Fic: The Upside of Down (S/W)
Title: The Upside of Down
Author: ed_84
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s)/Characters: Sheppard/Weir, John, Elizabeth, Cameron Mitchell, Samantha Carter
Warning(s): Angst; Lots of sex; language
Prompt: For the S4/S5 Fix It Challenge @ john_elizabeth; prompt: "Fuck you, John!"/"You did that already, remember?"
Summary: Elizabeth can’t do this anymore; they’ve danced this number once too many - and how many times can you decide to self-destruct anyway? There should be a limit on that.
Disclaimer: SGA does not belong to me.
A/N: This is a complete AU where the last two years of SGA went vastly different. Read to find out how.
Elizabeth doesn’t answer the phone when she sees who the call is from; rationalizes while a song plays out on her car radio that her conversations with John never end well. She’s doing better by him if she ignores him, and though it’s stinging remark, it’s only been fact for nearly a year.
When her phone doesn’t blink with a new message, she exhales sharply and drops the cell to the side seat, her eyes returning fully to the miserable rain-sleeked road ahead of her. She reminds herself they’re better off apart and alone, than together. Things get… messy when they’re together.
But the seconds tick by, and Elizabeth tries and fails to place the time when he last tried to contact her. It’s been… what, six months? Maybe seven? She remembers it was near Christmas, and he’d sounded drunk over the phone. Elizabeth also remembers getting into a fight within five minutes of saying hello.
Her hand grips tightly around the steering wheel, willing composure and strength. One mere phone call from him - not even answered - and just look at her. An emotional wreck. There are days when she can function just fine and act as if everything is normal. Days when her mother or her brother or her new friends in her new life would never suspect the crushing guilt and sadness she lives with everyday. During those days, when she has them, Elizabeth never thinks about former Lt. Colonel John Sheppard and the city they ran. She never lets her mind drift to Atlantis. She can handle her survivor’s guilt better when she’s alone.
She’s positive that it’s the same with him.
Another few seconds tick by, and Elizabeth curses under her breath, and picks up the phone. She hits speed-dial #4 before she can change her mind. It’s been a year of estrangement, and she still has him on her speed-dial.
A second ticks by, and he answers. “Elizabeth?”
She takes a breath, and answers.
He has her meet him at a bar. A damn bar.
For a moment, she wonders if he’s drunk again, still drowning his sorrows in the nearest bottle of Jack Daniels. She doesn’t think she can handle that again, but over the phone he sounds sober and serious, and it’s his tone more than anything that convinces her to meet him.
What the hell is he doing in D.C. anyway? The last she heard, he was on the west coast secluding himself to a southern California beach house that cost more money than he made in the three and a half years working at Atlantis, hazard pay and all. She wonders where he got the money, then remembers that she’s not supposed to care anymore.
Of course, if she really didn’t care, she wouldn’t be here, now would she?
She parks her car on a gravel-paved parking lot out back, a billboard looming over the building that announces the establishment’s name as Carson’s. A dull ache goes through her. She knows John picked this bar for the name alone. She fixes her hair in the rearview mirror, then climbs down from her SUV and approaches the side entrance. When she pushes open the heavy oak door, the waft of stale beer and cigarette smoke fills her senses.
She hates bars; John knows that.
A sweep of a gaze across the inside shows Elizabeth that the place is mostly empty. A few patrons sit in corner tables, another couple in back playing pool, but Elizabeth’s eyes immediately seek out the lone figure sitting at the bar on one of the tacky green stools.
She braces herself with a deep breath, and slides into the seat beside him. “Gin and tonic,” she orders from the bartender.
John studies her, his gaze starting at her face then down to the floor and back up again. Elizabeth pretends to be indifferent under the stare; she can’t even face him yet. They sit quietly side by side for several moments, the silence between them familiar. Elizabeth studies the bar again, eyes discreetly passing by the couple making out in the back.
She finally, finally, turns to look at him; his left eye is slightly swollen and purple. A dark bruise discolors the flesh below it. His hand is bleeding too, wrapped tightly in a bundle of soiled paper towels.
She tries her best to stay calm and impassive, but she’s never quite managed that particular bluff. “What happened to you, John?”
The bartender returns with her drink. “That’ll be $86, for your drinks and his. Now take this piece of shit and get the hell out of here, would you?”
A bar fight, she realizes. Elizabeth is, apparently, his free ride.
Stifling a low curse, she quickly retrieves her purse to angrily toss down a hundred dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she murmurs, then snags the glass by the rim, and tosses back her gin and tonic with a few gulps. She turns back to John, and orders, “C’mon. Let’s get going.”
After a beat, she’s aware that John is following her out the door without a word.
Nearly a year.
Nearly a year and she can barely recognize this man from who he was before. Lt. Colonel John Sheppard had been a lot of things, but a drunk son of a bitch had never been one of them. Elizabeth drives through the steady rain with her eyes fixed on the road ahead of her, afraid that if she opens her mouth, old reprimands will spill loose. They’ve had this fight too many times; it’s the reason they stopped seeing each other in the first place.
