Fic: A Simple Question, Lorne/Weir
Title: A Simple Question
Author: ed_84
Pairing: Lorne/Weir established relationship
Summary: It wasn’t the stuff of fairytales. At the beginning, this had been nothing but a highly objectionable and intensely sexual relationship, and nothing more. Now seven months later, God help her, it’s almost impossible to deny what this is - a relationship, with messy strings attached and all.
Warnings: R, sexual situations.
Spoilers: none.
Author's note: Prompt: Lorne/Weir, and someone finds out about their relationship. It started off angsty, and then quickly turned humorous. Not my original intentions, but WTH? Beta'd by IR.
First Place Winner for the Isis Awards' Evan Lorne/Elizabeth Weir category.
It begins one morning with a simple question. “So Dr. Weir, what are you wearing right now?”
She nearly collides with some random person coming down the hallway. She doesn’t respond to Lorne’s husky voice; simply hooks a strand of hair behind her ear, double-checking the radio piece to ensure the line is private. Elizabeth quells the first response that threatens to spill passed her lips, because despite Lorne’s playful tone, she’s really not in the mood for this right now.
She keeps her voice even and low, “Evan, not now.”
She’s just pulled away from her weekly conference call with the SGC, and she’s been “requested” to return to Earth for a few days. She suspects it’s the IOA, though she hasn’t able to get any straight answers from Landry one way or another. He's been disconcertingly vague, and a gnawing feeling descends upon her that this visit Earthside is going to be as pleasant as her last trip.
Elizabeth fights the anxious flutter in her stomach as she leaves command control. “I’ve got news,” she tells Lorne.
“Not until you answer my question,” Lorne says, voice low and teasing. “Enquiring minds want to know, what are you wearing this morning?”
Her job now lies in the hands of inept IOA members who look for scapegoats more than solutions, so Elizabeth thinks she should be given some lax regarding the sting of her next response. “What do you think I’m wearing, Lorne?” she shoots him down. “Red shirt, black pants. Same thing as always.”
There’s a pause on the other end, and she hears Lorne’s heavy sigh. “C’mon, Elizabeth. I’m just trying to have a little fun.”
“Yes, well, I’d prefer if we didn’t have that type of fun while we’re still technically on the clock,” she retorts, frustration getting the better of her. “I’m trying to be serious here.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Lorne snaps, annoyance bleeding into his words in response to hers. Of course, he has no idea why she’s so upset. “Serious, that’s always you. I’m just trying to loosen-”
“Lorne,” she cuts in, then forces herself to take a steadying breath. She’s already so frustrated that she can’t even get her words out. And when Elizabeth is so far gone that she can’t even talk about, it’s never a good sign. Lorne isn’t the one to blame for that, though. “Sorry,” she breathes with a tired sigh. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just... I just spoke with General Landry. I’m headed back to Earth.”
“What?” he exclaims harshly, all earlier conversation forgotten. “Why?”
She quickly thinks of a dozen reasons the IOA could have it in for her, not the least of which is a clandestine relationship with a subordinate in her chain of command. Her anxiety increases two-fold as she realizes this current conversation is just another example why this relationship with Lorne shows six different levels of poor judgment. It’s one thing to share a bed at night, another thing for Lorne to ask her what she’s wearing in the middle of the workday. They need to be more discreet than that.
“I have to go and quickly pack,” she explains in a tired voice, just as she makes it to her room. “I know you’re exploring the far-east wing labs down there, but I can’t wait for you to return. I have to give some last minute instructions to John and Rodney before I leave.”
She isn’t sure Lorne really paid attention to a lick of that. “Why are they calling you back?” he presses.
She closes her eyes and admits in a soft voice, “I don’t know. I’ll see you when I get back.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“They said it was urgent.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I’ll be back within two days, tops,” Elizabeth clarifies, parroting Landry’s promise. Thankfully, with fully working ZPMs on both sides of the gate, this trip can be quick. Hopefully. Assuming she comes back. “I’ll see you then.”
She can almost feel Lorne’s frown on the other end. “This conversation isn’t going anything like I planned.”
She smiles despite herself. “And where did you expect this conversation to go?”
“Phone sex?” he admits with a lift of his voice. “A guy can fantasize, can’t he?”
She rolls her eyes. “Men are all the same.”
She almost disconnects when Lorne stops her, “Hey, wait.”
“What?”
There’s a long pause on the other end, and the awkwardness of his hesitation carries more weight than any words he could possibly say. She knows exactly what he’s thinking; she’s thinking it too.
He lets out an audible breath. “I’ll miss you,” he admits softly, then hangs up before she can respond.
Instead of two days, she’s gone for two full weeks. Two very long, very very frustrating weeks. When Elizabeth finally steps through the wormhole, Lorne’s probably more desperately happy to see her than she’s happy to be there. Too bad he’s 30,000 feet under the surface of the ocean, stuck alone in one of Zelenka’s tests that requires the puddle-jumper to sit tight for another several hours.
The City has had two emergencies in the two weeks she’s been gone; the tamer of which was the one where Dr. McKay’s new experiment caused a massive flood in the Gateroom, which suspended all off-world activity for several days while the mess was fixed. On top of that, the medical team has had their hands full with a viral outbreak of the Pegasus version of the Chicken Pox, which incapacitated over a dozen personnel. They all had to be quarantined for nearly four days in the infirmary, where they were all heavily medicated. But even then, he’s seen grown women and men sob and cry over an irresistible urge to scratch themselves within an inch of their lives. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
So when he finally hears her voice over the radio, he has to tamper down a flood of relief. “Ma’am,” he forces a cordial greeting. “It’s good to have you back.”
“Secure line, Evan. You can speak freely.”
He drops the formal bullshit like a ton of a bricks. “Took you long enough,” he sighs, trying not to whine. “You said it’d be two days, tops.” It’s been two weeks. And honestly, there was a part of him that was slightly freaking out that Elizabeth might not be able to return to Atlantis at all. “How are you?”
She sighs heavily, and it’s a little weird that he can read her so well that such a small gesture can tell him so much. “I’m just glad to be back.”
“Where are you right now?”
“In my office,” she answers. “I’m just getting the full situation update on the-”
“You just got back. It’s late. You’re allowed to take a breather and relax a little. Start tomorrow.”
There’s a pause. “I am a little tired,” she admits in a soft voice.
The confession does more to concern him than anything else, and he suddenly gets a clearer picture of how demanding the last two weeks on her must have been. Elizabeth never admits to be tired or in pain; Sheppard once had to carry her to the infirmary unconscious because she refused to speak up about a life-threatening headache.
