Wow people! I'm sorry my chapters were super screwy! I had so many out of order. I think…think I have it fixed now. Plus, I was on vacation for more than a week, and didn't get a chance to write. As a reward for your patience I am going to post two new chapters today. Really new, not random out of place new (again, I hope).
She is an intruder on their happy night. It is such an odd uncomfortable feeling that she comes close to calling an end to it, and taking off the bracelets.
She can't quite bring herself to do it, because the family is so happy. Her family was never like this. Oh, there were good times, to be sure. There were days when her mother would dance with her across the wooden floors of her home. There were days when she and her mother would kneed the bread into submission. There were days when her father would return from some long journey with some trinket, just for her.
Mostly though, her life had been full of a lot of work, and only a little of this sort of playfulness.
Daniel is down on the floor wrestling with his two sons. Every now and again, he balances one of them on his feet, and lifts the feet far up in the air. The little boy then flattens himself out, and sings a song which she is given to understand is from some show they have made about a man with abilities beyond that of a normal human.
The whole time Olivia is cuddled on the couch reading a book, and this makes Vala wonder if there is some family dynamic she does not know about which excludes the girl.
"Don't you want to play?" she asks.
Olivia shakes her head.
Daniel grabs both of his son's under his armpits, and whispers to them.
"No!" Olivia says crawling up the back of the couch to stand on top of it. "Please don't tickle the sister! I'll do anything!"
"Sisda!" Drew explains, no longer able to wait for the charge command, but launching himself across the room.
"Dannings and Aliens! Let's play Dannings and Aliens!" Olivia calls out just in time to save herself.
"But Cassie's not here. No alien," Will protests.
Daniel's eyes turn to Vala with a wicked look in them. Before she can think of a way to save herself, he and Olivia say together, "Vala is an alien."
The two boys launch themselves at her with slippery kisses for some reason that she fails to grasp. Although she does manage to determine it's another TV show, whatever in the blazes those things are.
"Save me, Olivia," she pleads as she peels the boys off her in turn only to have them return with even wetter kisses in a matter of seconds.
"You shouldn't have disturbed my reading, and none of this would have happened!" Olivia says, hiding her smirk behind her book.
"Have mercy on me!" Vala pleads.
"Kiss them back!" Daniel advises.
Within minutes, Vala has all of Daniel's children, Olivia included, on the floor, giggling as she blows on their bellies.
Well, not all of his children of course. There is one missing. The one she has not met yet. Cassie walks in at the height of the ramble, and surveys the scene with disgust.
"Who is this?" she asks.
"A'ien!" Drew offers with pride as he lays a kiss on her.
"Dad's not-a-girlfriend from work," Olivia says in a teasing tone which is clearly meant to imply that she does not believe her father's classification of Vala.
Cassie freezes, and the color goes out of her face. "What?"
"Honey, I swear, Vala is just someone that I'm working with. Temporarily, before she goes back to her alien planet. There is nothing going on between us, your sister was just teasing me," Daniel says freeing, himself from the game on the floor to stand before his oldest daughter.
"Then why is she here, at our house, at seven o'clock at night?" Cassie challenges.
"That's my fault," Vala says standing up, "I was afraid that they wouldn't give me a fair chance if they had any other option. So I slapped a bracelet on his wrist, and now your poor father can't be very far away from me without getting sick."
"So you guys are stuck together? I'm supposed to believe you're just co-workers?" Cassie asks with a sneer.
"I'm sorry," Olivia says, hating the tone of voice that the grow-ups are using with each other, and desperate to soften the tone. Or at least turn it upon herself, who she views as the one who justly deserved it.
"This isn't your doing," Vala says, pulling the girl into a hug. Olivia fits rather snugly under Vala's armpit. "Look, Cassandra. You're right, I was playing at a bit of a game. I was flirting with your father. That was before I really knew him. Before I met his children," Daniel's heart sinks in his chest. He was right, someone like her could never go for someone with a house full of children. She was much too free spirited for that. "That was before I understood how deeply he loved your mother. You have nothing to worry about, you're father never even gave me a second glance." She walks over to Daniel, and takes the bracelet of his wrist.
"Goodbye, Daniel, and I'm sorry. They'll most likely ship me back to my planet before you get back to the base, so this is probably goodbye forever. You don't think they'll put me in jail, do you? If I'm in jail when you get to work tomorrow morning, you will put in a kind word for me, won't you?" she asks with only a hint of a pout, and a lot more seriousness than she has had since he's known her. More serious even than she had when she was taking over the ship.
"Vala, you can't go back to the base tonight."
"Why not?" she pouts.
"Well, you don't have a car, for one thing."
"I'll walk."
"It is six miles, and I bet you don't even know the way."
"I have a very acute sense of direction, I'll have you know!" she says, her voice rising with offense.
"You're not used to the city. You're not going by yourself."
"You can't leave your children."
"Cassie will watch them if I have to go, but I would much rather you stayed here for the night."
Vala sits down in a chair, surrendering. She knew that there was no way she could find her way back through the darkness anyway. "One last act of mercy before you hand me over to the proper authorities in the morning?" she asks.
"Please, you're not going to jail," he says.
"I stole your ship."
"You stole the United States Air Force's ship."
"That still seems like it would be a serious crime."
"That's a much more serious crime."
"Then I put alien technology on you, clearly not knowing what it did. How are you not mad about that one?"
"I am mad about that one."
"Not mad enough to send me to jail," she says.
He looks at her, knowing that she is right. Knowing that he should be angrier at the things that she has done to him. He can't figure it out himself. He sighs, "I just look at you, and I know there is a potential for… something good, Vala. Something very good."