She pulls up to her apartment complex and parks her SUV under the canopy nearby. Together, silently, they enter the building, wait in the lobby, ride up the elevator and arrive at her doorstep. All without a single word or even a glance exchanged. Though they’ve barely spoken a word to each other thus far, Elizabeth recognizes the mood hanging in the air. They’re fighting.
Damn it. When you stopped sleeping with a person and broke off a relationship, weren’t you supposed to stop fighting?
She gets her key in the door, pushes it open and enters first. By the time she finally has it closed again, she twists around to face John and without entirely knowing who initiates it, finds herself kissing him. Their lips fuse together, tongues toying angrily, fists in hair, clothes disheveled, and John pushes her back against the door with his body pressing into her.
His mouth taste like beer, and she hates beer. The kiss is sloppy and desperate, and John is either more drunk than she realized or better at covering it up these days. He lacks the finesse he usually possesses, the normal primal heat that often leaves her defenseless against his advances. She thinks of all the ways this meeting is a bad, bad idea. That list is probably longer than the list of charges at his court martial.
It’s stupid and foolish, but this too is familiar. When they don’t talk, when they don’t fight (and even if they do), it all invariably leads back to this. She thinks she’s had more angry sex with John Sheppard than is healthy for any countless number of relationships, but she really can’t claim that any of her relationships since Atlantis have been healthy. Elizabeth knows the routine of this as much as she knows the length of his zipper and the feel of his half-mast erection beneath his jeans.
The thought sobers her, tempering the dark heat of the kiss. Elizabeth can’t do this anymore; they’ve danced this number once too many - and how many times can you decide to self-destruct anyway? There should be a limit on that.
She pulls back and rips herself free of his embrace, stumbling down the hallway a little to put distance between them. They can’t do this. Not now.
“Eliza-”
“Don’t,” she warns him, and he stills with one look at her.
She wanders down the hallway and turns the light on in her living room.
It started with a routine callback to Earth, and two weeks later ended with a devastating conversation with the President of the United States. “I’m sorry,” he says. “We don’t have the resources and manpower to do what you’re asking us to.”
“If we don’t do something,” Elizabeth protests, “our people back there will-”
“It isn’t just my decision,” the President argues. “China, Russia, the other Gate Alliance members agree. Without a ZPM, and our ships preoccupied with defending the Milky Way against the Orii, there’s no way we can mount the rescue mission they need. We can’t afford to lose anymore people on a lost cause.”
Her eyes grow steel. “A lost cause? What about our people there? You can’t just abandon them!”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Weir. They’re on their own for the moment.”
That was two years ago, and they haven’t heard a word from Atlantis since. She doesn’t have codeword clearance anymore, but General Landry assures her that he’ll inform her if anything ever comes up. Elizabeth teaches now in Georgetown University, and in her spare time, officially does consultant work for the SGC whenever they need her negotiating skills. It’s a token offer though, for a woman that ran a city once.
John, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. After they’d exhausted all avenues and fought against all sides, he’d tried one last reckless attempt to storm the Stargate. His colorful service record now ends in a court marshal and dishonorable discharge. If you ask him now, he’ll tell you the end was inevitable. Fifty-fifty odds on whether he would be KIA or screwed over by the powers that be. At the time, though, the shock of being stripped of his rank and uniform had left him spiraling into a dark abyss.
Elizabeth knows it well; she held his hand on the way down.
Elizabeth circumvents the couch, unwrapping her scarf and unbuttoning her coat. John studies her new apartment, eyes gliding over the tasteful furniture and rows of photo-frames resting on the corner table. Elizabeth picks up dirty dishes from the dinning room when she sees him reach for the photo of his team; the one with Elizabeth in the background waving to the camera.
She sets her plates in the kitchen sink, and braces her hands against the countertop for a moment. Willing composure, it takes her a moment to regain the strength she needs to walk back out there and face him.
When she returns, Elizabeth finds that Sedge has found her way into the living room. She’s pawing at John with her tale and tongue wagging eagerly, barking with enthusiasm. John looks just as happy to see her, bent over so that he can rub the back of her ears. The sight stops Elizabeth short for a good five seconds, mind abruptly cast back to those precious moments of domestic bliss they all used to share together. Sedge loved John; she barely ate for a week after he left.
Things weren’t always bad; they had plenty of good times too. Great times, even.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” she recovers, trying for casual, as she picks up discarded junkmail and drops them into the waste bin. “How long have you been in town?”
He rises up and Sedge barks protests. “Sedge, down girl.” The dog obeys immediately. “A few days,” he answers.
“What are you doing here, John?”
“Meeting with some old friends.”
She wonders if he means herself, or someone else. But then again, she doesn’t think John has many friends left. He winces when he settles on her couch, holding his sides awkwardly with a badly bandaged hand. His speech is slurred, and his movements have been sluggish. She wonders if it’s even worth it to get into a real conversation with him in this condition.