“Go back to your quarters,” he suggests, biting his lip with a dark expression of worry. “Unpack. Unwind. I’ll meet you there in a few hours as soon as I return.”
There’s a long beat on the other end, and Elizabeth finally says, “Yeah, okay. I think I’ll do that.”
“Good.”
“Oh, and Evan?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s good to hear your voice,” she says, and disconnects before he can respond.
Damn IOA bastards, he thinks bitterly.
He’s not normally one to wish ill on people, but there are times when an exception or two rears its head. He usually keeps quiet and follows orders when it comes to the chain of command, but maybe he’s been spending too much time in Atlantis? This city breeds independent thought a lot more than the SGC ever did, especially since lately he’s been in a position to see things more clearly. He’s been questioning the hell out of some of the decisions being made back on Earth, particularly when it comes to a certain committee with a three-letter acronym.
He’s tapping his fingers impatiently for the next few moments, concern festering as he sits alone in the puddle jumper and waits for Radek’s diagnostic tests to finish running its full course.
Predictably, his thoughts center around Elizabeth.
Two hours later, impatience gets the better of Elizabeth and she reaches for her radio again. “How much longer are you going to be?”
Lorne’s voice over her earpiece sounds as frustrated as she feels, “At least another hour. Possibly two? The samples are coming in slow.”
She reclines back in bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. “I hate this,” she tells him.
“This?”
“This,” she clarifies on an uneasy breath. “It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen you. We didn’t even get to say goodbye in person, and now you’re stuck out there at the bottom of the ocean. I just… I just hate this.”
It’s a confession she never thought she’d admit to Evan Lorne, but then again, nothing about her relationship with this man has ever followed any sense of logic.
But it took one messy mission offworld and a drunken night later to find herself with a secret lover. It wasn’t the stuff of fairytales. At the beginning, this had been nothing but a highly objectionable and intensely sexual relationship, and nothing more. Ignoring that it brought into question a whole host of issues regarding her judgment, his, and the effect this had on the chain of command, Elizabeth repeatedly and continually kept finding her lips locked with Lorne at the most inappropriate times. Once, even, while he had been bedridden in the infirmary with Carson not a few feet away with his back turned.
Now seven months later, God help her, it’s almost impossible to deny what this is - a relationship, with messy strings attached and all.
“I know.” Lorne lets out a frustrated sigh that seems to echo everything she’s feeling. “I hate it too.”
His soft voice, just like that, manages to undue pretty much everything for her. She closes her eyes and breaths once, twice, deeply. Control over her wrought emotions has been harder and harder to come by these last two weeks, and now that everything is finally over, finally done with, she feels a little like a victim coming back from a hostage situation.
The IOA committee brought her in and went over every single one of Atlantis’ disasters and mistakes with a magnifying glass. Endless meetings, threatening questions, and all of it with her job hanging in the balance, suspended by one thin thread of string.
“I missed…” she begins, taking a steadying breath. “I missed this place so much.”
“Elizabeth, what happened?”
She shakes her head, because she doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to go into the painful details of how she was pretty much raked over hot coals the last few days. The only thing that matters is that the IOA’s doubts were proven wrong; she’d been allowed back to Atlantis after it became clear that her judgment was never the issue. Of course, it helped that she had the President and General O'Neill's adamant support.
“Elizabeth?”
“Don't worry about it,” she replies. “I’m back. That’s all that matters.”
There’s dead silence over the radio, and she knows she’s probably freaking him out with this conversation. She doesn’t mean to do that; doesn’t want to concern him. God, she just wants things back to the exact way they were, before.
And she really, really needs Lorne here in person for that. Damn it.
“So,” his voice drifts in, “what are you wearing?”
She lifts her head off the pillow, incredulous. “What?”
“What are you wearing?”
There’s another beat and a smile grows on her lips. “Lorne,” she warns, but it’s with affection.
“You doing something else?” he goads, his voice light and carefree. And, god, even though she knows this is his way of a diffusing a tense situation, it feels so good to hear his voice like that. “Where are you right now?”
“In my quarters.”
“Are you lying down in bed?”
She laughs aloud. “Shut up, Lorne. I’m not doing this.”
“Doing what?” he questions innocently, which doesn’t work at all. “All I’m doing is asking a few questions.”
“Yeah,” she admonishes dryly. “Completely innocent questions.”
She lifts her head off the mattress, spying her bag in the corner. She hasn’t unpacked yet, and that’s when she remembers some of the articles of clothing she picked up. Elizabeth didn’t have much time for shopping during the trip, but she made it a point to get out the day before yesterday and pick up at least a few new pieces.
Her voice turns flirtation and light, matching his, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I have a present for you,” she breathes, getting into the spirit of things. “I’ll give you a hint. It’ll definitely make answering the question “what am I wearing” a lot more interesting.”
The pause on the other end is longer this time. “Elizabeth, did you… did you buy something special to wear?”
She grins widely, because she can almost imagine the dumbstruck look on his face at the thought of lingerie. The imagery makes her laugh even more.
“For me to wear, and you to enjoy,” she teases. “I thought my wardrobe could use some spicing up.” She expects him to tease her back; some joke or another is never far from his lips because he’s always trying to make her smile. She grows a bit confused when there’s no response, though. A second of silence stretches into two and three, and she sits up in bed, suddenly worried that something else down there in the sea has grabbed his attention. “Lorne?”
“Elizabeth,” he breaths, and his voice is that tone, that low one; the one he only voices when they’re both in bed. It always has the effect of melting her spine and ceasing her thought-processes, and even though this time Lorne isn’t here, isn’t touching her like he usually is when he uses that tone, the effect is still as immediate. “You can’t tell me something like that when we’re separated by 30,000 feet of water.”
She pauses, thrown, because although she’d been expecting some type of reaction from him, she really didn’t think it would be this. He sounds… frustrated. The warning in his voice is the same as when she teases him for too long, too hard, and he just wants to come already.
Her body grows warm with the power. “I…” she begins, and her voice is just a little breathless. “I wasn’t looking to be cruel, Evan.”
“Describe it to me,” Lorne drops his voice. “What does it look like?”
Her mouth hangs open as she considers answering - considers teasing him about it.
“Elizabeth,” he pleads, and yes, he’s begging her. “What does it look like?”
“It’s black and red,” she finds herself answering, “and there are several pieces.”
“Several?” he repeats, and she’s acutely aware that she has him hanging on ever one of her words. It’s a strange power, novel in a way that has nothing to do with her usual command over language. “What pieces?”
