The Next Day
Vala smiles at the sleeping form of Daniel Jackson. It was different to watch him sleep than what she'd imagined it would be. It wasn't so much hot as… cute. When he was asleep, he looked incredibly young, and she was able to see that he resembled his sons.
"Darling," she whispers.
He opens his eyes, and he looks so confused for a minute that she's tempted to hand him his glasses to help him figure out exactly who he's in bed with. He figures it out all on his own then, and smiles up at her, "Morning." Then he rolls over, and glances at the clock. He groans when he sees the time, and moves to turn off some alarm that was no doubt about to go off.
"I just wanted to say goodbye before I left," she tells him.
The look of early morning confusion returns. Apparently he doesn't do well without the coffee "We have the day off, why are you going?"
"I thought I should probably leave before the children got up," she explains.
He grins at her, "I told you that I wasn't ashamed of you."
"I figured my being around in the morning would fall under the category of the banned sexual innuendos."
He shakes his head, "I'm not really a big fan of lying to kids or hiding things from kids. Janet had me do that with Cassie. We made sure we never had sex when she was in the same house as us until after we were married. She still ended up having sex when she was seventeen, so it didn't work."
"Seventeen?" Vala says scrunching up her face, "If only you could know all the things I had done by the time that I was seventeen."
Daniel closes his eyes, and actually looks a little nauseous. "Nope, don't want to hear about it. Olivia only thirteen, and she already has a boyfriend. Granted, they've never seen each other outside of school, except once when he came to meet me. Apparently when you are an eighth grader you don't actually spend time with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Anyway, I don't even want to think about Olivia having sex, at least not until she's twenty-five."
"What if she gets married before that?" Vala asks.
"She won't," Daniel says firmly.
"So, you're really ok with me staying?" she asks tentatively.
He leans over, and gives her a quick peck on the lips. It's very intimate, this kiss, because of how unsexy it is. His mouth has the distinct flavor of morning breath, at least in part because their amorous activities the night before prevented him from brushing his teeth. It's the sort of kiss that people give each other when they've been together for a long time. It's not usually the sort of thing people would share when they've only had one night together. Vala likes that they're already an old couple.
"I would love for you to stay all day. If you didn't have other plans for your day off. It's not a day off for the kids, so I've got to get everyone off to school. Then Cassie is bringing over her littlest munchkin. I'll have to pick Drew up in the middle of the day. I mean, it's a pretty bland day, but if you're willing to spend it with me?" he suddenly looks sheepish and insecure.
"I'd love it," she says grinning at him, and heading for the bathroom.
He glances at the clock, "Sorry, I've got to have first shower. If I don't shower now I won't get the chance until tomorrow. You can shower later when I'm taking the kids to school or whenever."
"We could shower together," she says, raising her eyebrows alluringly at him.
"I wish," he says with true longing in his voice, "But I just don't have the time."
As soon as he disappears into the bathroom, she gets dressed. Then she makes the bed. This only eats up a few minutes of time. It would have been even less if not for the rather acrobatic love making/wrestling match they'd engaged in in the middle of the night.
She stands in the bedroom, and tries to think of what a mother would do, a proper mother. Then she knows, she's got to make breakfast. Not that she's that familiar with Earth cooking. She lives on base, and eats at the mess hall. She'd helped with supper enough that she can manage the basics. She goes into the kitchen, and starts the coffee, she knows that Daniel cannot go long without that. Then she puts some toast in the toaster, and scrambles some eggs.
"Well, that's good enough, isn't it?" she asks the oven, as if was going to offer her approval for her domestic turn.
"I think it's wonderful. We normally just have cereal for breakfast," a voice says.
Vala turns to see Olivia standing there. She knows that Daniel approved of her staying, of his kids knowing that she stayed. Still, this is awkward, this is strange. She remembers when she was a little kid, and her step-mother used to have people spend the night. Of course, her step mother had been married.
Then again, Vala remembers with a pain, so was she.
"Morning," she offers.
"You spent the night," Olivia says. It's not a question, but Vala decides to nod anyway.
"Finally!" Olivia says in a relaxed voice.
"Your father and I have started dating," Vala offers.
Olivia takes the toast as it pops out of the toaster, and spreads peanut butter on it, "Thank goodness. I've been waiting for this to happen for a while."
Vala looks at her in surprise.
"If you're going to make us breakfast, as far as I'm concerned you can stay over every night."
Will enters the room rubbing his eyes. "Morning," Vala says, picking him up.
He doesn't appear to be surprised to see her there, so she puts a bib on him, and scoops eggs onto both of the children's plates. She's about to go look for Drew when Daniel comes out, holding the little boy.
"You make breakfast?" he says, sounding surprised.
Vala nods her head, her stomach twisting with the newness of the relationship. She is both excited, and a little scared she stepped over her bounds.
He leans forward, and pecks her lips. The intimacy again.
She was married to Tomin, and she never felt that close to him.
"Thanks for cooking," he says, strapping his son into a high chair.
"So, Dad, is Vala living here?" Olivia says with enthusiasm.
