"What's the emergency?" Sam asks when she arrives at Vala's quarters.
"Daniel gave me a drawer," Vala says breathlessly as she pulls the other women into her quarters, and shuts the door behind her.
"Ok, I'm really hoping there is some sort of a language barrier here, because I don't think you quite understand what the word 'emergency' means," Sam says with a roll of her eyes.
"I am in desperate need of girl talk. I don't know what this means in your Earth customs."
"I means that he likes you," Sam says, trying not to roll her eyes again.
"Right, but what am I supposed to fill the drawer with? Sex toys?"
"You have enough sex toys to fill a drawer?" Sam asks in shock. "No, Never mind, please don't answer that," she says when she sees that Vala is beginning to open her mouth. "You're supposed to fill the drawer with clothes and other stuff; you know, whatever would make you more comfortable. When a man gives you a drawer, he wants you to spend the night more often."
"More often? I'm already there three or four night a week," Vala says.
"Really?" Sam says with her eyebrows up.
"Is that unusual?" Vala says nervously.
"Not really, it's just a bit early. You guys haven't been together long."
"So, what exactly should I pack?" she says, looking at her closet.
"Well, what have you wished you had the morning after you wake up there?" Sam asks.
"Shampoo that wasn't man-flavored," Vala says quickly.
"Man-flavored?" Sam says with a cough.
"You know, it smells like only a man would wear it," Vala explains.
"Ah, well, pack your shampoo," Sam says, grabbing it out of the bathroom caddy, "Passionfruit; well, that isn't man-flavored at all."
"That's the only one I have, though. If I take it to Daniel's, I'll have no shampoo here."
"Let me get this straight, you spend more time there than here, right?" Vala nods, "So why don't you bring it back here when you're not there? Or buy another? What else?"
"Make-up," Vala says with decision, opening a drawer full of the stuff.
"Looks like you have enough of that to divide," Sam says with a laugh.
"I don't have many clothes, besides my BDUs, and some leather things Daniel told me I wasn't allowed to wear in front of his children," Vala says.
"I think you need a shopping trip then," Sam says.
"Really?" Vala asks, bouncing.
"Really, I could use one too. It's been a long time since I've gone shopping without kids in tow as well."
-0-
"Hey, Vala," Daniel says as he opens up the door for her, "I thought you weren't coming here tonight."
"I just did a bit of shopping with Samantha," she says, pulling bags into the living room, and going out to the step to pull in another arm full of bags.
"A little?" Daniel says incredulously.
"Maybe more than a little. See, I started packing for the drawer, and then I discovered that I really had very little clothes besides BDUs. You know, I've been borrowing your things or wearing BDUs. I just wanted… to look nice," she says.
He picks up half of the packages that she put down, and starts to carry them to his bedroom. "You always look nice."
"Well, thank you, but I think I would look nicer in clothes that I actually picked out."
"Is it something that I would allow you to wear in front of my children?"
"Sam approved it all for children. Well, apart from the stuff in this bag, and that isn't really intended for anyone's eyes but yours," she says, shaking a Victoria Secret bag.
Daniel giggles, and Vala drops down the bags on the floor of the room, going to open the drawer.
"There is something in here already," Vala says. She already didn't think that it would all fit in the drawer. Now he's filled it up again. He's taking back her place in his life.
"I got those for you," he says.
She pulls them out, "What are they?"
"Pajamas, they're to wear to bed," he explains.
"But I don't wear anything to bed," she says.
"Right, and that is kind of what I want to correct," he says.
"Excuse me," she says with her hands on her hips. She had never had someone try to put clothes ON her before.
"You get cold," he says with an eye roll at how insulted she became.
"Then you turn up the heat for me."
"And then I roast."
She giggles, relieved that he hasn't tired of her naked body quite yet, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"There was a beautiful naked girl in my bed, who was I to complain?" he shrugs.
She kisses him for the compliment, and then asks, "What made you tell me now?"
"Well, I didn't want to be roasting in my own bed forever."
She grins at the word 'forever'.
She bought too many things. Even when he re-arranges things a bit to give her a drawer in the bathroom as well, there are quite a few things left in the bags when she's done.
"If you don't mind, I'll just leave them in the bags, that won't hurt anything will it?" she asks.
He smiles, and tells her it won't. In his heart though, he knows it's about time he gave this women some closet space. He's held on to Janet's things long enough.
The Next Day
Maybe he would have been better off doing this in a phone call. After all, Cassie might not want any of these things, and then he would have wasted all the time that it took to pack them up and bring them across town. He knows that wouldn't have worked out well, though, the idea that he was presevering them for his daughter, instead of discarding them for his girlfriend, was the only way that he had managed to pack them up in the first place. If she didn't want them, well, at least they were out of the closet now.
"Hey dad, what's all that?" Cassie asks looking down at the boxes.
"It's some of your mother's things. I thought you might want to have them," he says.
She looks at him with a choke in her throat. She opens one of the boxes, expecting to see some sort of keepsake, perhaps a box of pictures. When she sees clothes, her heart almost breaks.
"This isn't about Mom! This is about you clearing a place for your whore!"
"She isn't a whore!" Daniel says angrily, pushing the boxes into his daughter's apartment, and shutting the door behind him to prevent the neighbors form hearing their argument.
