Fic: Bittersweet Symphony (2/2) Shep/Weir, NC-17
Part 1
Part Two
Twenty minutes later, Elizabeth was pounding down his door with a duffle bag thrown over her shoulder. She’d picked up an item or two from her apartment, then flagged down a taxi for the ride over here; which hadn’t been the easiest thing for her to do this late at night. She prayed John was either here or at the SGC, and not somewhere else doing god-knows-what. The seconds ticked by as she waited for him to pull open the door, and her apprehension grew.
God, where the hell was he-
The door opened, finally revealing John. “Elizabeth, what the hell are you-”
She never let him finish. In a complete role reversal from earlier in the night, she cut him off with a kiss, this time taking control of the situation with far more initiative than she'd ever displayed with any other lover. Elizabeth planted a hand against his chest and shoved hard, backing them into the foyer, kicking the door closed behind them with her heel. The bag dropped to the floor.
The next thing she knew, she was pressed up against the side wall. John proved quick on the uptake, hand immediately cupping the back of her head, dragging her to his mouth as if this had been his idea all along. Hands were everywhere. His under her shirt, feeling up her bra, unhooking the clasp; she had one hand around his belt buckle, desperate to undo the cinch, the other around his jeans, cupping the tight curve of his ass, encouraging him to rock into her.
“Fuck, Elizabeth,” he groaned. “Where the hell did this come from?”
She rested her head against the wall, catching her breath. “Do you want to talk right now or-”
“Option B,” he stopped her in a low voice. “I’ve wanted option B for a few hours now.”
She tugged the belt free and worked the tough material of his jeans down over the ridge of his hipbone, and thirsty for contact, worked her fingers beneath the elastic of his boxers, hand quickly pumping him. He broke off the kiss with an electric groan, and she remembered the shock from earlier in the night - how the alien influence had made him nearly jump her, his erection already fully hard. This was better than that, because this was all her that was drawing the reaction from him.
She wasn’t naïve; she knew the drug was probably still in his system, playing havoc, spurring him on. She had no intentions of pulling back. He gathered the folds of her skirt, lifting the material higher, then worked a hand under her skirt.
John froze for a second before he let loose a low chuckle. “I forgot,” he murmured with a laugh. “I’ve got your underwear already.”
She tried to cut off his smug laughter with a kiss, but he ducked his head low and mouthed kisses along her collarbone. He popped open the buttons that ran down the front of her green sweater, and she helped a little, tugging the material fully open and then letting it fall loosely off her shoulders.
“I kept watching you tonight,” he breathed in that low husky voice.
“What?” she breathed.
“When you kept crossing and uncrossing your legs,” he clarified, “I kept thinking about how wet you were, in that alley. How I made you come, right out there where everybody could see you. Jesus, Elizabeth, you were so goddamn hot making those dirty little noises. You should have heard yourself.”
She groaned, unable to respond to his teasing with anything but a little bit more desperation. He cupped her ass, then worked her skirt down with a single finger, the digit sliding along the crease of her ass. She wiggled a little, shimmying out of the skirt until it pooled onto the floor.
“You should have heard yourself lose control,” he continued, “sobbing my name, begging me to make you come.”
He hissed when she ran her nails across his chest, the thick coarse hair crinkling under her fingers. She doubted that he realized it, but there were a few moves she’d learned the last time they’d slept together; ones that got a reaction out of him just as quickly as he got them out of her. He was an easy man to read like this; couldn’t hide a thing even if he wanted to. That almost scared her because if she could read him so well, just exactly how well could he read her?
They maneuvered as far as the living room, shedding any remaining clothes along the way. They fumbled a little with getting his jeans down without letting any distance come between them. She shoved him down on the plush, oversized sofa in the corner, and moved to straddle his lap.
“You ever going to give me back my panties?”
“Nope,” he answered smugly. “Finders keepers.”
She feigned a glare, lifted her hips slightly, then sank down onto his shaft slowly. His smirk melted into a groan, and Elizabeth matched the sound with a whimper. John Sheppard was not a small man. He stroked her hips lightly with his hands, murmuring words of affection, and his mere voice near her ear soothed her down. She rocked against him, slowly, shifting in short movements. His hands went around her ass, kneading her muscles into swaying against him in a steady beat.
