to cup her ass, carefully walking them forward to his bed.
"The thought of you and right now is the only thing that got me through those two horrid days." Her hair is still damp from her shower, her clothes sticking to her skin and smelling faintly like flowers.
"That bad, huh?" He mumbles against her collarbone, chasing the delve in her skin up to her neck.
"Not now." Shakes her head and her hips roll forward against his. "Now this."
When his alarm goes off at 0530 the next morning she's still asleep beside him, out cold on her stomach, her one arm flung over his neck and the other hanging off the edge of the bed. Expects her bare back to be freezing but when he pulls the blanket up to cover her, she's still warm to touch.
"Vala?" He kisses the palm of her hand and traces fingers over her arm until reaching her shoulder and shaking her to wake her. She should've been gone by three like normal, but she must be so tired she slept through it. "Honey, you gotta go."
"Five more minutes." Doesn't move an inch, except for her hand that slaps him in the face reassuringly as she tucks her face further into the pillow.
"No baby, you gotta go now." Swings his legs over the side of the bed making sure all of his movements are overexaggerated, causing the mattress to roll like it's on top of an ocean current.
She groans and tries to hold onto the blankets as he rips them to the end of the bed. Her knees curl up against her chest in the sudden chill and he counts the seconds until she starts grumbling and dressing.
"Did you sleep through your alarm?" He yanks on his sweatpants to go for his early morning jog. It's overcast with a chance of showers, so he'll need a hoodie or something to protect him a bit if it rains.
"I'm not talking to you," her hair smothers her voice as she leans and pulls on her panties.
"Princess, you cannot be mad at me for waking you up."
"I'm too tired to be upset with you." Her eyes still hold heavy lids and her face still a bit gray from lack of sleep. She yanks her silky pajama pants up and then crawls into one of his thick gray sweaters.
"I need that."
She flops down onto the side of the bed, sprawling out across the mattress and watching him through upside down eyes like a cat. "Hmm, sleep?"
"No, this." He tugs at the hood of the sweater.
She doesn't answer.
"Vala."
"What?"
"You can't wear it."
"Why not?"
"Because then people will know?"
"Know what?" He doesn't know if she's trying to be cute or coy or just an early morning pain in his ass, but she smiles dreamily at him and hugs herself. "People will just assume I stole it from you."
That's actually true, and as much as he would like to have the small satisfaction of knowing she's wearing a piece of his clothing for a different reason, he does need it. "I'd still need it for my jog."
She flips quickly, her knees digging into the mattress, his tightly pulled fitted sheet still holding in place. "You'd tear this away from me just for your jog."
"Why do you want to wear it so badly?"
"Because my pants are tight, and I don't want anyone to see." Thinks it's some sort of weird alien women sensuality lie that works as a double entendre.
"I'm sorry, what?"
She hikes the chunky sweater up to her ribs with one hand and jabs a finger below her belly button with the other. "I'm bloated like a corpse, Cameron."
He breaks into a snort of laughter, and her expression wobbles thinking he's mocking her. "Vala." Leans across the bed, his knee on the edge. He touches a finger to the same spot and feels nothing but muscle. "You look exactly the same as last night."
"Are you sure?" Tilts her head to get a better angle, shoos away his fingers to take another look.
"I promise you're not bloated, you're gorgeous." He stamps a kiss into her cheek, and tugs at the bottom of the hoodie until she lifts her arms and relinquishes his sweater.
They have sex again that night, the same wild frantic sex initiated by her tackling him the moment after the pizza is finished. He secured a pass for her off the base for the next forty-eight hours under the lie of her needing new clothes, including a new hoodie. Afterwards she falls right asleep, chin against his chest while he's still explaining to her the idea behind Dancing with the Stars because she still fears it.
He carries her to bed, wrapped up in the blanket from the back of his couch, and then slipped between cold, crisp unused sheets because he's always on base with her now. Someone must have noticed how close they've become. They're good soldiers and able to place missions and teamwork first, but they're not good actors, either of them, not when it's not a life or death situation.
The alarm goes off at 0530 and he rubs the back of his eyes with his hand, slipping into a different pair of sweats and a t-shirt. There's a chill in the air, but the run will help him absorb it. Air puffs out in little spurts as he picks up the pace and rounds a corner. It's still dark out, but the streets are empty, and he's missed running on sidewalks instead of through the corridors of a mountain or across a puddle-soaked parking lot.
He wants more of this, more of what he woke up to today, he wants it everyday, but that would just be being greedy.
Just as the streetlights flick off and the sun blushes the sky he returns to the front door of his house, a modest two-bedroom, one bath home offered to him as part of compensation from the SGC. All of his neighbors have kids, have babies, push buggies and struggle with car seats. He has had five different types of alien blood on him now.