"So you don't deny that you're casting off mom's stuff for that harlot's? What if I don't take them? Is your next stop is goodwill? Out with the old and in with the slut?"
"You really need to stop calling Vala those nasty names, and I was never going to get rid of your mother's stuff. Although, it's not like it isn't long past time. If you didn't want it, I was going to put in the basement next to all the other stuff of hers that we shouldn't have kept. Like a used napkin that she used the day before she died that I dug out of the trash in her office. Vala is not a replacement for your mother."
"Damn right she's not," Cassie says vehemently.
"I could never replace your mother," Daniel says softly.
Cassie feels her anger losing steam, but she manages to get in one more angry shot before she is out completely, "You've certainly replaced her in your closet, and in your bed."
Daniel is silent for a couple of seconds, trying to figure out how much to tell his daughter. How much she is going to be able to understand. Some of it she is still too young for, even though she's been acting like an adult for a while now, the rest of it she's just too angry to understand. In the end, he decides to tell her the whole truth unabridged. The parts that she isn't ready for quite yet can lay in her mind and grow until she is ready to hear them.
"Just because Vala is in the same physical place, doesn't mean that she's taking up the same emotional place your mother is. When Sha're died, I thought I would never love again. She begged me, with her dying breath, to be happy again. It still felt like betrayal when I met your mom. Every first that I ever had with your mom felt like I was cheating on Sha're. Can you imagine what would have happened if I gave into those feelings? Can you imagine what I would have missed? I would have missed being in love with the best women that I have ever known, and I would have missed being a parent the four most amazing children ever. I wouldn't be your father if I had ignored Sha're's wish. I would have missed out on the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved Sha're. I loved your mother too. But they're both gone, and I'm not going to let the love I have for dead women prevent me from loving a live women."
"I just don't want you to forget mom," Cassie sobs.
"Oh, sweetheart. I only knew Sha're for a year, and I haven't forgotten her, no matter how much I loved your mother. I'm never going to forget your mother, not with all the wonderful years we had together."
"I just don't want you to end up loving Vala better than you did mom. Like you ended up loving mom more than you did Sha're."
"I didn't love you mother more than I loved Sha're. I loved them differently, that is true. Just like I love each of my kids differently than each other. But I can't say that I love any of my kids more or less than another one. Just like I could never pick out a wife that I loved more than any other wife. I swear to you Cass, no matter how much I fall in love with Vala, it will never make me feel anything less for your mother."
Cassie smiles a little at that, much comforted. "Ok, well you mentioned something before about how you are glad that you ended up with mom so that you could have a lot more kids. I'm hoping that you are not going to feel glad you ended up with Vala for the same reason."
Daniel laughs, "Four kids and three grandkids at my age, I'm pretty sure that my childrearing days are over."
Cassie smiles at this, and the two of them go in for a nice long hug.
He pulls away, and looks down at the boxes, "So, am I going to leave this stuff here, or am I going to take it back to the house with me? It's not like either of my daughters is ever going to be small enough that you can get away with wearing her clothes."
"She was a wee little women, wasn't she," Cassie says with a fond smile.
"But you never could have told it, because of the heals! I couldn't part with them all. I kept the biggest pair of her 'work heals' in the closet with me. I was afraid if I let them out of my sight for very long I would forget how she used to run down the hallway in them. I could never believe it. She had to have been defying a few laws of physics in order not to trip!"
"It's not like enough laws of physics don't get violated where you work," Cassie adds with a giggle.
"So, I'm taking these with me?" he asks.
Cassie nods her head, and gives him a kiss on her cheek.
"So, how are things going with you? Did you have any awkward nanny encounters?"
Cassie blushes, "Actually, everything is going fine in that department. Actually, Rya'c and are dating. Well, no, courting."
"Is there a difference?" Daniel asks with an eyebrow raise.
"Courting is way more serious. You only do it when you think there is a good chance that you're going to end up married to someone."
"Isn't that what dating is?" Daniel asks. He did, after all marry two out of the four women that he has ever dated, and that number just might increase before his life is over.
"Well, not for most people, you know. We've been doing a lot of this meditation where you get to touch each other's souls, and I'm pretty sure that we're meant for one another."
"And you get that from meditation?" Daniel asks skeptically.
"Of course, how else would you figure it out?"
"Well, you could have a conversation with the man before you thoughts start to turn to marriage."
"You don't get it, when you meditate with someone, tek-lo-reem, it is way deeper than conversation. You can figure out all sort of things that way that you could never figure out if you were just talking to someone."
"So you just sit there, and look deeply into one another's eyes, and decide that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone?"
"Of course not, our eyes are closed," Cassie says without the slightest hint of irony that Daniel felt like belonged behind the words.
"Cassie, marriage or even dating is a really serious thing. You have to talk to someone, get to know their thoughts, and opinions. You can't just jump into things."
"You should talk, I've known Rya'c for a lot longer than you've known Vala, and we aren't even sleeping together."
"Well, I'm not planning on marrying Vala."
Cassie stares at him in surprise, "Not ever?"
He shakes his head.
"Does she know that?"
Another shake of the head.
"Well, she probably deserves to."