“What was it this time?” Elizabeth asks anyway, referring to his fight. “The guy bump into you and refuse to say sorry?”
“Something like that,” he muses.
There’s a long stretch of silence, then she retreats to her bathroom to retrieve the first aid kit. When she returns, she quietly lifts the lid and pulls out the antiseptic and rolls of bandages. Sedge is circling around Elizabeth’s feet, fervently moving back and forth between her and John with enthusiasm that she hasn’t seen from her dog in a long time.
“Sedge,” John warns again, kindly. “Down girl.”
“She’s excited to see you.”
“I’m glad someone is.”
Elizabeth’s hands still just as she’s tearing open a new package of bandages, but she doesn’t say a word. John doesn’t offer one either when she starts undoing the pathetic bundle of paper towels wrapped around his fist.
She does his hand first, then retreats to the kitchen to get a bag of ice for his black eye. When she’s coming back to the living room, she finds him awkwardly holding his sides again.
“How many?”
He looks up at her, blankly.
“How many guys did you fight, John?” she goads. “No way you’d get this mangled by just one guy unless it was Ron-” She stops herself just before finishing, but it’s too late. She recovers a second later. “How many?”
“Three,” he finally answers. “Probably four. I don’t really know.”
“Did you even try walking away?”
“They started it,” he slurs in sudden anger.
Elizabeth wants to be angry with him so badly. She wants to be furious enough to kick him out of her apartment, actually. That would probably be better for the both of them. Except she can’t. Her feelings for this man have always been a weakness, and she stares at John and her chest aches. Her entire body aches, overcome with the urge to protect and comfort him.
But they’ve been here before, a dozen times over.
She tosses the ice bag to the couch, and quickly retreats to the kitchen before John can see her face crumble. She turns the faucet on so that it covers up her breath hitching. Sobs threaten to let loose, but Elizabeth braces her hands against the kitchen sink and tries to force herself calm.
After a few minutes, she’s aware that John enters the kitchen and Elizabeth can’t turn around when he comes up right behind her. His body draws so close to hers that she can feel the heat from him, can faintly smell the alcohol on his breath when he leans forward, his breath tickling her neck.
He finally rests his chin on her shoulder, wrapping her up in his arms, and it’s frightening how much better Elizabeth feels from that single action. She instinctively leans back into his embrace, his hands on her belly, her fingers over his, and that ache stems just for a moment.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispers to her.
Elizabeth lets her eyes fall shut.
She finishes fixing him up, then prods him towards her bedroom so he can get some rest. When she helps him lift up and remove his shirt, her throat constricts at the sight of the purple and blue bruises on his abdomen. Cursing, she opens her mouth to suggest maybe they go to the hospital to check him up, but one hard look from John immediately quells the proposition.
He’s starting to sober up, she thinks, but his movements are still jerky and he’s gonna be in ten types of pain in the morning when he wakes up. She watches as he strips himself of clothing, and a quiet hunger goes through her, a familiar heat pooling between her thighs. But he’s drunk and uncoordinated, not to mentioned bruised, and the thing Elizabeth craves most in that moment is to make him feel better. So when, invariably, he finally turns to her and kisses her, hands threading through her hair to keep her close, she gently prods him towards the mattress so he can lie down.
She’s careful - oh, so careful of his bruises. Even as she presses him back against the bed, she keeps her body hovered over his, arms bracing her on either side of his body. They kiss, hands fumbling, mouths latching onto patches of exposed skin, just long enough for him to grow half-hard, to feel his breath turning heavy with expectation, and then Elizabeth starts sliding down his body towards his waistline. She places light kisses to his chest and over his abdomen, while her hand finds the elastic band on his boxers.
Elizabeth slides her hand under the waistband and palms his erection, watching, enraptured, as his expression darkens with gratification. He looks glorious to her in this light, the bruise below his eye faded, his face twisted in a pleasurable grimace, and the faint moonlight from her bedroom window highlights the sharp angles of his jaw. He groans her name when she begins to pump his shaft, knowing the rhythm is too slow for his preferences but selfishly she wants to draw this out.
His hips buck up, timed with the movements of her hand, and eventually Elizabeth slides his boxers free. She’s still entirely dressed, a thing that hasn’t escaped his notice because Elizabeth can feel his hands fumbling for the hemline of her shirt. She ignores it, and moves down until she’s straddling his thighs.
“Elizabeth,” he moans, and she takes his dick into her mouth.
He grunts something incoherent, hand falling to fist in her hair. She takes a moment to adjust to the familiar length and width of him, then slides her mouth down the base of his erection, taking him in as fully as she can. He curses harshly, his hips bucking up into her mouth involuntarily. She keeps on him, working her hand up and down his shaft in time with the journey of her mouth. John leans back on the pillows and when she pauses for a breath, she looks up.
