Sort of spoilers for "Unending." Not that Unending happens in this chapter, but I did steal some dialogue from it… I bet you all can guess what dialogue.

One Month Later

Rya'ac rests his head against the forehead of Aaliyah. All of the tension goes out of her. The almost-tantrum dies on her lips. His mind reaches out and touches her in tek-lo-reem. Her mind is still a little flighty. Anxious. His is as steady and heavy as his own father's was when he was little. It gives her rest.

She is good at meditation, much better than either of her sisters, even if you account for the fact that they are much younger than her.

A stuffed animal hits Rya'ac in the head, and he leaves the meditation to tickle the rambunctious Keisha, who was guilty of the crime.

Liyah sighs with frustration; she was really close this time. To reaching him, to telling him all the things that she couldn't find the words for, the pictures for. All the things that she thought inside of her head, but had no way to get out of her.

Cassie opens up the door, and the children run to her, saying her name, except that Jayla has taken to calling Cassie "Mommy" lately. Time stretches out so much when you're little that Jayla can't really remember the time before the accident or her actual mother anymore.

Aaliyah has never called anyone "mommy", and Keisha is a bit stingier with the title than her little sister is, since she can remember the first person that she ever bestowed it on.

Rya'c lingers as he and Cassie talk about their days, and Cassie gets a very detailed kindergarten report for the talkative Keisha.

When Cassie asks him to stay for dinner, he accepts, as he always does. Rya'c likes being needed. He got so used to it when his own house was full of small children, and his father and step-mother could barely manage it without his help. Now, though, things were calmer. Beck had turned quite studious when she entered middle school. She was a bit reluctant to clean underneath her bed, and sometimes had to be reminded to put the book away and play with her friends, but other than that, she was quite easy to parent. Tam was fifteen, and mature for her age. She did her chores and her homework. Once in a while, she needed a good chat with her mother about catty friend troubles at school, or a blushing one with her sister about crushes.

The twins, at four, were getting to be a bit less work as well. They were old enough now that they could entertain themselves, at least for short stretches.

Here, at Cassie's house, he was always needed by one of the small girls. He felt like they deserved everything that they got, because they had suffered so much lose already.

"Goodnight," Rya'c says, after he and Cassie have done the dishes together.

"You could stay longer if you wanted," Cassie offers.

"I've got homework," Rya'c says.

"I want Rya'c story, please," Aaliyah says in her sing song voice that is just a bit louder than it really needs to be.

"Ok, story," he says. He tells himself that he is staying because you need to make speech effective. He tells himself that he's only staying because wants to encourage Aaliyah to talk more, to risk putting words together in constructions that she's never heard before, even if it means making some mistakes, and awkward speech in the beginning.

Rya'c walks upstairs, with three girls bounding after him. No-one invites Cassie along, even though she knows they probably wouldn't object if she followed them. She understands her mother, in that instant, better than she ever had before.

She understands how it is possible to be jealous that your children like someone more than they like you.

She understands how frustrating it can be for a man to be willing to drop everything to do something for you kids when he just said that he would not do that same thing for you.

Only with her, the whole thing is a whole lot more irrational than it was with her mother. At least her mother was dating or married to the man when she felt that way. Cassie is paying him to bond with her children. Even though he's off the clock right now, it only makes sense that he would be more interested in the three little people with whom he spent the better part of the day, than in her.

"Someday you're going to find a guy for real," she whispers to herself, before going upstairs to join them all.

One Week Later

It's a rare night that Vala doesn't make a visit to the Jackson house when SG-1 is on-world. Sometimes she just comes for dinner, or to spend a little time with the kids who fill an ache in her heart. Sometimes she comes after they've all gone to bed to mock sci-fi or play a game of "my planet's better than your planet" with Daniel (she never tired of the game, since she picked a different planet as "hers" each time. The joys of being a pathological liar.) Sometimes it was wine and being each other's therapist. Most often, it was some combination of all of the above.

Always, there was the agony of Is it a date, is it not a date? Should I touch his hand, should I not? To flirt or not to flirt, that was the question.

Usually, they both picked not.

Then came the night when she decided they were going to watch "Wormhole Extreme" again, in preparation for the second season which was about to be aired, five years after season one. Vala had watched each episode so many times that she knew all the lines by heart, and she recited them along with the actors, just a fraction of a second ahead. Daniel didn't know why that fraction of a second drove him so batty. He only knew that it did.

So he reached over to grab the remote out of her hand. She pulled it away from him, and he reached over her to get it. His arm brushed against her breast. He was so distracted by this important fact that she used the element of surprise to push him to the floor.

They're fighting just like they did back on the ship, except this time there is no real danger or malice in it. Even when there was, the fighting turned Daniel on, now that that is all gone from it, there is nothing but sexual tension in the act.

Before he can even think, he flips her on her back, and rubs himself against her. The look that is on her face is one that can only be worn by someone who has waited a long time for a good thing to happen, and is getting their just desserts at last.