She only bought two pairs, so she made sure they were both special. “Garter belt,” she admits in a soft whisper. She edges off her bed, compelled into finding one garment before she describes it. “Bustier.” She holds the garment up, in better light. “Matching panties.”
There’s a crash over the radio - from Lorne’s jumper - and then she can hear the noises of him moving around quickly. Her eyes widen when she hears the click of the radio informing her that he’s just gone off a private line.
“Atlantis, this is Lorne. I’m coming home early.”
She stops herself just before exclaiming her shock. Evening her voice, she intervenes just as Chuck comes on, “Major Lorne, this is Dr. Weir. What’s the sit rep? I thought you had a few hours left on the test?”
“I do,” he breathes, and god, his voice is that tone again. “But there’s some problems with the diagnostics machine. I can’t continue.”
“Problems?” she repeats pointedly.
“With the machine,” he insists in a tight voice.
A grin widens her face, because the only problem Lorne is having right now has to do with keeping his hormones in check. It gives her a little thrill to realize her talking - as tame as it was - got him so bothered. Maybe she should try it more often? There had to be plenty of advantages to breaking Major Evan Lorne so easily.
“Atlantis?” he says, clearing his throat. “I’ll be back within ten minutes.”
Elizabeth gets the message loud and clear. She tilts her head aside, glancing towards the little number draped across the edge of her bed. She disconnects the radio earpiece without saying another word. A few minutes of preparation later, and the knock at the door alerts her. She grins as she swiftly slips on the silk robe barely reaching her thighs, tying the band around waist as she answers her door.
Instead of Lorne, she finds John.
She does a little hop back in shock, embarrassment flooding her in an instant. “John!” she greets, high-pitched. “Hi, what are-it’s late and I…. hey,” she finishes lamely.
For a full two seconds, Colonel John Sheppard of the United States Air Force - friend, confidant and second-in-command - is outright ogling her. More specifically, he's ogling the unprecedented display of her legs. The robe isn’t risqué or anything of the sort, but considering most individuals on Atlantis have never even seen Elizabeth’s bare shoulders on the best of days, the robe would raise alarms as well as eyebrows if anyone ever saw her in it.
And now John has. Fantastic.
“Elizabeth,” he manages, finally snapping his gaze up. “Just wanted to check in on you.”
“Oh, I was just about to turn in. For bed.”
He nods. She nods. And they both stand there in awkward silence until Elizabeth manages to break it. “Was there something you needed, John?”
It’s hopeless to pretend he’s not doing everything humanly possible to keep his eyes from drifting south. His ears are turning red. “No, no. Just wanted to swing by and see…” He stops short, frowning. “Wait, wait. I did come here for something.”
She’s positive her face is as bright red as one of her regular shirts. “What is it?”
“Hold on, I’m trying to remember.”
She pins him with a dark, knowing look. “John,” she warns, because now he's just teasing her.
A slow grin spreads his lips, and he holds up his hands in surrender. “It looks like you’ve already settled back in, so I’ll just handle it on my own.”
“Handle what?”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing. Radek wanted to give you a quick update on his test before you turned in for the night-”
“The puddlejumper tests?” she cuts in.
John raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, he utilized the puddle-jumpers. How’d you know that?”
She drops her gaze for a second, tugging self-consciously at the hemline of her robe. “I’m trying to catch up as quickly as possible on all the reports. I read about that one.”
John’s brow burrows. “I can tell him we can do this tomorrow?”
Guilt nags at her. She normally doesn’t leave the office until nearly eight or nine, and here she is, the first day back in Atlantis, and she’s thinking more about Lorne than she is about her duties.
She sighs heavily. “Let me just throw on some clothes and I’ll join you.”
John’s lips threaten to curl into a smirk, but somehow - probably through a sense of self-preservation - he doesn’t say a word about her attire. The door slides shut in his face, and Elizabeth whirls around, a little frenzied as she shrugs off the robe and tosses on her regular clothes over an expensive and ridiculously complicated piece of lingerie.
Note to self, she thinks with a wry sense of humor, never decide to greet Lorne naked.
They’re like ships passing at sea.
Lorne is leaving the puddle-jumper bay just as Elizabeth and John are entering it. She catches his eye on his way out the door, and he stops short, at a momentary loss for words before his gaze flies up to connect with John.
“Sir,” he greets tightly, then formally nods towards Elizabeth. “Ma’am. It’s good to have you back on Atlantis.”
She plasters on a diplomatic smile. “It’s good to be back, Major.”
Sorry, sorry, sorry!
There’s another pause - hopefully none too noticeable for the others - and then he turns on his heels and leaves. John walks on ahead, oblivious, but Elizabeth can’t help but linger at the entrance for a moment. She waits until Lorne throws a look over his shoulder, and she mouths an apology and taps her watch subtly. She signals fifteen minutes with her hands, and Lorne nods, a dour expression growing on his face.
“Elizabeth?” John calls.
She snaps her gaze back to the puddle-jumpers, just as Radek launches into a long-winded explanation.
Fifteen minutes turn into half an hour, and Elizabeth internally feels like screaming her head off. She isn’t normally this impatient with Radek - with any of the scientists, really. They are all long-winded, occasionally pompous and arrogant, and need the ego-stroking and hand-holding of a Hollywood diva. Even Radek, and he’s one of the good ones. But Elizabeth can’t really handle this today.
Also, she’s forgotten how uncomfortable lingerie is. The current thong is riding up, and the red and black bustier may look sexy as hell, but the lace scratches and itches like crazy. She can’t do anything about it because John and Radek will catch it - which, under normal circumstances would be mortifying enough, but with her current bout of luck, they might just assume she caught the Pegasus Chicken Pox that’s been going around Atlantis lately and she’ll spend the next four days quarantined in the infirmary.
And Lorne would just love that.
Radek pushes his glasses back up his nose. “I just have one more thing to show you about the experiment-”
“Hurry up, then,” John grouses, which actually sounds like more of a threat when aimed at Radek. “You said this would take fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Radek waves a dismissive hand. After working under Rodney, nothing bothers him much. Well, at least not John. “Just help me bring in the last bit of the equipment so I may attach it to the monitors.”
Radek turns to leave without waiting for a response, and John flashes her a dark look as he passes her by. “I swear, these geeks think I’m here solely for manual labor or gene experimentatio-”
“They’re using you for your body?” Elizabeth voices, a sly smile on her lips.
The remark doesn’t faze John in the slightest. “Only because they haven’t seen enough of yours,” he volleys back over his shoulder.