He looks blissed-out, without a single care in the world except for his carnal desires and Elizabeth between his legs. It’s cliché but true, but as she goes back to sucking him off, she realizes that she relishes having this power over him. It’s seductive in its own right to be able render John Sheppard so helpless - defenseless, and really, that’s something they only are around each other in bed these days.
“Elizabeth,” John eventually protests. “I can’t… I can’t hold off… don’t…” he groans.
He wants her to stop. John, in his foolish state, probably thinks penetrative sex is an option for him tonight. Elizabeth continues to suck him off, staying on him relentlessly, coaxing a quick release that will hopefully let his abused body fall to slumber afterwards. Though there’s a persistent want between her thighs, Elizabeth stubbornly ignores it. Tonight won’t be about her.
The groans soon turn to curses, No, no, no, no you don’t have to - you don’t - fuck, Elizabeth, fuck yes. She speeds up and his hips start to thrust unsteadily. John curses her name once more, and then he comes with a rough bark that leaves Elizabeth swallowing several times.
When she pulls back, John’s heavy breathing is just starting to even out. He’s spread before her, spent and satiated, his eyes closed and his body naked. She thinks fiercely, possessively, that she wants to keep him in her bed forever. Things are always easier when they’re like this.
His eyes start to fall shut, exhaustion abruptly overcoming him just like she knew it would. “Elizabeth,” he stutters out. “That wasn’t what I wanted tonight.”
She stretches over him to press a soft kiss to his lips. “Tomorrow,” she promises. “Now go to sleep.”
He mumbles heavily, “I’ll make it up to you.”
“You bet your ass you will,” she replies affectionately, and he laughs against her lips. “Go to sleep, John.”
He’s left with no defenses in place against her, so he lets her maneuver him under the covers without protests. Elizabeth suspects he’s asleep before she’s even done, and she lies beside him for a little while, pressed alongside his back.
It amazes her that he still feels like home.
When the bedside clock strikes a quarter past six, she climbs out of bed and reaches for the phone resting nearby. “Hey,” she greets when the other end picks up. “Is this line secure?”
“Hold on,” Samantha Carter answers, then Elizabeth hears a click. “Go ahead.”
She looks to John, debating the foolish choice just for another second before she gives in with a sigh. “We need to have a meeting today at the remote site, and I’m bringing along a guest.”
The sensations of pins and needles prickle his body as John slowly regains consciousness. He blinks, vision ebbing, muscles protesting, and the mother of all hangovers blinds him until he faceplants back into the pillow. After a beat he groans again, and shifts, glancing around to discover he’s naked in an unfamiliar bedroom.
Elizabeth, he suddenly remembers.
It takes him a few moments to drag himself up, but the waft of coffee and something cooking in the kitchen motivates him. He cleans up in the bathroom first, though he can’t do anything about the rough beard that’s shadowing his face. His eyes are slightly pink, and he scrubs one hand through his wayward hair and gives up. He looks like shit, but he gargles his mouth, brushes his teeth with Elizabeth’s spare toothbrush, and does his best to look somewhat presentable before he goes back out.
Elizabeth’s place is a big apartment with an open floor plan, windows and French doors onto the balcony flung open to let the fresh breeze through. It all feels a little too familiar to John, reminding him of lazy Sunday mornings together in his old apartment in Colorado, and he stops short at the reflection.
He’s setting himself up for a hard fall all over again. They both are, merely by sharing the same space. They should know better by now.
He finds her in the kitchen, making scramble eggs and cooking strips of bacon. She doesn’t hear him when first he comes in, so he uses the opportunity to halt at the doorway and study her. Her hair is long and wavy, down to her lower back, and she has on pink pajamas and a white tank top. For a moment, he just stares at the pale skin on her shoulders, the faint traces of freckles. He doesn’t recall too much of the night’s events, but he remembers enough. He knows they slept together - sorta, kinda. The details are fuzzy.
She turns around and spots him. “Hey,” she greets, head titled aside. “Was wondering when you were going to get up.”
He isn’t sure if he’s allowed to kiss her good morning, so he goes over to stand near the stove, then leans across her to snag a strip of beacon from the spare plate. She pivots towards him, resting a hip against the counter, and meets his eyes.
“Hey,” he finally greets. “How’re you doing?”
She smiles like he just did a neat trick. “You didn’t ask me that last night.”
He shrugs a little, because he’s fairly sure there were a lot of things he didn’t do last night, not the least of which was normal human conversation. They stand in her kitchen for a while, making awkward small talk when all he really wants to do is reach over and brush his lips against hers. Even after all this time apart, Elizabeth still holds that sway over him. His head may be thrashed from a hangover, and there are parts of his body that protest the mere existence that he’s alive, but this morning he woke up to Elizabeth cooking breakfast for him. There aren’t many better ways to start the day.
“Eat quick,” she tells him. “We have plans for the day.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “For what?”
