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Title: Build Your Walls, I'll Tear Them Down Brick By Brick
Category: Daniel/Vala, Team (SG-1)
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 2,741
Spoilers: None
Your name:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Your recipient:suzy_queue
Request details: Snow! Vala (and Daniel) playing in the snow. Credit cards. Bantering.
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sg_rarepairings. Thanks be to shutthef_up for the awesome and awesomely *fast* beta.
“Looks like it snowed overnight,” Daniel comments as he emerges from Jack’s cabin, shrugging on a coat. While Jack sold the house, he was never going to let go of his beloved cabin and had even gone so far as to let SG-1 use it whenever they wanted so it stayed lived-in while he was stuck in Washington.
It was Cameron and Vala’s first visit.
“It did what?” Vala asks, stepping out from behind Daniel and wrinkling her nose. “What’s with all the white stuff?”
“It’s snow… you do know snow, right?” Daniel turns to look at her, wondering if she’s just pulling his leg but she seems genuinely mystified.
“Oh, snow. Of course,” Vala replies airily in the tone Daniel has come to recognise as a bluff. He grins despite himself. He’s looking at a drift that has buried most of the stairs leading up to the cabin and knows that it’s pretty lightly packed.
“Go ahead. Snow is perfectly solid,” he invites with a sweep of his arm. “But, you knew that.”
Vala twirls on her toes and pokes her tongue out at Daniel as she steps off the porch backwards and goes down to the waist in the slushy pile. She screeches, flailing her arms about and Daniel would help her if he weren’t doubled over laughing so hard.
“Wha’ happened?” Cameron cries, tumbling out the front door in only his jeans and one boot. His hair is sticking straight up on one side and plastered to his face on the other. Between Vala squirming around like an overturned turtle and that, Daniel desperately wishes for a camera.
“Guys, it’s really early,” Sam grumbles, emerging wrapped in a quilt. She eyes Vala, looks at Daniel who is still chuckling and rolls her eyes, heading back inside.
Vala has stopped squirming and is looking up at Daniel and Cameron with big, shiny eyes. “I can’t feel my legs,” she says in a shaky voice. Suddenly it’s not funny because she looks scared and Daniel steps carefully to the edge of the porch and reaches a hand out to her.
He sees the grin on her face just before a handful of snow is smashed into his face, most of it going up his nose.
“Sucker!” she crows, pumping her fists in glee. Daniel knows she would be doing her very special Vala victory dance if she weren’t still buried up to the hips.
000
Being half-buried in snow for the better part of the morning means Vala calls the best spot in front of the fire that evening.
“Tell me again why I got presents,” Vala says, eyeing the pile around her. Daniel had expected her to tear them open as soon as they were handed over but she piled them neatly, making a small wall around herself. Sam and Cameron had gone to bed when she still hadn’t opened them by midnight. “Not that I mind,” she clarifies, picking up one of the smaller packages and hugging it to her.
“It’s your birthday.”
“It really isn’t,” she says, but bites her lip and curls her arms protectively around the rest of the gifts as if Daniel would take them away with her admission.
“Alright. Tell me when your birthday is then,” Daniel says instead, scooching lower into Jack’s old leather armchair, knowing that he’s messing with a butt groove that has been worn in over years of very studious lounging.
Vala’s teeth press harder into the flesh of her lower lip until the skin goes white and then pink again. “I don’t…” She makes a frustrated noise and thumps a fist to her knee. “In amongst all the being taken as a host and torture, there’s some things I lost. Besides, your Earth calendar makes absolutely no sense. You basically started counting from when some guy was born.”
Daniel opens his mouth to correct her but she’s looking so forlorn that he resists the temptation, knowing he can probably blame Cameron for the overly-simple explanation of the modern calendar.