Daniel just about chokes on the coffee that Vala just handed him. "No, Vala isn't living here."
"She could," Olivia says, grinning at the two adults.
"Olivia," Daniel says putting his hands on her shoulders, "You're going to have to let the adults decide on the pace here."
Olivia nods.
"'Uice!" Drew demands.
Vala grabs the orange juice out of fridge, and pours it into a glass container.
"Plastic for toddlers," Daniel says pouring it into plastic container from another cupboard, "And he'll only drink half of this," Daniel says, drinking a sip out of what he left out of the glass container.
"Sorry," she says blushing.
"It's ok," he assures her. He delights in the newness, lets-figure-it-out together bashfulness that their relationship has.
Cassie walks into the room wearing a pants suit and high heals. Daniel remembers when she was eleven, and new to Earth, and asked her mother why on Earth she tortured herself with those horrid shoes.
His daughter wearing the uncomfortable shoes makes even less sense to him. Janet's reason for wearing high heals was for the most part her height, Cassie doesn't have any problems in that department.
Cassie freezes, and stares at the woman in the kitchen.
"Vala made breakfast," Olivia explains nonchalantly.
Cassie's eyebrows raise, "Vala drove over here at seven in the morning just to make breakfast?"
"Nope," Olivia says, summing up in that single word, and the smile that followed what could be written about in paragraphs and pages.
"Dad, can I speak to you for a minute?" Cassie asks, hanging a diaper bag off the edge of the chair.
"You kept saying we hada hurry so Liyah and I wouldn't get late for school," Keisha reminds her mother.
Cassie sighs, "She's right, I'll talk to you about this later," Cassie says, giving a glare to Vala as she spins out of the room with her daughter's in tow.
Daniel walks over, and wraps an arm around the small of Vala's back, and plants a quick kiss on her cheek before he goes back to preparing breakfast.
-0-
It wasn't exactly the romantic day after that Vala was used to having when she slept with a man for the first time. It was full of teddy bears, and laundry, and a very obvious game of hid-and-seek.
It was the best day that Vala had had in a very long time.
Still, she wasn't really prepared for the look on her face when Cassie returned from work to pick up her kids. Apparently, Cassie had used the day to work herself into an even heightened state of anger than she had had that morning.
"I need to speak to you alone," she hisses to her father.
"Olivia, can you watch the kiddos, we'll be up in our bedroom," Vala says.
"She's not coming," Cassie says, as if even saying Vala's name would cause damage to her tongue.
"Go ahead," Vala gives them permission to go without her even though her stomach is doing somersaults.
"You're sleeping with her?" Cassie asks horrified as soon as they have shut the door behind them.
"It's a recent development."
"I can't believe this, dad! I mean, I haven't made the best choices when it comes to men, but at least I didn't pick one that was dressed in some sort of leather sex costume."
"She hasn't worn that in a long time," Daniel defends.
"Seriously, dad! Do you really want her around your kids? Your grandkids? She's a criminal, for crying out loud! How irresponsible can you be?"
"You don't know her like I do, Cass; she's a really good person. She had some really bad circumstances, and she really didn't have a choice in the worst of her criminal actions."
"I know that whole bit about a society making a criminal, but there has to be some allowance for personal responsibility. I mean honestly, when you met her, she was beating you up! That should be some kind of sign that you shouldn't be with her!"
"I was beating her up, too," he says forcing the thought of last night's wrestling match from his mind. He knows that if he thinks of that, for even a second, he's going to smirk.
"Only because she was stealing your ship. Dad, I get it if you want to have a fling. Mom's been dead for a while, and no-one expects you to go on forever without someone. Just not with her! Not with that floosy! Not with someone you work for, and not with someone you take home to meet the kids."
"It's not a fling," Daniel says, his voice sounding surprisingly certainly in his ears. He isn't that sure, is he?
"Are you honestly deluded enough to think that you could ever have something serious with her?"
He thinks about Vala – Vala being burnt to death in his arms, Vala's only child trying to take over the whole universe, Vala crying in his room last night when he said many of the same things that Cassie is saying right now.
"I know that we can have a serious relationship," he tells his daughter.
Cassie plops down on the bed. This was not anything like what she'd imagined this talk going like while she'd fumed about it at work all day. "Serious like you think you're going to marry her?" she says, feeling deflated.
"I don't know. We're still early. Probably something like that someday, though," he says, without having to pause to consider it, like this idea was not at all new to them.
Cassie tries to picture herself with a step-mother. She tries to picture Vala Mal Doran as a respectable married women. She can't actually manage either.
"Well, I'm going to go on record saying this is a bad idea. This is just as bad as when I dated James," she says spinning out of the room.
Daniel stays for a couple of seconds after she leaves. He can't spare anymore, because he doesn't want Vala to worry that something Cassie said has stuck with him. None the less it has.
What if he is making a mistake? What if his heart is going to get broken? It's already been shattered so many times by death that he is pretty sure it cannot take one more crack, one more break, at least without shattering his entire soul.