Her expression turns guarded, and she simply shrugs. “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
One look at her, and he can already tell he won’t like the surprise ahead. He decides screw it. If the rest of the day is going to be horrible, then he’s at least going to milk this morning for all it’s worth. He reaches over to brush lips against hers, the faint tang of orange juice on her lips. Her hand rests against his chest for a moment, and then he pulls back.
They work together seamlessly in the kitchen, maneuvering around each other in old routine that comes rushing back. When he reaches for the bottle of Tylenol resting in the cupboard above the sink (she always keeps her medicine there), she’s already waiting with a glass of water.
They’re probably just biding time until the next fight, but John plans on enjoying this for as long as it lasts.
He wears the suit from yesterday because it’s the only thing with him: blazer flung open, top two buttons of his shirt undone, the entire thing wrinkled like he just rolled out of bed. Elizabeth drives them in her black four-door sedan, still refusing to tell him where they’re headed. He can read enough in the tense shoulders, though, in the way she avoids eye contact and keeps her sentences short. Something’s up, but he has no idea what.
The drive is mostly hushed, and John scrunches down in his seat and dozes off at some point, still working through the worst of his hangover. He doesn’t know how long the drive takes, but at some point Elizabeth is waking him up with a nudge. He blinks back some grogginess to discover an old cabin. They’ve driven past the city limits into a wooded area he’s never seen before.
“We’re here,” Elizabeth announces.
“Here?” John repeats, bewildered. “What is this place?”
He pulls open the door and takes in the breathe of fresh air; it’s been months since he’s inhaled something like this; he’s spent the last two years in one bustling city or another. For a moment, the fresh atmosphere reminds him of offworld missions, of pollution-free planets, of Atlantis even. He takes in another deep drag of air, the clean fresh smell lulling his senses.
Which makes what happens next all the more jarring.
Elizabeth hits some type of handheld device, and the cabin in front of them disintegrates like a mirage vanishing into the horizon. The area behind them alters too, the paved road winding another way, the trees less dense, more taller, and there’s a gate behind them that wasn’t there before.
The cabin is gone. Instead, there’s Cameron Mitchell and a four-door jeep, waiting. “He’ll take us the rest of the way,” Elizabeth explains with a side-glance, and then turns to greet Mitchell with a fond smile. “Hey, Cameron.”
“Lizzie,” Mitchell returns, grinning, and gives her a one-armed hug that belies friendship and intimacy. “You don’t call anymore. You don’t write. A man’s feelings could get hurt.”
John’s eyes narrow, and he stands there feeling like the world is playing a cruel joke on him, except they haven’t even gotten to the punch line yet. Cameron turns to greet John, a wry grin fixed on his lips. “Nice to see you again, Sheppard. Been a while.”
John’s eyes flitter to Elizabeth in confusion. “Yeah, long while.”
Cameron tosses John a small device. Scan your body, he mouths, the voice silent.
John gives him a bewildered look, then glances back at Elizabeth to discover she’s already doing something similar. With a disgruntled sigh, he runs the scanning device over his body and is acutely surprised when it beeps over his cufflinks.
“Here,” Cameron instructs, removing the cuffs. He walks back over to Elizabeth’s car and drops it inside, slamming the door closed. “There,” he says, as he walks back over. “Now we can talk in peace.”
“Who’s been listening in?” John demands, thrown.
“The SGC, the NID, who knows?” Cameron shrugs. “They’re all the same now anyway.”
Elizabeth and Cameron climb into the jeep, and after a short pause, John scrubs a hand through his hair and starts formulating theories. This obviously has to do with the Stargate. That’s the only reason for all this secrecy, for Cameron’s presence, for the concealed guilt in Elizabeth’s eyes. He’s surprised it took him this long to figure out.
“John?” Elizabeth says, holding his gaze. “C’mon. I’ve got a lot to explain, and we don’t have much time before they notice you’re off the grid.”
“Off the grid?” John repeats, incredulous. “Why are they bugging me?”
Elizabeth trades a look with Cameron, and then says, “Because they think you might be involved in a massive conspiracy to steal valuable alien technology from the SGC and Area 51 in order to create a separate interstellar traveling device of your own.”
John stares at her, eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Because,” Elizabeth answers, “That’s what I’m doing.”
John slides off his sunglasses and slips out of the jeep to stand on uneven ground. In front of him, there’s a large warehouse with a biometric scanner in front, fortified entrances, and security cameras running sweeps of the perimeter arc every twenty seconds. There’s another jeep and a vintage 1940 Indian motorcycle in the parking lot.
Elizabeth glances to the motorcycle, then back at Cameron. “Sam’s already here?”
Cameron nods. “Yep. Daniel, Teal’c and Vala couldn’t make it, though.”
“Jack?” Elizabeth asks, anxiously.
“Sorry, Lizzie,” Cameron finishes. “You didn’t give us any notice on this call. Your welcoming party is small this time.”