“Well, we allocated you a day,” Daniel says and then winces, because it all sounds so horribly cold when he says it out loud. It had seemed like a nice sentiment at the time but now he’s thinking they probably should have asked rather than dragging Vala up to Jack’s cabin and just springing it on her. Cameron was sure that Vala would love the whole surprise and mystery of it, but every now and again Daniel wonders if any of them know Vala very well at all.
She plays a convincingly well-adjusted, albeit opportunistic, person but underneath it all, Daniel’s not so sure.
“You can keep the presents. We don’t have to call it your birthday if it bothers you,” Daniel offers gently but Vala has raised an eyebrow and a smile is creeping across her features.
“I get presents every year at the same time?” she asks, something sly in her voice and Daniel grins.
Back to the Vala he knows.
He wonders why he’s disappointed.
000
“You know that’s just plain insane right?” Cameron leans into Daniel to whisper and Daniel shrugs, watching Vala and Sam with their heads together at the kitchen table, a glossy magazine in front of them.
“Landry okayed it and any big purchases have to be approved,” Daniel says.
Vala had finally opened all her presents and had exclaimed over every one, but the single envelope remaining when she was done had yielded a shiny new credit card had been an obvious favorite. She’d objected at first to the card being in the name of ‘Vala Jones’ but Sam had distracted her handily with a gift catalogue foraged from the pile of junk mail on the floor of her car.
“She’s the kind of gal that could ring up millions on little things,” Cameron mused, reaching for Daniel’s open beer bottle. Daniel slapped his hand away with a small grunt of protest.
“She’ll have a limit.”
“Since when has that ever stopped her?” Cameron asked and Daniel couldn’t help but grin in agreement.
000
“I bought you pyjamas,” Daniel said when he woke up to find Vala sitting astride him wearing only a black SGC t-shirt and some pretty interesting boy-cut underwear an electric blue in color that Daniel was definitely not looking at.
“I know. I love them.”
“They’re for wearing,” Daniel points out, moving his hands to Vala’s sides to shove her off and realising his mistake when she curls forward so his arms end up going around her instead.
“I did. I wore them and then I had an unfortunate accident with some red wine so I had to take them off again.”
Daniel knows he should be getting out from underneath Vala, but she’s warm and her dark hair is fanned on either side of his neck and it all just seems too hard. He realises his hands are still hovering in the air and so drops them to her back. She makes a small surprised noise like she was really expecting him to boot her out of bed like usual and when her nose presses into the side of his throat he just… lets it.
He feels the tension that vibrates through her body even though she’s trying to pretend that she’s relaxed. Her hands are fisted against his sides until the fingers uncurl and just happen to brush at the strip of skin between Daniel’s t-shirt and the top of the sweats he wore to bed.
He buries his hands in the thick mane of her hair and presses small circles into her scalp. The surprised noise re-emerges but this time there’s a curl of pleasure on the end of it. Vala goes completely boneless, her fingers stopping their insinuation under Daniels’ clothes and just rest against his ribs, little ovals of warmth.
“Are you having a good birthday?” he asks as she slides sideways, curling against his side. His hands stay in her hair as she fits her head under his chin.
000
Sam leans across Daniel to dig her spoon into his cereal and he just watches, knowing from long experience that what’s his is hers.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asks before filling her mouth with her spoon and his breakfast and he raises an eyebrow at her, mid-yawn.
“Watching you eat my breakfast?” he prompts and she gives him the ‘don’t be dense’ look she usually reserves for Jack and more often, these days, Cameron.
“She might play tough but she’s pretty fragile.”
“Since when are you an expert?” Daniel huffs but he can’t be annoyed because he knows Sam cares about him and has come to care about Vala and is doing him the courtesy of voicing her concern. She wants him to reassure her and trusts that he will.
Daniel isn’t so sure he can, because really, he doesn’t know.
“We’re all a little broken,” Daniel comments dryly and it’s Sam’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You, me, Jack, Teal’c. Hell, Mitchell’s only been with us a little over a year and already he’s got a couple of dings.”