Her mouth drops open, trying to recover with some witty response. Before she can recover, a hand snags around her waist and hauls Elizabeth back. The next thing she knows, she’s dragged into a nearby puddle-jumper and the hatch closes after them. Lorne backs her up against the wall and takes over her mouth in a toe-curling kiss before she can exclaim her shock.
There isn’t much chance for thinking after that. At least much beyond - oh, good god, yes. Hands are everywhere, under her shirt, in her hair, and Lorne’s body is pressed firmly against hers without an inch to spare between them. When he drags a hot mouth over her neck and across the ridge of her collarbone, Elizabeth moans, caught off guard by the sudden heat spiking in her body.
“We can’t,” she protests weakly. “They’re coming back.”
“Cadman’s gonna page them in a minute,” Lorne answers back, undoing the top button of her shirt. “They’ll be dragged away for at least twenty minutes, trying to figure things out.”
“Things?” she repeats in a breathless voice, confused and aroused. The combination plays havoc with her thought process. “Cadman?”
“Shh,” he mumbles, and unzips her fly. “The jumper’s already invisible. I’ve got everything covered.”
And her eyes roll back in her head because Lorne is doing that thing with his fingers, in between her thighs, and any thoughts of protests go flying out the airlock. Her hands fist in his jacket, because her grip on him is suddenly the only thing solid and real. His fingers slid over her, into her, so fast, so easy because she’s already so wet…and oh, God, she can’t believe they’re doing this. With his free hand, he lifts her shirt up and over her head to expose her lingerie, and vaguely, dimly, she’s aware of the electric groan that pierces his throat.
“Jesus Christ, Elizabeth,” he whispers, in that tone.
His dark head bends over her chest, using his teeth to tug down her bra. Her breasts get exposed to a cool splash of air, nipples hardening, and then his tongue laps across her sensitive skin. He takes the weight of one breast into his mouth, lavishing attention on it like he’s praying to her body. She hears the catch in her breathing and his responding chuckle, and her fingers drag through his hair.
Elizabeth can feel the tug of his mouth all the way to her groin, a wave of heat through her belly. Her lower body is still moving awkwardly against his hand, and in kind, Lorne is rubbing against her. She thinks this is quite possibly the most reckless thing she’s ever dared to do, but she can’t really remember why she should care.
When he flips her over and takes her from behind, her hands curl around a bar above her head and there isn’t a part of her that fights this. She focuses dimly on the pattern on the jumper wall as Lorne pushes into her. He bites off her name as Elizabeth grinds back against him, his hips thrusting in a fast fuck that leaves them both breathless. His fingers eventually circle her waist, continuing to rub against her clit tortuously until she comes under his assaults with an orgasm so blinding her vision goes pure white for several seconds.
“That’s my girl,” he mutters possessively, cupping her breasts to fill his palms.
Her eyes squeeze shut, and then he comes after a few more thrusts. He barks her name in a rough voice, then collapses heavily against her back with her lingerie half-on and half-off because they never got around to removing it. Lorne’s head is cradled against the curve of her neck, breath heavy in her ear, and the euphoria dimly begins to fade.
“We have to move.”
“Just a minute,” he pleads.
She squeezes her eyes shut, and tries to get her breathing under control. “God, I missed you.”
He grins against her shoulder. “Welcome home, Elizabeth.”
Ten minutes later, she’s trying to look John in the eye while trying not to think about the fact that Lorne has her underwear in his pocket. She doesn’t think she’s getting away with this entire tryst scot-free. John looks suspicion of Lorne’s sudden appearance by her side, and the way Cadman’s emergency seemed to have solved itself once Lorne radioed her in.
John throws one too many suspicious looks over her shoulder at Lorne, and eventually Lorne catches the drift. “Right, well, now that my job here is done-” and it takes everything in Elizabeth’s will power not to cough, “-I’ll be headed back to my quarters. Night, sir.” He turns to Elizabeth. “Ma’am.”
“Major,” she returns cordially.
“Right,” John says, slowly, drawing out the word. Eventually, his face scrunches up in an expression she’s long since labeled as his I-don’t-want-to-know face. She’s seen it on a number of occasions, and it usually means he’s working hard to repress a thought. “G’night, Major.”
Shit. John knows.
Lorne leaves abruptly, looking a little paler than before.
John glances aside to Radek. “We done for the night?”
Radek waves a hand. “Yes, yes. I think we’ve had enough headaches for one night. We can resume tomorrow. That all right with you, Dr. Weir?”
Elizabeth is too busy panicking over the thought that John has discovered her biggest secret to answer Radek. Shit. Lorne should never have dragged her into that puddle-jumper. Distractedly, she affirms her response to Radek and watches him bid farewell. She’s left standing alone with John - a knowing John.
“So,” John begins idly, scrubbing a hand across his neck.
Elizabeth tucks an errant strand behind her ear. “Yes?”
He pauses, and they share a look. He knows. She knows he knows. And he knows that she knows that he knows. And now they’re left to figure out what to do now that everybody here knows everything. God, this is her worst nightmare. Her relationship with Lorne has been her most guarded secret for so long; she doesn’t know how John will respond to this.
He bites his lip. “So, uh... you happy?”
The question catches her completely off guard. It isn’t the first thing she expected from him, nor is it the type of question she anticipated. Where was the recrimination? The disbelief? There’s not an ounce of judgment on his face, just… confusion? It seems Elizabeth and Lorne kept their secret well, if John’s shock is anything to go by.
Eventually, she recovers enough to manage two words. “I am.”
“Okay, then.” He pauses, wierded-out or something. She can’t define what exactly. “Then… I’m happy for you?”
It’s almost worded like a question, so she simply replies, “Okay.”
He nods again, looking confused, then pivots and strides away. However brief, she considers that to be one of the strangest conversations she’s ever had with John. She shouldn’t be surprised. John always hates talking about anything that involves personal relationships or feelings.
It takes her a full two seconds to realize that someone finally knows her secret, and the world hasn’t imploded. Drawing in a deep breath, she allows herself the freedom to relax. It may seem strange, but John knowing suddenly doesn’t seem as bad as it could be. Despite the awkwardness now, she suspects come morning that John will act like nothing has changed at all.
“Right,” Elizabeth acknowledges to herself. “That could have gone worse.”
She taps her radio earpiece, and a second later, Lorne greets her with a wary voice, “So, is my superior officer out to kill me now?”
“That depends,” she says as she walks out the door, “on if you keep his boss happy.”
“Oh? And how do I do that?”
“Easy. You answer a simple question.”
“What?”