As she worked, he ran a single finger down the cleft of her ass. Elizabeth stifled a moan, eyes slamming shut. He fingered her hole, teasing her slightly so that she kept jerking back against him in silent encouragement. He slid his finger down to where they were joined, meeting wetness. By that point, Elizabeth was spiraling out of control, nearly sobbing with want. She wondered if he’d imagined her like this; imagined them exactly in this position.
John seemed like a man that would think up a thousand improbable fantasies, even try to fulfill a handful of them if he could, but she wondered if he ever thought of this before - in Atlantis. If he’d ever stared across the debriefing table at her, and mind drifting, envisioned scenarios of fucking her; making love; her on top; him taking her from behind; what things flittered through his head if he ever gave it consideration?
She remembered his teasing from before, and decided to repay the favor. “I’ve imagined this, y’know,” she confessed, breath hitching slightly before she continued, “this moment, this position. I remember you were in my office and I had a flash. Of this. Me on top of you… straddling you in my chair.”
John groaned, loud and piercing, far more potent than any other she’d ever heard from him.
“It’d never happen,” she teased, forcing the words past swollen lips. Fixated on sharing her fantasies, she continued in a breathless voice, “My damn office walls, but I pictured it. I kept dreaming about you, too. Sunday morning sex. I wouldn’t be able to meet your eyes for days afterwards.”
“Balcony,” John murmured darkly in return, confessing to his own fantasies. “Against the railings, at night. That…” he broke off, panting heavily as she moved against him, before he picked up the thread again, “closet near your office, middle of the day.”
She smiled at the novelty of public sex; John had a kink for that, apparently.
He worked his fingers against her clit for a minute or two, forcing Elizabeth into a broken sobs, then came back over to her ass again. With the pad of his finger wet with her juices, he slid a finger into her easily. She dropped her head heavily against his shoulder, body quivering with need. He pushed a finger in and out from behind, and she rocked her body to the same rhythm. He added another, and then forced in a third, and she cried out, realizing in that moment she wanted this man so badly; wanted him to do things to her that would have made her hesitate with any other man.
She trusted him already, so much, so quickly. That had to be a sign, right?
He barked her name when he came, and she came flooding afterwards, the release working through them both. She collapsed heavily on top of him, limbs like jelly, and it wasn’t until several moments later, when feeling finally came back into Elizabeth’s legs, that she pulled free. He protested the distance, but she kissed him once and murmured something mindless against his lips. He subsided reluctantly, and she was acutely aware that his eyes were glued to her naked form as she padded across his apartment to retrieve her duffle bag.
She rummaged through the belongings, and emerged with the thick stack of papers that was bound on one side. Elizabeth slipped back into the living room, settling on the couch alongside John with her knees tucked under her.
“This was originally why I came here tonight,” she said, bracing herself with a drawn-out breath. “I want you to read this.”
John lifted a brow. “What is it?”
She tried not to fidget self-consciously. “It’s my memoir. I want you to be the first to read it.”
He paused, awareness flooding the expression on his face; he knew how big a deal this was for her. He had to know. Her memoir was something she’d been working on for months, singularly obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else. It represented everything to her: Atlantis, her people, her diary screaming out loud for all to read. If anyone else ever read it, that is. Elizabeth shook her head; she always presumed that it didn’t matter if someone else read it. It had been like a song she couldn’t get out of her head, persistent and annoying, demanding her attention. Now that it was all written down on paper, she hoped to have freedom to breathe.
And now she realized she did want someone to read it, after all; with a specific someone in mind.
John broke the hush with a joke. “You write about any fantasies of me in here?”
She tipped him an impish smile. “I kept that in my other diary.”
“Any chance I could get my hands on-”
“John,” she cut in. “Shut up.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he saluted. Then paused, face sobering up as he glanced to the manuscript in his hands. “Elizabeth, I’ve got a confession to make.”
The weight of his voice instantly concerned her. “What?”
“That spider I talked about earlier?”
Elizabeth froze, mind abruptly cast back into concern mode as she realized his body was probably still working that alien substance through his body. God, they really needed to get this checked out by the SGC doctors. If it was nothing more than an aphrodisiac, Elizabeth could live with that. As long as John was all ri-
“I never ate it,” he confessed. “I only pretended to.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
He had the decency to look sheepish. “I never ate anything offworld today.”
But, her mind stalled, he’d clearly been acting under the influence of something all day. He’d been angry and aggressive; he’d practically jumped her in that alley! He provoked a fight, confronted her about issues he’d normally never touch with a ten foot poll… she trailed off, realization dawning on her belatedly.