“Daniel…” Sam trails off, bringing her finger to her mouth to chew instead of finishing whatever thought she’s had. She never bites her nails, just the skin around them.
“I haven’t done anything,” Daniel tries but knows that won’t fly either.
“You just… you let people in but then you back off and they end up wondering what they did wrong to make you pull away,” Sam says, setting her spoon down on the counter and then putting her index finger on the end to twirl it in lazy circles. Her mouth has tightened down to a small line.
“Sam-“
“We’re all a little broken,” she says, repeating his words back to him and Daniel lets his head drop to the counter. He’s pulled away from everyone, he knows that but being aware of a problem and how to fix it are two very different things. He’s felt removed from people since… he’s not really sure when. He just knows that it happened slowly but steadily, like a slide down a muddy hill.
Then came Vala, big grin, black hair and the way she’d barrelled into his life.
000
“Sam and Vala have painted one of the bedrooms pink. That’s alright isn’t it?”
“You’re a funny guy.” Jack sounds tinny and too far away on the other end of the phone. Daniel, not for the first time, feels the pang of simply missing someone.
“I thought you were going to make it.”
“I can’t get away. I thought I could but… well, you know. Fate of the world and all that.”
“Ah yes.” Daniel tucks the phone between his chin and shoulder and pulls himself onto one of the high kitchen stools. The remnants of their lunch was still on the counter and he picks at a salad that’s gone limp.
“How’s everything going?”
“By everything you mean…?”
“I’m just asking a question, Daniel,” Jack says in his most innocent tone and Daniel rolls his eyes, knowing that Jack is probably imagining him doing it anyway.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let Sam talk to you first.”
“Way I heard it, there was no letting involved. I think I heard the sound of a killer wedgie.”
“I still can’t find my underwear.”
Jack let out a bark of laughter and Daniel just listened to it. He swivelled on his stool until he could see through the kitchen window to the back patio and the lake beyond. Sam was standing with one hand shading her eyes, watching something. He couldn’t see Vala or Cameron.
“Just be careful kiddo. Not all of us can be Kirk.”
“This is not just me screwing the alien priestess,” Daniel snapped, feeling the first stirrings of irritation that despite the distance, he still got ganged up on by Jack and Sam as a team.
“What is it then?”
Daniel paused, his mouth open, at a loss. Cameron bobbed into view and Sam dropped her arm so she could touch his shoulder. He watched how they talked, easy with each other and wondered why these days he felt like he was talking to people through a barrier, a kind of screwed up filter so nothing he ever said came out quite right.
“You didn’t exactly approve of the whole Sha’re thing at first,” Daniel pointed out and he could picture the way Jack was rubbing a hand over his face.
“Vala isn’t Sha’re,” Jack said in a careful tone, like he knew he had to tread carefully.
“Do you think… does everyone think that’s what this is? That I’m trying to recapture what I had with my wife?” Irritation is spiralling into anger and Daniel really doesn’t want to have this argument. “They’re nothing alike.”
“Exotic, from another world, pretty much flung themselves at you from the first moment they met you. Yep, poles apart.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Daniel snaps. He sees Sam looking at him through the window and he tries to smooth his face out because he can see how her brow has wrinkled in concern.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business anyway,” Jack says quickly, probably sensing that he’s stepped over some invisible line in the sand but Daniel figures if anything, he always had a knack for getting Jack to stumble right over it.
“No, I’m sorry. I… really don’t know what I’m doing. She’s… a little overwhelming,” Daniel says.
“If she fits, then that’s all that’s important,” Jack says and Daniel can’t help the smile that surfaces. They bicker and make up and then Jack always says something that reminds Daniel that no one has ever gotten him quite like an Air Force General with bad knees who, given any normal circumstances, he never would have even met.
“I’m starting to think that she does,” Daniel admits and it’s strangely liberating.
000
“Knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone,” Vala sings under her breath and what amuses Daniel the most is that she’s singing it to the tune of Happy Birthday.