“How quickly can you be in my room?”
Fin
Author: ed_84
Pairing: Lorne/Weir established relationship
Summary: It wasn’t the stuff of fairytales. At the beginning, this had been nothing but a highly objectionable and intensely sexual relationship, and nothing more. Now seven months later, God help her, it’s almost impossible to deny what this is - a relationship, with messy strings attached and all.
Warnings: R, sexual situations.
Spoilers: none.
Author's note: Prompt: Lorne/Weir, and someone finds out about their relationship. It started off angsty, and then quickly turned humorous. Not my original intentions, but WTH? Beta'd by IR.
First Place Winner for the Isis Awards' Evan Lorne/Elizabeth Weir category.
It begins one morning with a simple question. “So Dr. Weir, what are you wearing right now?”
She nearly collides with some random person coming down the hallway. She doesn’t respond to Lorne’s husky voice; simply hooks a strand of hair behind her ear, double-checking the radio piece to ensure the line is private. Elizabeth quells the first response that threatens to spill passed her lips, because despite Lorne’s playful tone, she’s really not in the mood for this right now.
She keeps her voice even and low, “Evan, not now.”
She’s just pulled away from her weekly conference call with the SGC, and she’s been “requested” to return to Earth for a few days. She suspects it’s the IOA, though she hasn’t able to get any straight answers from Landry one way or another. He's been disconcertingly vague, and a gnawing feeling descends upon her that this visit Earthside is going to be as pleasant as her last trip.
Elizabeth fights the anxious flutter in her stomach as she leaves command control. “I’ve got news,” she tells Lorne.
“Not until you answer my question,” Lorne says, voice low and teasing. “Enquiring minds want to know, what are you wearing this morning?”
Her job now lies in the hands of inept IOA members who look for scapegoats more than solutions, so Elizabeth thinks she should be given some lax regarding the sting of her next response. “What do you think I’m wearing, Lorne?” she shoots him down. “Red shirt, black pants. Same thing as always.”
There’s a pause on the other end, and she hears Lorne’s heavy sigh. “C’mon, Elizabeth. I’m just trying to have a little fun.”
“Yes, well, I’d prefer if we didn’t have that type of fun while we’re still technically on the clock,” she retorts, frustration getting the better of her. “I’m trying to be serious here.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Lorne snaps, annoyance bleeding into his words in response to hers. Of course, he has no idea why she’s so upset. “Serious, that’s always you. I’m just trying to loosen-”
“Lorne,” she cuts in, then forces herself to take a steadying breath. She’s already so frustrated that she can’t even get her words out. And when Elizabeth is so far gone that she can’t even talk about, it’s never a good sign. Lorne isn’t the one to blame for that, though. “Sorry,” she breathes with a tired sigh. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just... I just spoke with General Landry. I’m headed back to Earth.”
“What?” he exclaims harshly, all earlier conversation forgotten. “Why?”
She quickly thinks of a dozen reasons the IOA could have it in for her, not the least of which is a clandestine relationship with a subordinate in her chain of command. Her anxiety increases two-fold as she realizes this current conversation is just another example why this relationship with Lorne shows six different levels of poor judgment. It’s one thing to share a bed at night, another thing for Lorne to ask her what she’s wearing in the middle of the workday. They need to be more discreet than that.
“I have to go and quickly pack,” she explains in a tired voice, just as she makes it to her room. “I know you’re exploring the far-east wing labs down there, but I can’t wait for you to return. I have to give some last minute instructions to John and Rodney before I leave.”
She isn’t sure Lorne really paid attention to a lick of that. “Why are they calling you back?” he presses.
She closes her eyes and admits in a soft voice, “I don’t know. I’ll see you when I get back.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“They said it was urgent.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I’ll be back within two days, tops,” Elizabeth clarifies, parroting Landry’s promise. Thankfully, with fully working ZPMs on both sides of the gate, this trip can be quick. Hopefully. Assuming she comes back. “I’ll see you then.”
She can almost feel Lorne’s frown on the other end. “This conversation isn’t going anything like I planned.”
She smiles despite herself. “And where did you expect this conversation to go?”
“Phone sex?” he admits with a lift of his voice. “A guy can fantasize, can’t he?”
She rolls her eyes. “Men are all the same.”
She almost disconnects when Lorne stops her, “Hey, wait.”
“What?”
There’s a long pause on the other end, and the awkwardness of his hesitation carries more weight than any words he could possibly say. She knows exactly what he’s thinking; she’s thinking it too.
He lets out an audible breath. “I’ll miss you,” he admits softly, then hangs up before she can respond.
Instead of two days, she’s gone for two full weeks. Two very long, very very frustrating weeks. When Elizabeth finally steps through the wormhole, Lorne’s probably more desperately happy to see her than she’s happy to be there. Too bad he’s 30,000 feet under the surface of the ocean, stuck alone in one of Zelenka’s tests that requires the puddle-jumper to sit tight for another several hours.
The City has had two emergencies in the two weeks she’s been gone; the tamer of which was the one where Dr. McKay’s new experiment caused a massive flood in the Gateroom, which suspended all off-world activity for several days while the mess was fixed. On top of that, the medical team has had their hands full with a viral outbreak of the Pegasus version of the Chicken Pox, which incapacitated over a dozen personnel. They all had to be quarantined for nearly four days in the infirmary, where they were all heavily medicated. But even then, he’s seen grown women and men sob and cry over an irresistible urge to scratch themselves within an inch of their lives. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
So when he finally hears her voice over the radio, he has to tamper down a flood of relief. “Ma’am,” he forces a cordial greeting. “It’s good to have you back.”
“Secure line, Evan. You can speak freely.”
He drops the formal bullshit like a ton of a bricks. “Took you long enough,” he sighs, trying not to whine. “You said it’d be two days, tops.” It’s been two weeks. And honestly, there was a part of him that was slightly freaking out that Elizabeth might not be able to return to Atlantis at all. “How are you?”
She sighs heavily, and it’s a little weird that he can read her so well that such a small gesture can tell him so much. “I’m just glad to be back.”
“Where are you right now?”
“In my office,” she answers. “I’m just getting the full situation update on the-”
“You just got back. It’s late. You’re allowed to take a breather and relax a little. Start tomorrow.”
There’s a pause. “I am a little tired,” she admits in a soft voice.
The confession does more to concern him than anything else, and he suddenly gets a clearer picture of how demanding the last two weeks on her must have been. Elizabeth never admits to be tired or in pain; Sheppard once had to carry her to the infirmary unconscious because she refused to speak up about a life-threatening headache.