John can’t pinpoint why, but he really really dislikes that nickname for her. For a beat, he almost wants to correct Cameron, but a glance aside shows Elizabeth unruffled by the endearment. Repressing the urge to roll his eyes, John idly kicks a rock loose and sends it flying toward the front entrance. A laser beam from the top right corner of the building obliterates the rock before it ever hits the building, and John stares, blinking.
“Sorry,” Cameron says, rushing up to the bio-scanner. “Automated security is tight here. We have to make sure nothing gets in when there’s no body around to guard the place.”
John’s had just about enough of this. “Anyone want to fill me in already?”
“How much has Lizzie told you?”
John scowls. “Lizzie’s been a little tight-lipped, apparently.”
“Let me just show you,” Elizabeth cuts in, sending John a pleading look to play nice.
Two minutes later they’re inside the building and John is staring up at a sight that shocks him silent. It's small - a quarter of the regular size - but the shape and look of it is unmistakable. In the center of the factory room is a mini-Stargate. John can barely comprehend it.
“Colonel Carter reverse engineered this,” Elizabeth explains, “from a prototype built several years ago by an alien named Orlin, who used everyday household items to create a mini-Stargate.”
“Everyday household items?” John repeats, incredulous. “To build a Stargate?”
Behind him, Carter’s voice ring outs to announce her presence. “If you can believe it, it fit in my basement. And trust me, no one was more surprised than me when it originally worked.”
“Where did you get the energy to run it?” John asks, bewildered.
Carter stops beside the group and stares up at the mini-Stargate. “The original prototype was capable of interfacing with local energy sources but the power was insufficient in running the device to its full capacity. However, the use of purely earth materials and the lack of naquadah meant that the device burnt out and became useless after a short time, at which point the wormhole collapsed. It took me roughly the last seven years to reverse engineer the basic components of it, and I’m still not complete.”
Elizabeth adds, “We’ve been able to smuggle out various alien technology from Area 51, and SG-1 has been acquiring small pieces of naquadah bit-by-bit. We’re hoping to get enough to gate to the midway station.”
Cameron waves his hands towards the Stargate with a flourish. “And tada! Here we are.”
John feels vaguely like he needs to sit down to absorb everything. He trades looks with Elizabeth, unable to keep the incredulity off his face. It’s obvious what was happening here: the underground Stargate, SG-1’s involvement, Elizabeth - they’re all trying to reestablish contact with the Pegasus Galaxy.
Elizabeth releases a tense exhale. “And we’re close, John. Really close.”
Cameron grunts. “Yep. Got another, what? Six months? Seven?”
“Eight,” Carter declares. “And that’s if we manage to keep below radar. Security has been closing in on us lately.”
“How long have you been working on this?” John asks.
“Roughly a year,” Carter answers, “but I’ve been trying to reverse engineer this mini-Stargate since the original one died in my base-” Carter’s cell phone rang, cutting her off. When she turns away to answer it, John lets the enormity of the situation settle on his shoulders. The implications sink in fairly quickly. “Cameron,” Carter calls. “We gotta go. There’s a situation developing at the SGC.”
“You have to leave now?” Elizabeth asks anxiously.
Carter nods. “Emergency.”
Cameron jogs quickly to the corner to retrieve something. “Lock up when you’re done,” Cameron says, passing some alien device to Elizabeth. He presses a kiss to her cheek, and rushes to catch up with Carter who’s already halfway out the door. “See ya later, Sheppard!” Cameron hollers as he retreats. “We’ll talk more later.”
The metal door clangs shut after them.
“Well,” Elizabeth says. “I guess I can answer all your questions by myself. Just don’t get too technical, because I can’t answer-”
“I just have one question,” John cuts in suddenly, eyes turning hard. “You’ve been doing this for a year, and you’re telling me just now?”
His tone is sharp and cutting, and Elizabeth attempts to ward off his anger with a hand. “You were being watched, John. Ever since you got yourself thrown out of the Air Force, you’ve been under surveillance. Not constant, but enough so that none of us felt comfortable approaching you until we had more than a pipedream.”
“A year,” he simply repeats, accusing. “You could have told me for the last year.”
“I’ve barely seen you in the last year!” Elizabeth volleys back, incredulous. “You’ve been drunk and pissed off and-”
“Maybe finding out about this would have changed my attitude some!”
A flash of an emotion akin to grief streaks across her face. “And I’m supposed to hold out hope for that, when nothing else has managed to get through?”
“You should have told me,” John barks furiously. “I had a right to know about this! You’ve got SG-1 in on this, and you couldn’t even-”
“SG-1 is the only reason we’ve gotten this far!” Elizabeth cuts in, voice rising to match his. “You have any idea what they’re risking? What we all are? This can be seen as treason, John. High treason, and you can bet your ass we won’t get a fair and public trial before being tossed into a windowless 8-by-8 cell for the rest of our lives. SG-1 is risking everything to help us.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t leave a man behind,” Elizabeth declares. “Much less a city. No matter what the bigwigs in Washington say.”
