Chapter Text
Colorado Springs is still new, and Cam's doing what he always does when he's stationed in a new place. He's exploring. He's got a lot of down time right now… he's had a week to settle in before reporting for duty, and even after his disastrous (in his mind) meeting with Landry this morning the ball isn't exactly rolling. They're not going to let him through the gate without a team (though he's working on Landry letting him go to Dakara and talk to Teal'c) and he doesn't really have any intention of settling for anything less than the team he wants. He's unhappy enough about this whole leadership thing. He's got a stack of prospects to look through and he'll have to make it at least appear like he's actually giving these kids a shot, but the last thing he wants is for SG-1 to turn into some paler version, a reboot with wet behind the ears kids following him around alien planets.
He wants Samantha Carter, and Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c. He wants the SG-1 that he spent months reading mission reports about, hanging onto every word like it was the best damn book ever written. He wants that, and it's so close he can taste it. He knows Carter's off at Area 51, and Teal'c is on a whole different planet… but Jackson is still on base, he hasn't left for Atlantis yet, and Cam has every intention of hunting him down first thing in the morning.
For right now, though, he's back in civilian clothes in his car with the windows down and he's looking for a good place to eat. He's done the steakhouse down the street, tried the sushi place a few blocks over, and he wants something different now. He wants a strong cup of coffee to chase away the weariness, a juicy burger and some homemade fries. He wants… a diner. He spots the sign for the place named Sol's and pulls his car into the little parking lot. It's a greasy spoon all right, and he's had good luck with this kind of joint in the past. He parks, pats his baby on the gleaming hood, and heads inside.
*
It is a slow day at Sol's.
Sal is in the back, watching his soaps on the tv above the cooker and Betty is running the front while also giving herself a manicure. Vala only has one other table when she hears the ding-a-ling of the bells on the door. A tall, lanky man walks in, grabs a menu and seats himself near the window in the back.
Vala stands at the bar by Betty and looks him over slowly. He has a sort of classic all American look that she recognises from television. She also recognises Betty getting excited. "Sit down, this one is mine. Besides, you still have wet tips," Vala mutters, nodding down to Betty's hands. The woman scowls at Vala but she just grins even wider back.
Slowly, she makes her way over to the booth and towards the young man. She pops a gum bubble and pulls the pen out from behind her ear. She smirks down at the young man sitting in the far corner booth.
"Hi, welcome to Sol's Diner, my name is Val, what can I get for you today honey?" She asks, popping her gum again, the tip of her pen on the paper pad.
Cam's still looking at the menu that had already been on his table when he slid into the booth. It takes a minute for him to raise his eyes and glance up at the waitress that has just walked up.
Her makeup is gaudy, her lips are overly pink and shining. It's her voice that catches his attention, some strange accent that he can't quite place. So, this is how they grow them in Colorado Springs? Somehow, not quite what he'd imagined. It's distracting but there's something else there.
He shrugs it off, looks back down at the menu, then back up at her. "Uh, I'll take a coffee to start off with."
Vala scribbles it down on her pad of paper and turns to go. He seems a bit odd, distracted more like. She slips behind the bar and grabs for the coffee pot as Betty hurries over to her.
"He looks just like one of those actors you see on tv," she whispers excitedly. "You think he's someone famous?"
"Here? In this godforsaken place?" Vala chuckles, shaking her head. "I doubt it. You're reading too many of those tavleks Betty."
Betty frowns. "Tabloids, Val." Vala just shrugs and grabs the customers cup of coffee along with the cream and sugar.
"Whatever," she whispers back to Betty as she slips past to go and take the man his drink.
He watches her while she's getting his coffee, takes a closer look since she's not looking at him. Underneath the gaudy makeup and ill-fitting green uniform, he can tell she's really attractive.
By the time she comes back, he's got his food picked out; he knows what he'll order but he still asks, "So what are your specials today, Val?"