“Go back to your quarters,” he suggests, biting his lip with a dark expression of worry. “Unpack. Unwind. I’ll meet you there in a few hours as soon as I return.”
There’s a long beat on the other end, and Elizabeth finally says, “Yeah, okay. I think I’ll do that.”
“Good.”
“Oh, and Evan?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s good to hear your voice,” she says, and disconnects before he can respond.
Damn IOA bastards, he thinks bitterly.
He’s not normally one to wish ill on people, but there are times when an exception or two rears its head. He usually keeps quiet and follows orders when it comes to the chain of command, but maybe he’s been spending too much time in Atlantis? This city breeds independent thought a lot more than the SGC ever did, especially since lately he’s been in a position to see things more clearly. He’s been questioning the hell out of some of the decisions being made back on Earth, particularly when it comes to a certain committee with a three-letter acronym.
He’s tapping his fingers impatiently for the next few moments, concern festering as he sits alone in the puddle jumper and waits for Radek’s diagnostic tests to finish running its full course.
Predictably, his thoughts center around Elizabeth.
Two hours later, impatience gets the better of Elizabeth and she reaches for her radio again. “How much longer are you going to be?”
Lorne’s voice over her earpiece sounds as frustrated as she feels, “At least another hour. Possibly two? The samples are coming in slow.”
She reclines back in bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. “I hate this,” she tells him.
“This?”
“This,” she clarifies on an uneasy breath. “It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen you. We didn’t even get to say goodbye in person, and now you’re stuck out there at the bottom of the ocean. I just… I just hate this.”
It’s a confession she never thought she’d admit to Evan Lorne, but then again, nothing about her relationship with this man has ever followed any sense of logic.
But it took one messy mission offworld and a drunken night later to find herself with a secret lover. It wasn’t the stuff of fairytales. At the beginning, this had been nothing but a highly objectionable and intensely sexual relationship, and nothing more. Ignoring that it brought into question a whole host of issues regarding her judgment, his, and the effect this had on the chain of command, Elizabeth repeatedly and continually kept finding her lips locked with Lorne at the most inappropriate times. Once, even, while he had been bedridden in the infirmary with Carson not a few feet away with his back turned.
Now seven months later, God help her, it’s almost impossible to deny what this is - a relationship, with messy strings attached and all.
“I know.” Lorne lets out a frustrated sigh that seems to echo everything she’s feeling. “I hate it too.”
His soft voice, just like that, manages to undue pretty much everything for her. She closes her eyes and breaths once, twice, deeply. Control over her wrought emotions has been harder and harder to come by these last two weeks, and now that everything is finally over, finally done with, she feels a little like a victim coming back from a hostage situation.
The IOA committee brought her in and went over every single one of Atlantis’ disasters and mistakes with a magnifying glass. Endless meetings, threatening questions, and all of it with her job hanging in the balance, suspended by one thin thread of string.
“I missed…” she begins, taking a steadying breath. “I missed this place so much.”
“Elizabeth, what happened?”
She shakes her head, because she doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to go into the painful details of how she was pretty much raked over hot coals the last few days. The only thing that matters is that the IOA’s doubts were proven wrong; she’d been allowed back to Atlantis after it became clear that her judgment was never the issue. Of course, it helped that she had the President and General O'Neill's adamant support.
“Elizabeth?”
“Don't worry about it,” she replies. “I’m back. That’s all that matters.”
There’s dead silence over the radio, and she knows she’s probably freaking him out with this conversation. She doesn’t mean to do that; doesn’t want to concern him. God, she just wants things back to the exact way they were, before.
And she really, really needs Lorne here in person for that. Damn it.
“So,” his voice drifts in, “what are you wearing?”
She lifts her head off the pillow, incredulous. “What?”
“What are you wearing?”
There’s another beat and a smile grows on her lips. “Lorne,” she warns, but it’s with affection.
“You doing something else?” he goads, his voice light and carefree. And, god, even though she knows this is his way of a diffusing a tense situation, it feels so good to hear his voice like that. “Where are you right now?”
“In my quarters.”
“Are you lying down in bed?”
She laughs aloud. “Shut up, Lorne. I’m not doing this.”
“Doing what?” he questions innocently, which doesn’t work at all. “All I’m doing is asking a few questions.”
“Yeah,” she admonishes dryly. “Completely innocent questions.”
She lifts her head off the mattress, spying her bag in the corner. She hasn’t unpacked yet, and that’s when she remembers some of the articles of clothing she picked up. Elizabeth didn’t have much time for shopping during the trip, but she made it a point to get out the day before yesterday and pick up at least a few new pieces.
Her voice turns flirtation and light, matching his, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I have a present for you,” she breathes, getting into the spirit of things. “I’ll give you a hint. It’ll definitely make answering the question “what am I wearing” a lot more interesting.”
The pause on the other end is longer this time. “Elizabeth, did you… did you buy something special to wear?”
She grins widely, because she can almost imagine the dumbstruck look on his face at the thought of lingerie. The imagery makes her laugh even more.
“For me to wear, and you to enjoy,” she teases. “I thought my wardrobe could use some spicing up.” She expects him to tease her back; some joke or another is never far from his lips because he’s always trying to make her smile. She grows a bit confused when there’s no response, though. A second of silence stretches into two and three, and she sits up in bed, suddenly worried that something else down there in the sea has grabbed his attention. “Lorne?”
“Elizabeth,” he breaths, and his voice is that tone, that low one; the one he only voices when they’re both in bed. It always has the effect of melting her spine and ceasing her thought-processes, and even though this time Lorne isn’t here, isn’t touching her like he usually is when he uses that tone, the effect is still as immediate. “You can’t tell me something like that when we’re separated by 30,000 feet of water.”
She pauses, thrown, because although she’d been expecting some type of reaction from him, she really didn’t think it would be this. He sounds… frustrated. The warning in his voice is the same as when she teases him for too long, too hard, and he just wants to come already.
Her body grows warm with the power. “I…” she begins, and her voice is just a little breathless. “I wasn’t looking to be cruel, Evan.”
“Describe it to me,” Lorne drops his voice. “What does it look like?”
Her mouth hangs open as she considers answering - considers teasing him about it.
“Elizabeth,” he pleads, and yes, he’s begging her. “What does it look like?”
“It’s black and red,” she finds herself answering, “and there are several pieces.”
“Several?” he repeats, and she’s acutely aware that she has him hanging on ever one of her words. It’s a strange power, novel in a way that has nothing to do with her usual command over language. “What pieces?”