John jerks away, staring up at the mini-Stargate, almost wanting to strangle something with his bare hands. The idea that he’d been left out of the loop with this - Atlantis was his home, his people, as much of his responsibility as Elizabeth’s. She should have contacted him immediately, not waited until he stumbled upon her half-drunk and decided in her infinite charity that it was finally okay to throw him a bone. He should have been the first to know about this.
“You’ve got two options, John. You can stand there and be angry, or you can accept that I made a judgment call.”
“A call that left me in the dark for a whole fucking year!”
“I wish I could have brought you in earlier-”
“Why didn’t you?” John demands, snidely. “Having too much fun looking your nose down at me? You’ve always liked being the smart and capable one. Wanted to hold that high ground a little longer, Miss Goddamn Perfection?”
She just stops and stares at him, eyes welling with tears. “Fuck you, John.”
“You’ve done that already,” he lobs back, before he can stop himself. “Now I want answers.”
Elizabeth bites her lip, angrily brushing away a tear that spills down her cheek. “I can’t speak to you when you’re like this.”
She pivots on her heels and strides away without giving him another word. He watches her go, half his body screaming to catch up with her, but there’s some semblance of control that reasserts itself when he sees her tears.
There’s still a whole ton of rage bottled up inside him, but he thinks back - to his dishonorable discharge, the spectacular ending of his career with fireworks and all. It isn’t remotely surprising that he was considered a security risk to the SGC, but damn it all to hell, he thought he’d earned more than that from Elizabeth. She’d always been the one to believe in him, even when others hadn’t. The last few years, apparently, had changed that.
That stings more than John is willing to own up to.
It’s another hour before both of them calm down, and when John appears behind her, he looks aged and worn thin. “Tell me,” John says, and he sounds so tired. “Give me the real reason you kept me out of this.”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and quietly turns to face him. “We put it to a vote,” she eventually confesses, because she can’t stand that dejected look on his face. Never has managed to find any defense against it. “It was a six-to-one vote, everybody against me. They didn’t think we could take on the risk of getting you involved.”
“SG-1 didn’t want me in?” John says in realization.
“I tried to talk them into it, but yesterday was the first day I could get any headway in the argument.”
“What changed yesterday?”
She pauses. “My argument. I always wanted you involved from the beginning. Your full participation. But that can’t happen, can it? Not with your current status with the SGC. I told them yesterday I didn’t want that anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
Elizabeth exhales slowly. “You can’t stay, John. I brought you here so that you could see everything, but you can’t stay. You can’t help out. Not yet. Not until the mini-Stargate is up and running, ready to go.”
“That’s another eight months from now,” John protests.
“That’s another eight months you need to stay gone,” Elizabeth agrees. “Go back to where you-”
“You can’t expect me to just go back to the hellhole I came from. Not now. Not when I know there’s a chance we can get back to Atlantis-”
“You have to, John,” Elizabeth insists. “The others agreed to telling you, but you’re still too much of a security risk. It jeopardizes the operation.”
He clamps his mouth shut, jaw squared, and Elizabeth knows exactly what she’s asking him to do. Now that he knows, it isn’t going to be easy for him to sacrifice his involvement, but they have no choice. It’s too much of a risk. The deal with SG-1 was that she told him about the mini-Stargate; that was all. No further involvement.
“It’s only eight months,” Elizabeth reasons. “You can do that.”
He scrubs a hand through his hair, then glances up at her as another realization hits him. “What about us? Can I-”
“No,” Elizabeth declares, throat constricting. “After today, we can’t see each other again. As far as anyone watching is concerned, we had a one-night fling and then broke up again. You won’t contact me. I won’t contact you. It’ll be exactly like the last year of our lives.”
He stares at her, repulsed by the evolving situation. “So that’s it? You drop this bombshell on me, and I’m just supposed to accept it?”
After a beat, she answers bluntly, “Yes.”
“What if I say no?”
“You can’t say no,” Elizabeth refutes. “You do, and we might never see Atlantis again.”
The drive back to her apartment is awkward. John slips his cufflinks back on, and they stick to a script, the first few minutes of the car ride spent making mindless small talk about a fishing trip that serves as a cover story for the day’s events. After that, though, they don’t talk much. John can’t wrap his mind around the fact that he’s agreed to this - to leaving Elizabeth, to leaving this operation behind. It goes against every fiber of his being.
First thing that happens upon entering her apartment, Sedge pads up to them and starts barking excitedly. Her front legs climb up John’s pants, her tongue wagging happily, and John miserably thinks she’s going to be wondering why he went away again. The plan is to pick another fight tonight - loud and angry, and then John was supposed to storm off and vanish for the next eight months.
Sedge wouldn’t understand any of that. She’s just blindly loyal and loving, but at least Elizabeth has that type of presence in her life. God knows he hasn’t provided her with the same.