He needs to remind Cameron that it isn’t nice to tease the aliens.
She’s sitting on the living room on the floor, her presents and the wrapping paper spread out on the coffee table. She’s carefully re-wrapping her gifts, even the ruined pyjamas. Daniel drops down onto the floor on the other side of the table, grimacing when his knees pop.
“Can we stop and get more of this paper on the way home?” Vala asks, shaking a piece of brightly coloured paper that has puppies and party hats on it.
“I guess. Why?”
“I’m going to wrap everything I own,” Vala says with a shrug, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world.
“You know, you’re only supposed to unwrap presents the once,” Daniel points out, tearing a piece of sticky tape off the roll Vala is using and wrapping it around the end of his finger, tight enough that the tip goes blood red in only a few seconds.
“Who says?” Vala challenges and Daniel chuckles.
There is no logic quite like Vala-logic.
“People are concerned,” Daniel says and Vala pauses in her wrapping.
“Concerned?”
“About us.”
“About us?”
“Are you going to keep doing that?”
“Absolutely,” Vala nods, tipping Daniel the full-teeth grin that always makes him think of the Cheshire cat. “Look,” she says when Daniel throws up his hands. “I’m not a subtle person. I like the way you look and wish to rub my bits on your bits and if anyone has a problem with that, I don’t give a damn.”
Daniel’s mouth drops open and all he can think to say is, “You’ve been hanging out with marines too long.”
“You’re a good man. You can be a little… preachy, but a girl can appreciate passion.” Vala waggles her eyebrows and then resumes her wrapping, lower lip caught in her teeth in concentration.
“Did we just decide something?” Daniel asks, a little stunned.
“I don’t know about you, but I decided something quite a while ago,” Vala says without looking up.
He watches her rewrap presents until Sam calls them for dinner. When Vala stands, brushing off her pants, she reaches out and twines her fingers with Daniel’s.
He lets her, knowing that it doesn’t matter that they’re both a little broken, because that way they fit together.
Category: Daniel/Vala, Team (SG-1)
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 2,741
Spoilers: None
Your name:
kellifer_ficYour recipient:
suzy_queueRequest details: Snow! Vala (and Daniel) playing in the snow. Credit cards. Bantering.
Notes: Written for
sg_rarepairings. Thanks be to shutthef_up for the awesome and awesomely *fast* beta.“Looks like it snowed overnight,” Daniel comments as he emerges from Jack’s cabin, shrugging on a coat. While Jack sold the house, he was never going to let go of his beloved cabin and had even gone so far as to let SG-1 use it whenever they wanted so it stayed lived-in while he was stuck in Washington.
It was Cameron and Vala’s first visit.
“It did what?” Vala asks, stepping out from behind Daniel and wrinkling her nose. “What’s with all the white stuff?”
“It’s snow… you do know snow, right?” Daniel turns to look at her, wondering if she’s just pulling his leg but she seems genuinely mystified.
“Oh, snow. Of course,” Vala replies airily in the tone Daniel has come to recognise as a bluff. He grins despite himself. He’s looking at a drift that has buried most of the stairs leading up to the cabin and knows that it’s pretty lightly packed.
“Go ahead. Snow is perfectly solid,” he invites with a sweep of his arm. “But, you knew that.”
Vala twirls on her toes and pokes her tongue out at Daniel as she steps off the porch backwards and goes down to the waist in the slushy pile. She screeches, flailing her arms about and Daniel would help her if he weren’t doubled over laughing so hard.
“Wha’ happened?” Cameron cries, tumbling out the front door in only his jeans and one boot. His hair is sticking straight up on one side and plastered to his face on the other. Between Vala squirming around like an overturned turtle and that, Daniel desperately wishes for a camera.
“Guys, it’s really early,” Sam grumbles, emerging wrapped in a quilt. She eyes Vala, looks at Daniel who is still chuckling and rolls her eyes, heading back inside.