He rises to his feet, startled by the desire he sees in her eyes, and she thinks that she's done something wrong, and wishes that she could figure out what it was. She'd apologize for it, whatever it was, and no matter how badly she wanted to repeat it. Then he holds out his hand to her. She stands up off the floor, and takes it.

He turns from her, and they walk single-file down the hallway without saying a word. Her hand is on the small of his back, and yet somehow, this is one of the most sensual things she's ever experienced. Maybe what her step-mother was always telling her about dressing and flirting was trueless is more.

He pulls her inside the room, and closes the door, and presses her against it.

She wants to try to escape from his grasp, to make this a game like it was one the floor of the living room. She wants to wrestle with him. She just can't bear to make herself, because she wants it so much, she wants him so much.

"Oh, God, Daniel," she whispers as he kisses her neck.

"I'm not a god," he says as he guides her to the bed. She could escape now for sure, but she isn't going to. She would let him lead her anywhere.

"You're a god-slayer," she says.

"False gods," he corrects.

"Even better," she says, willingly falling on the bed and letting him cover her.

It was never this good. Even Qetesh didn't feel this much satisfaction when she had eight nis'maed men servicing on her, and Vala's disgust to turn her on.

Daniel was amazing.

He had been still for quite some time, no doubt enjoying his success as much as she had, and then suddenly she felt his muscles go tight next to her.

"What's wrong?" she asks, running her hands across the muscles on his bare chest.

"What did we just do?" he asks, sitting up in bed.

"You would think the father of two biological children would be able to recognize sex when he did it," she says with a giggle.

He starts to grab clothes of the floor. Whenever an article is hers, he throws it to her, and if it's his own, he pulls it on. He makes a mistake with the shirts. They are both black SGC-issued things, and the sizes aren't much different. You can tell, however, when he's put the shirt on, that hers is used to having a bit more in the chest area that he has to offer it.

"I get it, you don't want the kids to catch Daddy having sleepovers," she says, starting to dress herself, and trying her best not to be offended by his haste. "I will keep the innuendo to a minimum, and not blow our cover."

"Vala," he says, looking pained.

"Look, if I stop the innuendo altogether, they are going to get suspicious. They are used to me, after all, darling."

He stares at her, and she stops chatting. Once, when she as a child traveling with her father, she stepped through the Stargate from a world which spun incredibly fast to one which spun incredibly slow. Going through the Stargate alone was enough to make someone sick, but that change….well, it had felt exactly like this. She was going from very happy to very sad in a mere second.

"Vala, we can't just sleep together."

I will not cry, she tells herself. "Right," she mutters, turning her back to him with the pretended reason of getting dressed out of his view. Really, she knows that she is close to tears, and she's hoping that she is going to be able to keep exactly how close she is to tears away from him.

"I mean, come on. It's not like we could ever have a serious relationship," he continues.

The tears start to fall in earnest now.

"I mean, yes, you've proven yourself to be trustworthy on a professional level, and I am very proud of you for that. But on a personal level? Come on, Vala, give me a break. I mean, at best, you're an unstable emotional wreck. I'm not saying that I'm much better," Vala can hear the sound of Daniel pacing, and her mind frantically tries to think of a way to get out of his bedroom without him seeing her tears as she puts on the last of her clothes.

"I've lost two wives, Vala; I am pretty sure that I am never going to be able to be with someone in a serious fashion again, and if I was going to, not in a million million years would I possibly consider that person being you! I mean, we are so completely opposite, and wrong for one another, it's not even funny. And the worst part is you know that! And this whole flirty sexual thing that you do is just a way of having a laugh at my expense. So I'm sorry that I'm not more appreciative, and I'm sorry that you're bored. But don't you pretend that it's anything else."

She nods her head with her back still toward him, and then tries to make her way out of the room without turning. He reaches out his hand to stop her, "Don't act like you're hurt," he says with annoyance in his voice.

She nods her head, and slips from his grip making it to the door to his bedroom. He puts his hand flat on the door to stop her, and looks at her intently, "Hey."

"Please, just let me go," she pleads, a bit embarrassed.

"Look at me," he demands.

As soon as she does, he can see the truth of the whole thing. He wonders how he could have been so blind as to miss this all that time. He gives her a kiss that is so different from the ones that they just shared while they were making love. This one is gentle and romantic and sweet.

He pulls away and smiles at her, "You'd better not be messing with me."

She giggles in relief.

"So, I can keep coming over to send time with your kids, and have wine with you?" she asks timidly.

"Definitely."

"And is there going to be a repeat of what just happened?" she says, looking at the bed.

"Well, I'd like to think we're a bit too creative for a repeat, but there will definitely be something along those lines," Daniel says with a wide grin on his face.

"So we're together?" she asks.

He's touched by the worry that he sees in her eyes, "Yes, we're dating," he says, touching her cheek.

"Are we going to tell people?"

He gives her another one of his sweet and romantic kisses. "I'm not ashamed of you, Vala. We are going to tell the people we work for, my family, everyone."

She grins.

"We are however not going to make sexual comments around my kids, no matter how subtle you think you are being."

"Deal," she says, extending her hand in excitement.

He takes it, and shakes with a wide smile upon his face.