She only bought two pairs, so she made sure they were both special. “Garter belt,” she admits in a soft whisper. She edges off her bed, compelled into finding one garment before she describes it. “Bustier.” She holds the garment up, in better light. “Matching panties.”
There’s a crash over the radio - from Lorne’s jumper - and then she can hear the noises of him moving around quickly. Her eyes widen when she hears the click of the radio informing her that he’s just gone off a private line.
“Atlantis, this is Lorne. I’m coming home early.”
She stops herself just before exclaiming her shock. Evening her voice, she intervenes just as Chuck comes on, “Major Lorne, this is Dr. Weir. What’s the sit rep? I thought you had a few hours left on the test?”
“I do,” he breathes, and god, his voice is that tone again. “But there’s some problems with the diagnostics machine. I can’t continue.”
“Problems?” she repeats pointedly.
“With the machine,” he insists in a tight voice.
A grin widens her face, because the only problem Lorne is having right now has to do with keeping his hormones in check. It gives her a little thrill to realize her talking - as tame as it was - got him so bothered. Maybe she should try it more often? There had to be plenty of advantages to breaking Major Evan Lorne so easily.
“Atlantis?” he says, clearing his throat. “I’ll be back within ten minutes.”
Elizabeth gets the message loud and clear. She tilts her head aside, glancing towards the little number draped across the edge of her bed. She disconnects the radio earpiece without saying another word. A few minutes of preparation later, and the knock at the door alerts her. She grins as she swiftly slips on the silk robe barely reaching her thighs, tying the band around waist as she answers her door.
Instead of Lorne, she finds John.
She does a little hop back in shock, embarrassment flooding her in an instant. “John!” she greets, high-pitched. “Hi, what are-it’s late and I…. hey,” she finishes lamely.
For a full two seconds, Colonel John Sheppard of the United States Air Force - friend, confidant and second-in-command - is outright ogling her. More specifically, he's ogling the unprecedented display of her legs. The robe isn’t risqué or anything of the sort, but considering most individuals on Atlantis have never even seen Elizabeth’s bare shoulders on the best of days, the robe would raise alarms as well as eyebrows if anyone ever saw her in it.
And now John has. Fantastic.
“Elizabeth,” he manages, finally snapping his gaze up. “Just wanted to check in on you.”
“Oh, I was just about to turn in. For bed.”
He nods. She nods. And they both stand there in awkward silence until Elizabeth manages to break it. “Was there something you needed, John?”
It’s hopeless to pretend he’s not doing everything humanly possible to keep his eyes from drifting south. His ears are turning red. “No, no. Just wanted to swing by and see…” He stops short, frowning. “Wait, wait. I did come here for something.”
She’s positive her face is as bright red as one of her regular shirts. “What is it?”
“Hold on, I’m trying to remember.”
She pins him with a dark, knowing look. “John,” she warns, because now he's just teasing her.
A slow grin spreads his lips, and he holds up his hands in surrender. “It looks like you’ve already settled back in, so I’ll just handle it on my own.”
“Handle what?”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing. Radek wanted to give you a quick update on his test before you turned in for the night-”
“The puddlejumper tests?” she cuts in.
John raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, he utilized the puddle-jumpers. How’d you know that?”
She drops her gaze for a second, tugging self-consciously at the hemline of her robe. “I’m trying to catch up as quickly as possible on all the reports. I read about that one.”
John’s brow burrows. “I can tell him we can do this tomorrow?”
Guilt nags at her. She normally doesn’t leave the office until nearly eight or nine, and here she is, the first day back in Atlantis, and she’s thinking more about Lorne than she is about her duties.
She sighs heavily. “Let me just throw on some clothes and I’ll join you.”
John’s lips threaten to curl into a smirk, but somehow - probably through a sense of self-preservation - he doesn’t say a word about her attire. The door slides shut in his face, and Elizabeth whirls around, a little frenzied as she shrugs off the robe and tosses on her regular clothes over an expensive and ridiculously complicated piece of lingerie.
Note to self, she thinks with a wry sense of humor, never decide to greet Lorne naked.
They’re like ships passing at sea.
Lorne is leaving the puddle-jumper bay just as Elizabeth and John are entering it. She catches his eye on his way out the door, and he stops short, at a momentary loss for words before his gaze flies up to connect with John.
“Sir,” he greets tightly, then formally nods towards Elizabeth. “Ma’am. It’s good to have you back on Atlantis.”
She plasters on a diplomatic smile. “It’s good to be back, Major.”
Sorry, sorry, sorry!
There’s another pause - hopefully none too noticeable for the others - and then he turns on his heels and leaves. John walks on ahead, oblivious, but Elizabeth can’t help but linger at the entrance for a moment. She waits until Lorne throws a look over his shoulder, and she mouths an apology and taps her watch subtly. She signals fifteen minutes with her hands, and Lorne nods, a dour expression growing on his face.
“Elizabeth?” John calls.
She snaps her gaze back to the puddle-jumpers, just as Radek launches into a long-winded explanation.
Fifteen minutes turn into half an hour, and Elizabeth internally feels like screaming her head off. She isn’t normally this impatient with Radek - with any of the scientists, really. They are all long-winded, occasionally pompous and arrogant, and need the ego-stroking and hand-holding of a Hollywood diva. Even Radek, and he’s one of the good ones. But Elizabeth can’t really handle this today.
Also, she’s forgotten how uncomfortable lingerie is. The current thong is riding up, and the red and black bustier may look sexy as hell, but the lace scratches and itches like crazy. She can’t do anything about it because John and Radek will catch it - which, under normal circumstances would be mortifying enough, but with her current bout of luck, they might just assume she caught the Pegasus Chicken Pox that’s been going around Atlantis lately and she’ll spend the next four days quarantined in the infirmary.
And Lorne would just love that.
Radek pushes his glasses back up his nose. “I just have one more thing to show you about the experiment-”
“Hurry up, then,” John grouses, which actually sounds like more of a threat when aimed at Radek. “You said this would take fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Radek waves a dismissive hand. After working under Rodney, nothing bothers him much. Well, at least not John. “Just help me bring in the last bit of the equipment so I may attach it to the monitors.”
Radek turns to leave without waiting for a response, and John flashes her a dark look as he passes her by. “I swear, these geeks think I’m here solely for manual labor or gene experimentatio-”
“They’re using you for your body?” Elizabeth voices, a sly smile on her lips.
The remark doesn’t faze John in the slightest. “Only because they haven’t seen enough of yours,” he volleys back over his shoulder.
