TITLE: Once There Was a Night
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Dec. 11, 2004
NOTES: I was only able to post a little bit of the story that I meant to be Cofax's birthday story, and everyone was so excited to see some Sam/Daniel that I dug out this snippet that had appeared one late night. Takes place between S7's Lost City II and S8's New Order.
DISCLAIMER: Read




They ended up half in a closet, which made a certain sort of sense and drew a snicker from them both once they disentangled and noticed.

At least it was her closet, Daniel noted, sitting back on his heels with his back to her bed. Sam stood and pulled on her shirt without asking him to reach behind the door for her bra. If they'd ended up in his, he explained, tugging up his pants, one of them would have probably found themselves impaled on something painful, like the etched rhinoceros horn that he'd propped in one of his old boots because he never had found the stand that went with it in all those boxes.

Her hands scrubbing through her hair, Sam raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

Daniel caught his breath and the less straightforward interpretation of his babbling. He shut up.

About a minute later, he located his shoes on opposite sides of the entryway. Their drunken positions -- one was perched on his jacket -- dredged up a memory of hopping, almost stumbling when Sam yanked at his collar, of his desperation to not lose contact with the peppermint-sharp taste of her. Then he picked up both shoe and jacket, and the crinkle of a clear wrapper drifting to the floor brought with its fall the realization that it could have been either of them who deposited that sweetness there; she had forced a candy into his mouth, pushing it between his lips in the first step down this path -- or the most immediate one, anyway -- as a slick distraction from the blatantly incorrect character carved into the restaurant door.

While bending down to pull the left shoe from under the side table, Daniel noticed that he hadn't made it out of his socks.

Stepping carefully into the kitchen, he watched Sam watching the coffee pot begin to boil, her back as straight and loose as ever as she leaned against the tall island. He couldn't see her face.

...bright eyes meeting his while she sinks down and down onto him...cheeks flushing hotter when his hands cover and then slide hers up over her body...

Shifting, Daniel forced his mind clear by listing off the minor goa'uld. Which worked fine until he realized that he'd left out Tanith and found himself trying to decide if any dead goa'uld should be a forgotten one, and how to never joke about that in front of Teal'c. After another deliberate inhale, exhale, he cleared his throat.

It wasn't awkward. Not that anything had been aligned correctly for the last month --her word, aligned; a term used to describe the universe with Jack gone-but-definitely-not-dead, spoken into her hands, right before he suggested that getting out from under a mountain couldn't hurt -- so maybe "further out of whack" wasn't an issue.

Even so, it was a stupid surprise that it wasn't awkward now to be standing under bright lights with...Sam. She was Sam. Because she hadn't transformed. Neither had he. So, Sam turned to hand him a mug with a small knowing smile behind the straightforward question on her lips, and Daniel didn't have to pause or equivocate before he said, yes, he felt kind of better, too.

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