Vala has stopped squirming and is looking up at Daniel and Cameron with big, shiny eyes. “I can’t feel my legs,” she says in a shaky voice. Suddenly it’s not funny because she looks scared and Daniel steps carefully to the edge of the porch and reaches a hand out to her.
He sees the grin on her face just before a handful of snow is smashed into his face, most of it going up his nose.
“Sucker!” she crows, pumping her fists in glee. Daniel knows she would be doing her very special Vala victory dance if she weren’t still buried up to the hips.
Being half-buried in snow for the better part of the morning means Vala calls the best spot in front of the fire that evening.
“Tell me again why I got presents,” Vala says, eyeing the pile around her. Daniel had expected her to tear them open as soon as they were handed over but she piled them neatly, making a small wall around herself. Sam and Cameron had gone to bed when she still hadn’t opened them by midnight. “Not that I mind,” she clarifies, picking up one of the smaller packages and hugging it to her.
“It’s your birthday.”
“It really isn’t,” she says, but bites her lip and curls her arms protectively around the rest of the gifts as if Daniel would take them away with her admission.
“Alright. Tell me when your birthday is then,” Daniel says instead, scooching lower into Jack’s old leather armchair, knowing that he’s messing with a butt groove that has been worn in over years of very studious lounging.
Vala’s teeth press harder into the flesh of her lower lip until the skin goes white and then pink again. “I don’t…” She makes a frustrated noise and thumps a fist to her knee. “In amongst all the being taken as a host and torture, there’s some things I lost. Besides, your Earth calendar makes absolutely no sense. You basically started counting from when some guy was born.”
Daniel opens his mouth to correct her but she’s looking so forlorn that he resists the temptation, knowing he can probably blame Cameron for the overly-simple explanation of the modern calendar.
“Well, we allocated you a day,” Daniel says and then winces, because it all sounds so horribly cold when he says it out loud. It had seemed like a nice sentiment at the time but now he’s thinking they probably should have asked rather than dragging Vala up to Jack’s cabin and just springing it on her. Cameron was sure that Vala would love the whole surprise and mystery of it, but every now and again Daniel wonders if any of them know Vala very well at all.
She plays a convincingly well-adjusted, albeit opportunistic, person but underneath it all, Daniel’s not so sure.
“You can keep the presents. We don’t have to call it your birthday if it bothers you,” Daniel offers gently but Vala has raised an eyebrow and a smile is creeping across her features.
“I get presents every year at the same time?” she asks, something sly in her voice and Daniel grins.
Back to the Vala he knows.
He wonders why he’s disappointed.
“You know that’s just plain insane right?” Cameron leans into Daniel to whisper and Daniel shrugs, watching Vala and Sam with their heads together at the kitchen table, a glossy magazine in front of them.
“Landry okayed it and any big purchases have to be approved,” Daniel says.
Vala had finally opened all her presents and had exclaimed over every one, but the single envelope remaining when she was done had yielded a shiny new credit card had been an obvious favorite. She’d objected at first to the card being in the name of ‘Vala Jones’ but Sam had distracted her handily with a gift catalogue foraged from the pile of junk mail on the floor of her car.
“She’s the kind of gal that could ring up millions on little things,” Cameron mused, reaching for Daniel’s open beer bottle. Daniel slapped his hand away with a small grunt of protest.
“She’ll have a limit.”
“Since when has that ever stopped her?” Cameron asked and Daniel couldn’t help but grin in agreement.
“I bought you pyjamas,” Daniel said when he woke up to find Vala sitting astride him wearing only a black SGC t-shirt and some pretty interesting boy-cut underwear an electric blue in color that Daniel was definitely not looking at.
“I know. I love them.”
“They’re for wearing,” Daniel points out, moving his hands to Vala’s sides to shove her off and realising his mistake when she curls forward so his arms end up going around her instead.
“I did. I wore them and then I had an unfortunate accident with some red wine so I had to take them off again.”