Grabs the key from his mailbox and unlocks the door, stepping onto the rug inside the door and nudging his shoes off as silently as possible to allow her to sleep in as much as she can. The door clicks closed behind him and when he locks it, she asks, "Cameron, is that you?"
Wants to ask who else would be in his house this early in the morning, but in their line of work it could be almost anyone else. The IOA coming to question her, an enemy coming to start shit, the Daniels finding them for an audience. "Yeah, it's me."
"Come here, now."
"What's the matter, Princess?" Yanks the shirt over his head, her demand just like last night and round two is a high possibility, but again that might be him just being greedy. Jogs down the small hallway off the dining room turning into the bedroom. "Miss me—"
And he stops dead in his tracks.
"Not exactly." She's in front of his mirror, hands on opposite sides of her stomach, her stomach which definitely has a bump now, sloping out a little after her ribs and curving back in by her hips. It looks like—
"Holy shit."
"Am I bloated now?" Chin to her shoulder as she looks back to him, wide eyes and a nervous closed smile.
"What—uh—what—" He slips through the door, turning her towards him, and it's noticeable. He didn't think it was that bad, but fuck it's really, really— "What—and—how?"
"What do you mean?"
"Vala, you're pregnant." Flattens his hand against the bump and no longer touches the toughness of muscles, instead it feels very light, very jiggly.
"I'm not pregnant."
"Honey, you ate a lot of pizza last night but—"
"I had my moon tides before we left for the pollen planet, remember?"
It feels like she's pregnant, and he feels like he would feel if she was: scared as hell. "You're sure that's not what this is?"
"It doesn't feel anything like it did last time."
She would know better than him. When he stops staring at her stomach and back into her face she's worried, done a great job of wiping it from her face, but her eyes, in her eyes he can still view the fear.
"Let's go see Lam."
The day—the day is a weird one.
Lam can't find out what's causing the 'swelling', that's what they're calling it, and whatever 'it' is, Sam has it too. They get blood and cultures and all sorts of other medical bullshit done to them while he gets the pleasure of explaining to Teal'c and the Daniel twins what's going on. He tries to skip the big words, because the subject is confusing, and just plain creepy, but as far as Lam can tell, there's something inside of them that might be gestating and that is dangerous.
And creepy.
"Okay so we have some things to discuss, but one of them ranks most important—"
"Have you dealt with the parking spot debacle yet?" Thing one crosses his arms against the table while Thing two rolls his eyes with a groan.
"No—" He speaks between his clenched teeth "—there is something a little more pressing—"
"I do not understand," Teal'c leans forward addressing the Daniels, "do you not both carpool in together?"
"That's not the point."
"The point is we're two separate beings and deserve to be—"
"Also, do you not spend most of your nights sleeping on the base anyway?"
"That's not—"
"It's the basis of the idea that—"
He slams his clipboard against the conference table and declares, "So Sam and Vala are infected with a space virus you dug up on that flower planet."
Sneaks in a little before dinner to see her. They're both in quarantine, but Sam's confined to another room because they don't know what's making the swelling worse. And boy is it getting worse. She's reading and doesn't see him sit in the seat next to her. She's in the classic blue medical scrubs and at first he thinks they must have got new sheets because they're usually white but now they're blue tenting over her knees.
Then he realizes it's not her knees, and that she's gotten bigger. Almost like she shoved a helium balloon under her shirt, which she might have done at the Christmas party last year, and when she catches him staring she blushes, and it's not the kind a blush he can give her in the bedroom, or by whispering how gorgeous she is while they're just sitting on the couch, it's the same kind of blush Daniel had three years ago when she told them she was pregnant through him.
He goes to take her hand but finds an IV running through the back of it. "What's this for?"
"Nutrients, it's rather hard to keep food down."
"You doing okay?"
Tucks back the hair blocking her face. Expects her to go off on him, about how of course she's not fine, how something in inside her body, again, that she doesn't want there, again, and he doesn't know how she's so calm through it all. Her cold fingers ring around his as she simply flips a page in her magazine. "I'm uncomfortable, and very tired."
Out of everything they've been through together, both in a relationship and as teammates, this is the first time she's given him a straight and honest answer from the get go and he doesn't know how to answer it other than with dumbfounded avoidance. "Lam make any headway yet?"
"Her and Dr. Rix concur that it's not parasitic, like last time, but are now currently debating if it's viral or fungal."
"What do you and Sam think?"
"I'm far to tired to care, darling." She taps the side of his face and he knows it's all for show, that even she isn't this plucky, and even her patience cannot be stretched this far. "Lam wants me to stay in this room for the night, but I refused."