"On Mondays? Sal's meatloaf. Its not bad. It comes with a large side of mashed potatoes and gravy. I've never heard any complaints and we generally tend to sell out of it by the end of the night anyways." Vala tosses her hair over her shoulder and gives him a wide grin. "Any other questions I can answer for you?" She asked brightly.
"Actually, I think I want a burger... that one looks good." He glances down at the menu and trails his finger down until he finds what he wants. "One question first though - are your fries homemade?"
"Absolutely," Vala replies. "I've peeled enough potatoes myself to attest to that." She writes down the his order on her pad. "Anything else?"
He flips the menu over. "We might talk pie after the burger and fries..."
Of course, he's a very hard judge on pie. His mother makes the best... during his recovery, when he was back living there before being cleared for duty, she'd made him pie almost every week to try and fatten him up. He smiles faintly at the memory, and then realizes that Val is still standing there. "That's all," he says, sliding the menu back to where it was before and picking up his coffee to sip it.
She gives him another smile and slips off and back towards the kitchen. "Order up!" She shouts, dinging the bell and sticking the ticket on the wheel. "Looks like you're going to have to do some actual work," she teases Sal as he stands up from his stool.
He waves his spatula at her and she skeddadles away from the window.
Cam is still watching her, amused by the antics happening behind the counter. He thinks of his bag in the car some of the files in it that he's supposed to be reviewing, and wishes instead that he'd grabbed a magazine or a newspaper. He spots one on the counter abandoned and after thinking about it for a few seconds, gets up and walks over. He leans forward, waiting to get someone - Val, or the other waitress - to notice him so he can ask if he can take it.
"Yes honey? What can we do for you?" Betty asks, rushing to the other side of the counter to help him out. Vala rolls her eyes and stays where she is, letting the older woman get her fill. She does, however, keep her eye on the man, watching how he moves.
He glances at her name tag and gives her a smile. She looks more like what he'd expect a diner waitress to be than Val. "Anyone using this paper, Betty?"
"Darling, all yours," she says, sliding it across the table to him. She gives him a wink, smiling rather invitingly at him.
Vala has to work to hold down her snort.
She doesn't hold it down very well. Cam hears it and glances at her, a little smile on his face. He lifts an eyebrow, silently asking her what was so funny... though he's pretty sure it had something to do with the way Betty was all but giving him her number when she handed him the paper over.
Vala seals her lips but holds up the coffee pot. "Would you need a refill then? To go with your stolen newspaper?"
"Yes, please," he says, sliding back into his booth. He doesn't unfold the paper yet, waiting until she walks back over. "I like fresh coffee with my pilfered news stories."
She laughs, or maybe she's just rolling her eyes again.
Under his breath he says, "Your friend over there. I'm guessing that's not her natural color?"
"I don't think that's her natural anything," Vala replies amiably. "Hair's dyed, things have been added and I'm pretty sure that there isn't a natural fiber on that uniform she's wearing."
He snickers.
"Somehow, I can believe that." Sitting back, he opens up the paper. "Hey, this crossword puzzle is half done... and wrong. Very wrong. What's a kol and why does someone think it's a three letter word for a flightless bird?"
Vala cocks her head to the side but said nothing. So perhaps Earth didn't have any kol, didn't mean they weren't still flightless birds. She slips off after filling his cup with coffee again and goes to check on his order.
He glances through the sports page but finds nothing interesting. The folded crossword section sits beside him and it doesn't take long for him to give in to temptation. While he's waiting on his food, he pulls a pen out of his pocket and started working on the unfinished portion of the crossword, leaving the incorrect answers untouched.
"Order up!" Sal calls, hitting the chime and setting the plate down on the counter. Vala slips off the stool she was sitting on and picks the plate up, carrying it over to his table.
"Here you are, burger and home made fries, peeled specially by me," she says with a nod.
Cam can smell the food before he makes it to his table. It looks every bit as delicious as he'd been hoping, and he barely remembers to thank his waitress before picking up the burger and digging in.