Her mouth drops open, trying to recover with some witty response. Before she can recover, a hand snags around her waist and hauls Elizabeth back. The next thing she knows, she’s dragged into a nearby puddle-jumper and the hatch closes after them. Lorne backs her up against the wall and takes over her mouth in a toe-curling kiss before she can exclaim her shock.
There isn’t much chance for thinking after that. At least much beyond - oh, good god, yes. Hands are everywhere, under her shirt, in her hair, and Lorne’s body is pressed firmly against hers without an inch to spare between them. When he drags a hot mouth over her neck and across the ridge of her collarbone, Elizabeth moans, caught off guard by the sudden heat spiking in her body.
“We can’t,” she protests weakly. “They’re coming back.”
“Cadman’s gonna page them in a minute,” Lorne answers back, undoing the top button of her shirt. “They’ll be dragged away for at least twenty minutes, trying to figure things out.”
“Things?” she repeats in a breathless voice, confused and aroused. The combination plays havoc with her thought process. “Cadman?”
“Shh,” he mumbles, and unzips her fly. “The jumper’s already invisible. I’ve got everything covered.”
And her eyes roll back in her head because Lorne is doing that thing with his fingers, in between her thighs, and any thoughts of protests go flying out the airlock. Her hands fist in his jacket, because her grip on him is suddenly the only thing solid and real. His fingers slid over her, into her, so fast, so easy because she’s already so wet…and oh, God, she can’t believe they’re doing this. With his free hand, he lifts her shirt up and over her head to expose her lingerie, and vaguely, dimly, she’s aware of the electric groan that pierces his throat.
“Jesus Christ, Elizabeth,” he whispers, in that tone.
His dark head bends over her chest, using his teeth to tug down her bra. Her breasts get exposed to a cool splash of air, nipples hardening, and then his tongue laps across her sensitive skin. He takes the weight of one breast into his mouth, lavishing attention on it like he’s praying to her body. She hears the catch in her breathing and his responding chuckle, and her fingers drag through his hair.
Elizabeth can feel the tug of his mouth all the way to her groin, a wave of heat through her belly. Her lower body is still moving awkwardly against his hand, and in kind, Lorne is rubbing against her. She thinks this is quite possibly the most reckless thing she’s ever dared to do, but she can’t really remember why she should care.
When he flips her over and takes her from behind, her hands curl around a bar above her head and there isn’t a part of her that fights this. She focuses dimly on the pattern on the jumper wall as Lorne pushes into her. He bites off her name as Elizabeth grinds back against him, his hips thrusting in a fast fuck that leaves them both breathless. His fingers eventually circle her waist, continuing to rub against her clit tortuously until she comes under his assaults with an orgasm so blinding her vision goes pure white for several seconds.
“That’s my girl,” he mutters possessively, cupping her breasts to fill his palms.
Her eyes squeeze shut, and then he comes after a few more thrusts. He barks her name in a rough voice, then collapses heavily against her back with her lingerie half-on and half-off because they never got around to removing it. Lorne’s head is cradled against the curve of her neck, breath heavy in her ear, and the euphoria dimly begins to fade.
“We have to move.”
“Just a minute,” he pleads.
She squeezes her eyes shut, and tries to get her breathing under control. “God, I missed you.”
He grins against her shoulder. “Welcome home, Elizabeth.”
Ten minutes later, she’s trying to look John in the eye while trying not to think about the fact that Lorne has her underwear in his pocket. She doesn’t think she’s getting away with this entire tryst scot-free. John looks suspicion of Lorne’s sudden appearance by her side, and the way Cadman’s emergency seemed to have solved itself once Lorne radioed her in.
John throws one too many suspicious looks over her shoulder at Lorne, and eventually Lorne catches the drift. “Right, well, now that my job here is done-” and it takes everything in Elizabeth’s will power not to cough, “-I’ll be headed back to my quarters. Night, sir.” He turns to Elizabeth. “Ma’am.”
“Major,” she returns cordially.
“Right,” John says, slowly, drawing out the word. Eventually, his face scrunches up in an expression she’s long since labeled as his I-don’t-want-to-know face. She’s seen it on a number of occasions, and it usually means he’s working hard to repress a thought. “G’night, Major.”
Shit. John knows.
Lorne leaves abruptly, looking a little paler than before.
John glances aside to Radek. “We done for the night?”
Radek waves a hand. “Yes, yes. I think we’ve had enough headaches for one night. We can resume tomorrow. That all right with you, Dr. Weir?”
Elizabeth is too busy panicking over the thought that John has discovered her biggest secret to answer Radek. Shit. Lorne should never have dragged her into that puddle-jumper. Distractedly, she affirms her response to Radek and watches him bid farewell. She’s left standing alone with John - a knowing John.
“So,” John begins idly, scrubbing a hand across his neck.
Elizabeth tucks an errant strand behind her ear. “Yes?”
He pauses, and they share a look. He knows. She knows he knows. And he knows that she knows that he knows. And now they’re left to figure out what to do now that everybody here knows everything. God, this is her worst nightmare. Her relationship with Lorne has been her most guarded secret for so long; she doesn’t know how John will respond to this.
He bites his lip. “So, uh... you happy?”
The question catches her completely off guard. It isn’t the first thing she expected from him, nor is it the type of question she anticipated. Where was the recrimination? The disbelief? There’s not an ounce of judgment on his face, just… confusion? It seems Elizabeth and Lorne kept their secret well, if John’s shock is anything to go by.
Eventually, she recovers enough to manage two words. “I am.”
“Okay, then.” He pauses, wierded-out or something. She can’t define what exactly. “Then… I’m happy for you?”
It’s almost worded like a question, so she simply replies, “Okay.”
He nods again, looking confused, then pivots and strides away. However brief, she considers that to be one of the strangest conversations she’s ever had with John. She shouldn’t be surprised. John always hates talking about anything that involves personal relationships or feelings.
It takes her a full two seconds to realize that someone finally knows her secret, and the world hasn’t imploded. Drawing in a deep breath, she allows herself the freedom to relax. It may seem strange, but John knowing suddenly doesn’t seem as bad as it could be. Despite the awkwardness now, she suspects come morning that John will act like nothing has changed at all.
“Right,” Elizabeth acknowledges to herself. “That could have gone worse.”
She taps her radio earpiece, and a second later, Lorne greets her with a wary voice, “So, is my superior officer out to kill me now?”
“That depends,” she says as she walks out the door, “on if you keep his boss happy.”
“Oh? And how do I do that?”
“Easy. You answer a simple question.”
“What?”
“How quickly can you be in my room?”
Fin