"If she wants you to—"
"There is nothing medically wrong with me, Cameron."
He's looking at something big and medically wrong with her, but his momma raised a good son and she's riding this wave of calm, too calm and maybe Lam spiked her IV cocktail.
There's a rustle in the main emergency area as Lam returns from her late lunch.
"You'll be in your room tonight?" She nods, and he gives her a quick peck on the temple. "I'll see you then."
"Alright."
"Tell them to comm me if it gets worse."
"Hey," he greets, immediately regretting it as the lights from the hall flash across her asleep in her bed, or at least he thinks she's asleep. She's facing away from the door, probably expecting his arrival and the flood of light opening the door brings. Probably knows he's been standing outside her door for the last five minutes trying to figure out how to tell her what Lam told him, because it's a doozy.
"Why were you waiting out there for so long?" She twists in the bed towards him and Jesus, she's bigger and Lam had warned him she, and Sam, would be bigger, but he wasn't prepared for this big. It looks like she might explode.
Explode.
"There were people in the hall." Lies through is teeth as he approaches the bed, sitting down on the side and pulling off his shoes.
"You don't have to stay here tonight," mumbled in half sleep as she nudges herself farther into the pillow. "Dr. Lam gave me a sedative to help me sleep, and some sort of medical cocktail to hopefully quell whatever is in here."
"I—uh—spoke with Lam too." His shoe drops to the floor and he pulls at the laces of the other. His back is to her. He's going to have to tell her this with his back to her. "She told me some things."
"Nothing good right?" She shimmies in the bed again and her face contorts into one of pain, sort of pinched in the middle.
"You okay?"
"My back really hurts, and my stomach will not stop itching."
"Anything I can do?"
"Not unless you know something I don't." He clears his throat and she fidgets behind him until she sits up straight. "Cameron—"
"The pollen that was in the air, it has a weird effect on human bodies, female human bodies. That's why the planet isn't inhabited."
"What does it do?"
"Well, that's the thing—"
"Cameron."
"It sort of gestates in them, siphoning CO2—"
"See Oh what?"
"And then releasing oxygen."
"Oh." When he turns she's itching at her stomach through a shirt, one of his shirts, and it's barely covering her anymore. "Oxygen isn't bad."
"Well—" The other shoe drops and too much of anything is a bad thing.
"It cannot be as bad as carrying the Orici." He doesn't know how to answer that because this is going to drag up some really old, really messed up shit for her, and she's going to play it off with a slap and a laugh. "Do not tell me I need to birth this pollen."
"No, not technically." Grips the blanket over her knee and he can't look at her, but he can't not look at her and in the darkness her eyes hook to his. "If the medicine Dr. Lam gave you doesn't work, we have less than a day before you explode."
"Explode?"
"Yes."
"Explode, like an Al'keesh being fired upon?"
"Like a box of firecrackers tossed into a big ol' fourth of July bonfire." Tugs off his shirt, and tosses it to the ground, then drops his pants and pulls back the covers.
"What are you doing."
"I thought I was staying with you tonight." Pulls at the blanket that she still holds in place, her hand covering his half of the mattress.
"Not if I explode."
Pulls again with a sterner expression. "Lam is very confident in the cocktail she drew up, she and Sam researched plant species and—"
"Cameron." Reaches back and moves the knuckles of her hand against her lower back. "As much as I enjoy your company among other things, I don't want to explode, much less, on you."
"You won't." Grabs the pillow from his side of the mattress and hands it to her. She stares at it a second and as he points to his thighs, she shoves it between hers. That gets him the blanket free and as he slides into the cool sheets, she slides her pillow over for him to share. Tries to nestle against him the best she can, but her body is buoyant with air and every position is uncomfortable for her.
Finally rests with her head on his bicep and him hogging the one pillow. He bends his arm and plucks at strands of her hair, watching her eyes slide closed.
The next morning when his alarm goes off at three, their positions have changed. She's taken the pillow back from him in her sleep and spun to the edge of the bed and one of his legs have replaced the pillow between her legs. He's tracing her body with his, parked very close and before he can second guess himself he lets his hand travel from her hip to her stomach, which is much smaller.
His sigh against the back of her neck wakes her and she shivers back against him. "Did I explode?"
"No." His hand strokes her hip, and he kisses behind her ear. "You deflated a bit."
"Good, that explains it." Threads one of his arms underneath her neck, through her hair, and nuzzles against him until he shivers. She holds his hand in place, and even if he wanted to pull back he couldn't.
"Explains what?" He kisses her again, nose nudging through her hair.
"I'm very gassy."
"Baby, you know I love it when you talk dirty to me."