“You used that as an excuse,” she realized. “Tonight was all you?”
John licked his lips nervously. “I figured the whole “Aliens Made Me Do It” excuse would be good if this all went sideways.” He shrugged, eyeing her with concern. “Worked, didn’t it?”
She just stared at him for a moment, unable to process the information. “John, do that to me again… and I will physically hurt you.”
He offered her a smirk, stretching out lazily to interlock fingers behind his head. “Another one of your fantasies, I presume?”
She pounced on him for that one, though it quickly descended into something else entirely. Before the sun rose, they made love again, no alien aphrodisiac needed to work John’s body up into overtime in the early pre-dawn hours. He took her from behind, fulfilling that short-lived fantasy, pushing Elizabeth over the edge for the third time that night. They curled up and fell asleep in his bed, the sticky sheets wrapped around them, and the faint musk of sex and salty sweat hanging in the air.
Not a bad way to end the night, all things considered. Not a bad way at all. And that was when she realized it, the epiphany occurring to her in the hazy moments before slumber overtook her, body pleasantly numb: Atlantis may be over, but her life clearly wasn’t.
Maybe there was hope for her, after all.
Dr. Elizabeth Weir’s Autobiography: Closing Remarks. Page 329.
In this story, I was never the hero.
I was not the soldier, the gifted scientist, or the warrior who took up arms against the Wraith. My place was always somewhere else - standing adrift from the others. Dr. Elizabeth Weir, if history ever marks my name down, will no doubt be seen as an ordinary woman that was thrown into extraordinary circumstances. It was my greatest honor and privilege to be given that opportunity for however brief a time it was.
Atlantis will always be my first true love in life, and like most first loves, it cuts the deepest when it wounds. Years from now, when this book is published - if it ever is - I hope the story I have to tell doesn’t end with the final page of this book. Like everything else, the end of one thing is merely the beginning of something else. I was lucky enough to lead a group of extraordinary people that proved, day-after-day, that the human spirit was a force to be reckoned with. My time in Atlantis may be over, but there are a thousand lessons I have yet to learn, millions of things I have yet to experience.
There’s another story out there with my name on it. I’m sure of it.
This isn't the end.
Fin.
A/N: Feedback is love. :)
Part Two
Twenty minutes later, Elizabeth was pounding down his door with a duffle bag thrown over her shoulder. She’d picked up an item or two from her apartment, then flagged down a taxi for the ride over here; which hadn’t been the easiest thing for her to do this late at night. She prayed John was either here or at the SGC, and not somewhere else doing god-knows-what. The seconds ticked by as she waited for him to pull open the door, and her apprehension grew.
God, where the hell was he-
The door opened, finally revealing John. “Elizabeth, what the hell are you-”
She never let him finish. In a complete role reversal from earlier in the night, she cut him off with a kiss, this time taking control of the situation with far more initiative than she'd ever displayed with any other lover. Elizabeth planted a hand against his chest and shoved hard, backing them into the foyer, kicking the door closed behind them with her heel. The bag dropped to the floor.
The next thing she knew, she was pressed up against the side wall. John proved quick on the uptake, hand immediately cupping the back of her head, dragging her to his mouth as if this had been his idea all along. Hands were everywhere. His under her shirt, feeling up her bra, unhooking the clasp; she had one hand around his belt buckle, desperate to undo the cinch, the other around his jeans, cupping the tight curve of his ass, encouraging him to rock into her.
“Fuck, Elizabeth,” he groaned. “Where the hell did this come from?”
She rested her head against the wall, catching her breath. “Do you want to talk right now or-”
“Option B,” he stopped her in a low voice. “I’ve wanted option B for a few hours now.”
She tugged the belt free and worked the tough material of his jeans down over the ridge of his hipbone, and thirsty for contact, worked her fingers beneath the elastic of his boxers, hand quickly pumping him. He broke off the kiss with an electric groan, and she remembered the shock from earlier in the night - how the alien influence had made him nearly jump her, his erection already fully hard. This was better than that, because this was all her that was drawing the reaction from him.
She wasn’t naïve; she knew the drug was probably still in his system, playing havoc, spurring him on. She had no intentions of pulling back. He gathered the folds of her skirt, lifting the material higher, then worked a hand under her skirt.
John froze for a second before he let loose a low chuckle. “I forgot,” he murmured with a laugh. “I’ve got your underwear already.”