When he's done, stomach very full and appropriately decaffeinated, he sits back and picks up the paper again. He doesn't have his ticket yet, but there have been a few more people coming in. His waitress is currently dealing with a guy who doesn't appear to have learned any lessons in how to treat women, if the leer on his face is anything to go by.
Vala ignores it, it isn't worth it to deal with it and really, as sad as it is, it is a common affair. It takes some time, but she is finally able to make it back to her first customers' table, her pad in hand.
"Did you want to take a look at the pie again?" She asks, hand on the table as she looks down at the crossword puzzle. She reads over the answers that he has filled in and the ones she had done that he has crossed out.
He ignores her question for the moment and nods toward her problem table. "Everything okay over there?"
"Hm? Oh Stan?" She looks up over towards the problem table and gives a half shrug. "Same as he always is. Its nothing," she says, turning back to look at the one sitting in front of her. "I can handle it."
He shrugs. "I bet you can... I think I'll pass on the pie today. Didn't expect that burger to be the size of a dinner plate."
Vala chuckles and tugs off the ticket and hands it to him. "Sal likes things big," she agrees.
Cam pulls a twenty out of his pocket and drops it on the table on top of the ticket, handing her back the newspaper.
"Change?" She picks the money up and slips it into her apron pocket.
"Nah," he says, giving her a smile on his way out. "Keep it."
"Well then, you have a very nice night." She smiles and slides her pad into her pocket and grabs his dish, clearing the table as he gets up to leave. As he is walking away, Vala turns back to watch him, enjoying the way his jeans cling to his ass.
*
It is later in the week, far busier than it had been before, when Vala spots a familiar man walk through the diner doors. She grabs her pen from behind her ear and jumps to seat him when Betty moves forward, practically leaving her current table alone as she goes to seat him.
Cam is oblivious the rush to get to him (on Betty's behalf, at least) as he sits down. He looks over the menu, picking out something besides the burger this time. The food on Dakara wasn't exactly up to snuff, but the Sol's Diner meatloaf promises to be tastier.
"Happy now?" Vala asks Betty as the woman goes and tags the ticket on Sal's wheel. Betty just grins hugely at Vala. "You're like twice his age," she laughs, unable to not shake her head. Betty is quite shameless at times.
"Sometimes that makes things even better." Betty shrugs as she walks off to take care of her other tables. Vala shakes her head again, chuckling to herself as she follows suit to greet the family that has just walked in.
While he's waiting on his food, Cam glances at the counter. There's another newspaper there. (He really needs to remember to get a subscription... he's been in Colorado Springs two weeks now, and he's still barely unpacked.) Both of the waitresses are busy, and Cam finally gets up and snags the paper.
"Order up!" Sal shouts through the window, smacking the bell as he returns to his next order. The plate sits as both Betty and Vala rush from table to table. The place is packed and moving.
Sal moves back to the window, spotting the plate and smacking the bell again. "Order up!" He shouts louder, catching Vala's eye and waving her over. It is one of Betty's tables but the woman is bogged down with another table of eight. Grabbing it, Vala checks the ticket and makes her way over to a booth to find the familiar customer from earlier in the week sitting and doing another one of her crossword puzzles.
"Another snatched newspaper I see," she comments, sliding the blue plate special across the table towards him.
"You got some of these wrong," Cam says, glancing up at her with a friendly smile once he recognizes her as the waitress from before. She looks tired, like it's been a hard day. He can understand that. The place is packed. "Betty over there gonna be mad you poached her table?"
Vala shakes her head. "Doubt she's going to notice much since she's stuck hip deep in toddlers over there," she replies, jerking her head to the table Betty is working on. "Should make a decent tip over there. Anyways, what's wrong about the order?"
He looks over at Betty and feels a pang of sympathy. He's not really one for kids, having not been around them much in his life.