Daniel knows he should be getting out from underneath Vala, but she’s warm and her dark hair is fanned on either side of his neck and it all just seems too hard. He realises his hands are still hovering in the air and so drops them to her back. She makes a small surprised noise like she was really expecting him to boot her out of bed like usual and when her nose presses into the side of his throat he just… lets it.
He feels the tension that vibrates through her body even though she’s trying to pretend that she’s relaxed. Her hands are fisted against his sides until the fingers uncurl and just happen to brush at the strip of skin between Daniel’s t-shirt and the top of the sweats he wore to bed.
He buries his hands in the thick mane of her hair and presses small circles into her scalp. The surprised noise re-emerges but this time there’s a curl of pleasure on the end of it. Vala goes completely boneless, her fingers stopping their insinuation under Daniels’ clothes and just rest against his ribs, little ovals of warmth.
“Are you having a good birthday?” he asks as she slides sideways, curling against his side. His hands stay in her hair as she fits her head under his chin.
Sam leans across Daniel to dig her spoon into his cereal and he just watches, knowing from long experience that what’s his is hers.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asks before filling her mouth with her spoon and his breakfast and he raises an eyebrow at her, mid-yawn.
“Watching you eat my breakfast?” he prompts and she gives him the ‘don’t be dense’ look she usually reserves for Jack and more often, these days, Cameron.
“She might play tough but she’s pretty fragile.”
“Since when are you an expert?” Daniel huffs but he can’t be annoyed because he knows Sam cares about him and has come to care about Vala and is doing him the courtesy of voicing her concern. She wants him to reassure her and trusts that he will.
Daniel isn’t so sure he can, because really, he doesn’t know.
“We’re all a little broken,” Daniel comments dryly and it’s Sam’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You, me, Jack, Teal’c. Hell, Mitchell’s only been with us a little over a year and already he’s got a couple of dings.”
“Daniel…” Sam trails off, bringing her finger to her mouth to chew instead of finishing whatever thought she’s had. She never bites her nails, just the skin around them.
“I haven’t done anything,” Daniel tries but knows that won’t fly either.
“You just… you let people in but then you back off and they end up wondering what they did wrong to make you pull away,” Sam says, setting her spoon down on the counter and then putting her index finger on the end to twirl it in lazy circles. Her mouth has tightened down to a small line.
“Sam-“
“We’re all a little broken,” she says, repeating his words back to him and Daniel lets his head drop to the counter. He’s pulled away from everyone, he knows that but being aware of a problem and how to fix it are two very different things. He’s felt removed from people since… he’s not really sure when. He just knows that it happened slowly but steadily, like a slide down a muddy hill.
Then came Vala, big grin, black hair and the way she’d barrelled into his life.
“Sam and Vala have painted one of the bedrooms pink. That’s alright isn’t it?”
“You’re a funny guy.” Jack sounds tinny and too far away on the other end of the phone. Daniel, not for the first time, feels the pang of simply missing someone.
“I thought you were going to make it.”
“I can’t get away. I thought I could but… well, you know. Fate of the world and all that.”
“Ah yes.” Daniel tucks the phone between his chin and shoulder and pulls himself onto one of the high kitchen stools. The remnants of their lunch was still on the counter and he picks at a salad that’s gone limp.
“How’s everything going?”
“By everything you mean…?”
“I’m just asking a question, Daniel,” Jack says in his most innocent tone and Daniel rolls his eyes, knowing that Jack is probably imagining him doing it anyway.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let Sam talk to you first.”
“Way I heard it, there was no letting involved. I think I heard the sound of a killer wedgie.”
“I still can’t find my underwear.”
Jack let out a bark of laughter and Daniel just listened to it. He swivelled on his stool until he could see through the kitchen window to the back patio and the lake beyond. Sam was standing with one hand shading her eyes, watching something. He couldn’t see Vala or Cameron.