She tried to cut off his smug laughter with a kiss, but he ducked his head low and mouthed kisses along her collarbone. He popped open the buttons that ran down the front of her green sweater, and she helped a little, tugging the material fully open and then letting it fall loosely off her shoulders.
“I kept watching you tonight,” he breathed in that low husky voice.
“What?” she breathed.
“When you kept crossing and uncrossing your legs,” he clarified, “I kept thinking about how wet you were, in that alley. How I made you come, right out there where everybody could see you. Jesus, Elizabeth, you were so goddamn hot making those dirty little noises. You should have heard yourself.”
She groaned, unable to respond to his teasing with anything but a little bit more desperation. He cupped her ass, then worked her skirt down with a single finger, the digit sliding along the crease of her ass. She wiggled a little, shimmying out of the skirt until it pooled onto the floor.
“You should have heard yourself lose control,” he continued, “sobbing my name, begging me to make you come.”
He hissed when she ran her nails across his chest, the thick coarse hair crinkling under her fingers. She doubted that he realized it, but there were a few moves she’d learned the last time they’d slept together; ones that got a reaction out of him just as quickly as he got them out of her. He was an easy man to read like this; couldn’t hide a thing even if he wanted to. That almost scared her because if she could read him so well, just exactly how well could he read her?
They maneuvered as far as the living room, shedding any remaining clothes along the way. They fumbled a little with getting his jeans down without letting any distance come between them. She shoved him down on the plush, oversized sofa in the corner, and moved to straddle his lap.
“You ever going to give me back my panties?”
“Nope,” he answered smugly. “Finders keepers.”
She feigned a glare, lifted her hips slightly, then sank down onto his shaft slowly. His smirk melted into a groan, and Elizabeth matched the sound with a whimper. John Sheppard was not a small man. He stroked her hips lightly with his hands, murmuring words of affection, and his mere voice near her ear soothed her down. She rocked against him, slowly, shifting in short movements. His hands went around her ass, kneading her muscles into swaying against him in a steady beat.
As she worked, he ran a single finger down the cleft of her ass. Elizabeth stifled a moan, eyes slamming shut. He fingered her hole, teasing her slightly so that she kept jerking back against him in silent encouragement. He slid his finger down to where they were joined, meeting wetness. By that point, Elizabeth was spiraling out of control, nearly sobbing with want. She wondered if he’d imagined her like this; imagined them exactly in this position.
John seemed like a man that would think up a thousand improbable fantasies, even try to fulfill a handful of them if he could, but she wondered if he ever thought of this before - in Atlantis. If he’d ever stared across the debriefing table at her, and mind drifting, envisioned scenarios of fucking her; making love; her on top; him taking her from behind; what things flittered through his head if he ever gave it consideration?
She remembered his teasing from before, and decided to repay the favor. “I’ve imagined this, y’know,” she confessed, breath hitching slightly before she continued, “this moment, this position. I remember you were in my office and I had a flash. Of this. Me on top of you… straddling you in my chair.”
John groaned, loud and piercing, far more potent than any other she’d ever heard from him.
“It’d never happen,” she teased, forcing the words past swollen lips. Fixated on sharing her fantasies, she continued in a breathless voice, “My damn office walls, but I pictured it. I kept dreaming about you, too. Sunday morning sex. I wouldn’t be able to meet your eyes for days afterwards.”
“Balcony,” John murmured darkly in return, confessing to his own fantasies. “Against the railings, at night. That…” he broke off, panting heavily as she moved against him, before he picked up the thread again, “closet near your office, middle of the day.”
She smiled at the novelty of public sex; John had a kink for that, apparently.
He worked his fingers against her clit for a minute or two, forcing Elizabeth into a broken sobs, then came back over to her ass again. With the pad of his finger wet with her juices, he slid a finger into her easily. She dropped her head heavily against his shoulder, body quivering with need. He pushed a finger in and out from behind, and she rocked her body to the same rhythm. He added another, and then forced in a third, and she cried out, realizing in that moment she wanted this man so badly; wanted him to do things to her that would have made her hesitate with any other man.
She trusted him already, so much, so quickly. That had to be a sign, right?
He barked her name when he came, and she came flooding afterwards, the release working through them both. She collapsed heavily on top of him, limbs like jelly, and it wasn’t until several moments later, when feeling finally came back into Elizabeth’s legs, that she pulled free. He protested the distance, but she kissed him once and murmured something mindless against his lips. He subsided reluctantly, and she was acutely aware that his eyes were glued to her naked form as she padded across his apartment to retrieve her duffle bag.