"Tell you what, I'll leave an extra tip and you can make sure she gets half anyway. And the order is perfect," he says, but points to the newspaper. "Some of these answers are wrong. But I guess I can't say much, I did steal the paper, now didn't I?" He grins at her. He's in a decent mood. He feels like his visit to see Teal'c was worthwhile, and Landry has given him another few days to mull over his SG-1 potentials. He doesn't need to know that Cam hasn't even glanced at the folders since that first time.
"Well, Sal will be happy to know the order wasn't messed up," she agrees, sliding the plate to him. Looking over, she notices the pen sticking out from behind his ear.
"And doing the puzzle in pen, very risky," she winks at him. "Let me know if you need anything." With another smile she turns and heads over to her next table.
He abandons the puzzle while he eats, but picks it back up once his plate is half empty and he's no longer scarfing down the food. It's going well until he realizes that his pen is out of ink, the bold lines fading and beginning to skip in places. He frowns and taps it against the table, frustrated.
When Val walks back by, he calls out. "Hey-" It's just enough to get her attention. He holds up his pen. "You got one I could borrow? Mine ran dry."
Frowning, Vala walks over and plucks the pen from his fingers. She sucks on the tip like she had watched Betty do many times before and tries the pen again. Still, no ink comes out.
"Huh," shrugging, she digs into her apron and hands him another pen instead.
His eyebrow lifts when she sucks on the tip, because... well... damn.
"Uh, thanks," he says, his thoughts a bit scattered. She puts the old pen down too and he can see the glossy pink lipstick print around the tip. He wants until she's walked away to pick it up and stare at it contemplatively.
It had been a hard afternoon and the man at table 7 is still at table 7. Betty is finishing with her massive table of 8 and Vala decides to walk by, coffee pot in hand and see if he needs anything else.
"Still here I see. Haven't finished the puzzle yet?" She asks, topping off his cup without bothering to ask.
"Not quite," he says. He still hasn't figured out if he should just write over the wrong answers, so they're still in the squares. "Hey, last time I think you said something about pie..."
"Oh? We still have pie. We have pie just about every day," Vala replies, snagging a menu and passing it over. "Today's special is triple berry."
"What would you recommend?" Cam asks. He usually trusts the opinions of the waitress, because she's usually had everything on the menu a dozen times over.
Vala screws up her face and looks down at the menu. "I'd go for the cherry cobbler myself. I think that is pretty damn good."
He hands her back the menu without really looking at it. "Cherry cobbler it is... Val, right?"
"Vala, actually," she corrects, tucking the menu back up under her arm. "One cherry cobbler coming right up, with ice cream on top?"
"Vala?" He looks up, surprised. "But your nametag says Val."
Vala shrugs. "Sal said it was cheaper to get Val printed up. Plus it was easier really, I'll answer to either... And a lot of other names in between," she adds giving Cam a wink before walking off, never getting his answer of ala mode or not.
He laughs quietly, looking back down at the crossword. He realizes he never answered her too, but he's pretty sure he won't be disappointed either way.
It doesn't take long for Sal to dish up his famous cobbler for her and Vala is quickly sashaying her way back towards the man's table. "Sol's Diner's famous cherry cobbler with ice cream," Vala says, sliding the plate down in front of him. "And without." She smiles and sat the second plate down alongside the first.
He laughs and looks up at her, shaking his head in disbelief. "You know how much extra gym time I'm gonna have to put in for this?"
Vala raises a brow. "Gym time? Working on trying to keep your girly figure?" She tucks her tray up under her arm again as she pretends to clean the table next to his.
"Girly figure?" Cam shakes his head. "Just military fitness standards." Okay, maybe he's kinda throwing that in there for a reason, but Val... Vala... is cute and if she's one of those anti-war hippie types, he'd rather get that out of the way up front. He's had enough glares from the girl behind the counter at the bookstore down the street once she glimpsed his military ID.
"Military man," Vala repeats, enunciating each syllable slowly. She has certainly spotted a bunch of the airmen from the Colorado Springs station going on various runs in the morning, she isn't surprised to see another in their diner. "So you take orders well," she continues as innocently as she knew how.