“Just be careful kiddo. Not all of us can be Kirk.”
“This is not just me screwing the alien priestess,” Daniel snapped, feeling the first stirrings of irritation that despite the distance, he still got ganged up on by Jack and Sam as a team.
“What is it then?”
Daniel paused, his mouth open, at a loss. Cameron bobbed into view and Sam dropped her arm so she could touch his shoulder. He watched how they talked, easy with each other and wondered why these days he felt like he was talking to people through a barrier, a kind of screwed up filter so nothing he ever said came out quite right.
“You didn’t exactly approve of the whole Sha’re thing at first,” Daniel pointed out and he could picture the way Jack was rubbing a hand over his face.
“Vala isn’t Sha’re,” Jack said in a careful tone, like he knew he had to tread carefully.
“Do you think… does everyone think that’s what this is? That I’m trying to recapture what I had with my wife?” Irritation is spiralling into anger and Daniel really doesn’t want to have this argument. “They’re nothing alike.”
“Exotic, from another world, pretty much flung themselves at you from the first moment they met you. Yep, poles apart.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Daniel snaps. He sees Sam looking at him through the window and he tries to smooth his face out because he can see how her brow has wrinkled in concern.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business anyway,” Jack says quickly, probably sensing that he’s stepped over some invisible line in the sand but Daniel figures if anything, he always had a knack for getting Jack to stumble right over it.
“No, I’m sorry. I… really don’t know what I’m doing. She’s… a little overwhelming,” Daniel says.
“If she fits, then that’s all that’s important,” Jack says and Daniel can’t help the smile that surfaces. They bicker and make up and then Jack always says something that reminds Daniel that no one has ever gotten him quite like an Air Force General with bad knees who, given any normal circumstances, he never would have even met.
“I’m starting to think that she does,” Daniel admits and it’s strangely liberating.
“Knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone,” Vala sings under her breath and what amuses Daniel the most is that she’s singing it to the tune of Happy Birthday.
He needs to remind Cameron that it isn’t nice to tease the aliens.
She’s sitting on the living room on the floor, her presents and the wrapping paper spread out on the coffee table. She’s carefully re-wrapping her gifts, even the ruined pyjamas. Daniel drops down onto the floor on the other side of the table, grimacing when his knees pop.
“Can we stop and get more of this paper on the way home?” Vala asks, shaking a piece of brightly coloured paper that has puppies and party hats on it.
“I guess. Why?”
“I’m going to wrap everything I own,” Vala says with a shrug, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world.
“You know, you’re only supposed to unwrap presents the once,” Daniel points out, tearing a piece of sticky tape off the roll Vala is using and wrapping it around the end of his finger, tight enough that the tip goes blood red in only a few seconds.
“Who says?” Vala challenges and Daniel chuckles.
There is no logic quite like Vala-logic.
“People are concerned,” Daniel says and Vala pauses in her wrapping.
“Concerned?”
“About us.”
“About us?”
“Are you going to keep doing that?”
“Absolutely,” Vala nods, tipping Daniel the full-teeth grin that always makes him think of the Cheshire cat. “Look,” she says when Daniel throws up his hands. “I’m not a subtle person. I like the way you look and wish to rub my bits on your bits and if anyone has a problem with that, I don’t give a damn.”
Daniel’s mouth drops open and all he can think to say is, “You’ve been hanging out with marines too long.”
“You’re a good man. You can be a little… preachy, but a girl can appreciate passion.” Vala waggles her eyebrows and then resumes her wrapping, lower lip caught in her teeth in concentration.
“Did we just decide something?” Daniel asks, a little stunned.
“I don’t know about you, but I decided something quite a while ago,” Vala says without looking up.
He watches her rewrap presents until Sam calls them for dinner. When Vala stands, brushing off her pants, she reaches out and twines her fingers with Daniel’s.
He lets her, knowing that it doesn’t matter that they’re both a little broken, because that way they fit together.
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