She rummaged through the belongings, and emerged with the thick stack of papers that was bound on one side. Elizabeth slipped back into the living room, settling on the couch alongside John with her knees tucked under her.
“This was originally why I came here tonight,” she said, bracing herself with a drawn-out breath. “I want you to read this.”
John lifted a brow. “What is it?”
She tried not to fidget self-consciously. “It’s my memoir. I want you to be the first to read it.”
He paused, awareness flooding the expression on his face; he knew how big a deal this was for her. He had to know. Her memoir was something she’d been working on for months, singularly obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else. It represented everything to her: Atlantis, her people, her diary screaming out loud for all to read. If anyone else ever read it, that is. Elizabeth shook her head; she always presumed that it didn’t matter if someone else read it. It had been like a song she couldn’t get out of her head, persistent and annoying, demanding her attention. Now that it was all written down on paper, she hoped to have freedom to breathe.
And now she realized she did want someone to read it, after all; with a specific someone in mind.
John broke the hush with a joke. “You write about any fantasies of me in here?”
She tipped him an impish smile. “I kept that in my other diary.”
“Any chance I could get my hands on-”
“John,” she cut in. “Shut up.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he saluted. Then paused, face sobering up as he glanced to the manuscript in his hands. “Elizabeth, I’ve got a confession to make.”
The weight of his voice instantly concerned her. “What?”
“That spider I talked about earlier?”
Elizabeth froze, mind abruptly cast back into concern mode as she realized his body was probably still working that alien substance through his body. God, they really needed to get this checked out by the SGC doctors. If it was nothing more than an aphrodisiac, Elizabeth could live with that. As long as John was all ri-
“I never ate it,” he confessed. “I only pretended to.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
He had the decency to look sheepish. “I never ate anything offworld today.”
But, her mind stalled, he’d clearly been acting under the influence of something all day. He’d been angry and aggressive; he’d practically jumped her in that alley! He provoked a fight, confronted her about issues he’d normally never touch with a ten foot poll… she trailed off, realization dawning on her belatedly.
“You used that as an excuse,” she realized. “Tonight was all you?”
John licked his lips nervously. “I figured the whole “Aliens Made Me Do It” excuse would be good if this all went sideways.” He shrugged, eyeing her with concern. “Worked, didn’t it?”
She just stared at him for a moment, unable to process the information. “John, do that to me again… and I will physically hurt you.”
He offered her a smirk, stretching out lazily to interlock fingers behind his head. “Another one of your fantasies, I presume?”
She pounced on him for that one, though it quickly descended into something else entirely. Before the sun rose, they made love again, no alien aphrodisiac needed to work John’s body up into overtime in the early pre-dawn hours. He took her from behind, fulfilling that short-lived fantasy, pushing Elizabeth over the edge for the third time that night. They curled up and fell asleep in his bed, the sticky sheets wrapped around them, and the faint musk of sex and salty sweat hanging in the air.
Not a bad way to end the night, all things considered. Not a bad way at all. And that was when she realized it, the epiphany occurring to her in the hazy moments before slumber overtook her, body pleasantly numb: Atlantis may be over, but her life clearly wasn’t.
Maybe there was hope for her, after all.
Dr. Elizabeth Weir’s Autobiography: Closing Remarks. Page 329.
In this story, I was never the hero.
I was not the soldier, the gifted scientist, or the warrior who took up arms against the Wraith. My place was always somewhere else - standing adrift from the others. Dr. Elizabeth Weir, if history ever marks my name down, will no doubt be seen as an ordinary woman that was thrown into extraordinary circumstances. It was my greatest honor and privilege to be given that opportunity for however brief a time it was.
Atlantis will always be my first true love in life, and like most first loves, it cuts the deepest when it wounds. Years from now, when this book is published - if it ever is - I hope the story I have to tell doesn’t end with the final page of this book. Like everything else, the end of one thing is merely the beginning of something else. I was lucky enough to lead a group of extraordinary people that proved, day-after-day, that the human spirit was a force to be reckoned with. My time in Atlantis may be over, but there are a thousand lessons I have yet to learn, millions of things I have yet to experience.
There’s another story out there with my name on it. I’m sure of it.
This isn't the end.
Fin.
A/N: Feedback is love. :)