"I give orders well," Cam says, looking at her. He doesn't grin, keeps his expression just as neutral as hers is while he takes a bite of the cobbler. It is every bit as amazing as she'd promised it would be.
"Ooh well, look at you," Vala teases, moving the salt and pepper shakers slightly and sitting on the edge of the table. "High up on the food chain are you?"
"High enough." He takes another bite, getting some ice cream this time. It's cool, slightly drippy from being so close to the cobbler, and he has to wipe at his lower lip. "I'm a colonel."
Vala frowns momentarily. She doesn't really know the structure of the US armed forces but she quickly covers it over with a brief smile. "Still.... Not the highest," she comments, still teasing him slightly.
She's... feisty. Cam kind of likes that. Actually, he likes that a lot. "Maybe not, but I'm working on it." He takes another bite of cobbler and realizes that there's no way he's gonna finish both plates she brought. He nods toward the one without ice cream. "Want some?"
"Not supposed to eat on the clock," Vala replies sadly, her eyes quickly darting back to where Sal is hidden away in the kitchen. The cobbler does look tempting...
He can see that she wants to. He nudges the plate a little bit closer and waves his fork at her. "Come on, Vala.... you know you want to..." He says her name teasingly, the sound rolling off of his tongue.
"Look at you, already trying to get me to break rules," Vala tsks at him but she picks up the fork. "I thought you military men were supposed to all be on the straight and narrow? All really big into that following the rules thing?"
"Straight and narrow?" He lifts an eyebrow at her. "Because I'm sure offering you a bite of pie is gonna bring the whole infrastructure crumbling down here."
"Oh, you never know," Vala shrugs, trying not to crack a smile. "All it takes is one little grain of sand and all that." She slides her fork into the cobbler and takes a large gooey bit, her eyes sliding closed happily. Sal really does make the best cobbler.
He grins watching her. That expression is a mixture of childish delight and borderline sexual pleasure that should be disturbing, but somehow isn't. "You make that look even better than it is."
"Oh, not possible. Because it is every bit as good as that," she assures him with a nod. "Here, let me show you, maybe you just didn't get it right." She cuts off another bite and holds the fork out for him.
He's surprised at the move, but he likes it. He leans forward and takes the bite, chewing slowly. "Oh, yeah. That's the good stuff." He watches her take another bite, but then his eyes start to wander. She's still sitting on the edge of the table and while her skirt isn't exactly that revealing he can still see a nice bit of leg... or rather, a bit of nice leg.
"Letting your eyes wander, are they colonel?" Vala asks, taking another bite of the cobbler. She knows exactly what he's doing.
He jerks his gaze back up, face burning slightly. He's not exactly a lothario but he's usually a little smoother at checking girls out than that. Funny thing was, he hadn't thought he was being that obvious.
"Maybe," he says, figuring she's hot enough that she knows she's worth checking out. "That bother you?"
"Now, would I be sitting here on the edge of your table feeding you cobbler if it did? Not that big of a tease," she smirks.
Cam lifts his eyebrow again, but doesn't comment on that. He doesn't really know her that well and he doesn't want to end up slapped. He's about to make a completely unrelated comment on the quality of the cobbler when his phone rings.
It's Harriman. There's something going on with the Atlantis transport, some sort of delay, and Landry wants him in on the briefing. It's exciting - something to do besides just sit around looking at files - and Cam's mind is instantly racing at full speed. He doesn't take a moment to dig some money out of his pocket and drop it on the table, more than enough for the meal and enough tip for Vala and Betty.
"I, uh... gotta go." He says, realizing that she probably figured that out. "You work every morning?"
Vala is flustered by the other man's quick movements, hurrying to stand and pay. "Ah, most of them, yes," she replies slowly, slipping down from the table and clearing the plates.
He's out the door and in his truck before she's done clearing the table.