"And you're trying to tell me you're not together," Cassie says before pushing past the two of them, and going up into her room to study.
Two Days Later
How did Daniel get himself talked into using this communication device with Vala, of all people? Oh yeah, that's right; her stupid dysfunctional bracelets. Who starts using alien technology when they had no idea how it worked anyway? Oh right, everyone, like, all the time. But still.
He was still linked to her. If they were more than a few hundred feet apart they would both pass out. *
So now he's going into another galaxy with Vala by his side.
Apparently, he's going into another galaxy in someone else's body. That's creepy. At least they picked a male body for him. How weird would it be to find yourself suddenly in the body of the other gender? Especially a well-breasted member of the other gender as Vala appeared to be occupying.
Not that she was anywhere close to short on the breast department when she as in her own body.
His eyes fall on the wall, and he reads the word. "Marriage." The marriage house. He can't imagine being married to the woman in front of him. He'd done that… twice. Each time, it had ended in death.
If he did risk marriage again, it was going to be with that upstanding widow he'd imagined yesterday. Certainly someone respectable. Not someone who regularly put gold coins down her bodice. In fact, not even someone who had a bodice. No, his upstanding widow was going to hide her cleavage in some way far more upstanding than a bodice.
Vala was not the marrying type, anyway, so there was nothing to worry about from that front.
She wants to know what that sign means. The marriage sign. Should he lie?
The truth spills out of his mouth.
She finds it funny. Flirty funny like she finds most everything else. But for a moment, in her eye, he catches something else. Perhaps Vala Mal Doran is, in fact, the marrying type.
One Week Later
"You look very handsome, Ty," Sam says as she fashions a tie around her son's neck.
"Hey, mom, on the way can we stop and pick up Livy? I told her that we were going to give her a ride, and then it totally slipped my mind to actually ask you to give her a ride. Sorry!" Ty says with a sheepish look on his face.
Sam's hands go still while still on the tie, even though it's securely fashioned. "You asked Livy to go to this dance with you?"
"No, I said that I would pick her up for the dance," Ty says rolling his eyes.
Sam's hands leave the tie in order to smack herself in the forehead, "Tell me you did not use those exact words!"
"I don't get what the big deal is," Ty says exasperated at his mother's antics. "Livy and I are friends. We're always carpooling places together."
"Does Olivia know that you're gay?" Sam asks.
"No! I'm not ready to tell anyone yet. That doesn't mean that she's not my friend. I'm sure when I tell her she's going to be ok with it," Ty defends.
"I think you should tell her sooner rather than later," Sam says.
"I'm not ready to come out to anyone yet. I haven't even told my own grandfather, why would I go around telling friends?"
"It's just… Ty, I've thought. You're father thinks to. We've thought for a while that Olivia might have a crush on you."
"Ew, gross, we're practically brother and sister!" Ty says, crinkling up his nose.
"Have you ever noticed that you are the only one who makes that comparison? Or that every time you say something like that, Olivia gets all uncomfortable?"
He shakes his head, "You really think she likes me… like that?"
"Maybe. I just think you should probably tell her, because the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be, and I know that the last thing you would ever want was to break Olivia's heart."
"It's weird. It would be like if you woke up one morning, and found out that Uncle Daniel was in love with you. Just something that you never dreamed in a million years was even possible. I'll talk to her tonight."
Sam bends down, and plants a kiss on her son's cheek. He wipes it away with a look of disgust, and Sam is left to wonder when exactly her son started growing up.
-0-
Ty and Olivia are sitting at the bleachers at school. Olivia is wearing a very sparkly dress that Ty remembers complimenting once on some other girl.
This fact is definitely lending credibility to his mother's theory.
They are engaged in an argument over whether C.S. Lewis was better at science fiction or fantasy, a topic that would normally take all of her focus.
However, her eyes follow each new couple as they enter the dance floor. She seems mesmerized by each awkward invitation to dance. When Ty's favorite athlete asks out a girl in a pink dress, it's hard to determine which of them is more jealous.
"You want to dance," he says. It's a statement, not a question, but her eager ears mishear it, and she jumps up, and holds a hand out for him to take.
He can't bear to explain to her what he meant, and he figures that he might as well do what he is about to do while they are on the dance floor as anywhere else, so he puts his hand in hers. He discovers with horror that her hand is drenched in sweat.
She is so focused on him that she trips on the way down the bleachers. He puts out his hand to catch her, and it lands on her hip. Her eyes alight with excitement, and a chaperone makes their way over to break up the 'public display of affection', so Ty pulls away from her like she was made of molten lava.
They make their way to the dance floor. Most of the couples aren't dancing by the strictest definition. They're holding on to each other, and swaying back and forth. Ty's ballet training won't let him do that, so he pulls the girl into a rather respectable waltz.
A sigh escapes Olivia's lips; she got the good dancer.
"Livy, I have something important to tell you, and I probably should have told you a long time ago. I would have, only, I didn't see it. My mom did, but I didn't believe her until…" he drifts off and takes a deep breath. Then he leans forward.
Olivia's heart skips a beat. He's going to kiss her! They'll be kicked out of the dance, and have her parents called, but he's going to kiss her in front of all of these people.
Then her heart drops as she hears the secret that he leaned forward to whisper to her, "I'm gay."
*In the series they said this was only true because the communication device was used in conjunction with the stones. However, they were really just guessing about technology they did not understand. I maintain that it is just as likely that this would be true whether or not they'd used the technology with the communication stones.
Authors Note: Junior High dances… as a teacher I've discovered they're even more painful to watch than participate in. Seriously… awkward.