“So,” Elizabeth says, reaching down to rub Sedge behind her ears. Elizabeth looks up at him, crouched low, and takes a deep breath. “Good weather we’re having today.”
That’s a code phrase; he’s supposed to pick a fight with her now, about something or another: work, life, taking the dog for a walk, take your pick. It’s strange, but despite the fact they’d spent the majority of the last twenty-four hours fighting over one thing or another, now, suddenly, he can’t think of a thing to say that would precipitate an argument. He doesn’t want to fight. Irony of all ironies.
“John?” Elizabeth says pointedly, as she rises to her feet again. “I said, good weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
He remains rooted in his spot upon realizing just how close she is.
Fuck it. Change of plans.
John leans over to her, brushing a kiss against her mouth. She inhales sharply in surprise, but John snakes a hand around her waist, his touch slow and soft and light, her mouth sweet with cherries she ate on the car ride home. She's warmer than he remembered, blood-warm all over. His kiss slow and deep: like they've got all the time in the world, though the ticking time-bomb of eight months is flashing bright in the back of John’s mind.
“John,” she breathes, warning. “What are you doing?”
This isn’t part of the plan.
His voice goes a soft rumble, like gravel worn smooth. "Do you want me to stop?"
Elizabeth doesn’t move, staring at him for endless seconds. He waits, not ultimately sure how he wants her to answer. He still has to leave, and spending the night together is just going to make leaving in the morning just that much more painful.
After a beat, her hand falls to the center of his chest, along the dark blue buttons that line his wrinkled shirt. Without a word, she starts undoing them and John ducks his head for another kiss, permission granted, tongues toying, one hand in her hair while the other rests gently against her hip. Elizabeth works blindly, untucking his shirttail that was half hanging out anyway, and as he backs her towards the bedroom, she quickly works off his blazer, then his shirt, letting the items litter her hallway floor. The cufflinks fall with them, and John slams the bedroom door shut after him, blocking out any noise - and anyone listening - to everything that happens next.
He backs her up against the door of her room the moment it closes, hands pulling her blouse loose and then it's shocking, how much he wants this. How much he needs it. Drunk on the taste of her, John thinks about the last few months, the loneliness that he thinks Elizabeth could only understand, the only one who shares his burdens, and he doesn’t want to go back to that. He thinks about another eights months of that purgatory, and he presses his open mouth to Elizabeth’s neck, more suckle than a kiss, all pressure and wetness until he hears her whimper.
Another heated kiss, with his weight pressing her against the door, and they’re fumbling to discard clothing now. John untucks her shirt and pushes it off, fingers mapping the contours of her lacey red bra. It takes a bit of fumbling, but he finally unhooks her bra and slides it down her arms.
“John,” her breath hitches, head resting back against the door. “What do you want?”
He can’t think beyond the terms of you. Anyway, anyhow, always. Just you. It’s strange that he could have theoretically had her at any point during the last year; all he had to do was show up at her doorstep and the rest would always fall into place; it’s as inevitable as two magnets being drawn together.
He picks her up and carries her over to the bed; Elizabeth squeaks a bit for show when he drops her heavily onto the four-poster bed. He yanks her body to the edge of the mattress with one hard tug, flicking his wrist to undo the buttons of her jeans before he jerks the material roughly down her long toned legs. His palms blaze a pathway up her calves, her thighs, pushing her legs further apart until she’s spread eagle before him, the only thing covering her body is some thin red thong that doesn’t hide much.
John doesn’t even bother with removing the underwear. Fisting the material around his knuckles, he tugs the thong to the side, then begins to place light kisses up along her inner thigh. She moans his name, and he grins almost fiercely, thinking back to yesterday, to last night in bed when she’d given him a blowjob and gotten nothing in return. It’s time to repay the favor.
He kisses at first, mouth over her clit, soft pad of his tongue running over once, twice, before he latches on and sucks hard. Her hips buck up, and he plants a hand against her left thigh, holding her hips to the bedspread, but he quickly abandons that when he decides to use his hand to fingerfuck her.
“Don’t stop,” she moans, “Oh, god… John, don’t…”
Christ, he could do this all night.
He kisses and licks, fingers thrusting in, digits wet and slick, pumping into her as she writhes under him. He draws her clit into his mouth, and Elizabeth is bucking up against him so hard, the frantic fight for release, fingers tangled in his hair, moans in her throat. Her muscles spasm with a warning and when she comes, it’s with a soft cry and he holds onto her as she rides the tremors, ridiculously happy to be on his knees in front of her.
He slides off the bed momentarily to remove the last items of clothing, the entire time watching Elizabeth, naked, chest heaving as she gets her breathing back under control. She looks glorious like this, always has. He doesn’t understand why he can’t get this right with her on a daily basis; they work so good together, perfect in the bedroom, and he knows the issue isn’t love.
Eight months, he thinks. Eight months and he isn’t even allowed the hope of this. Sometimes, during his darkest moments, that’s all that’s gotten him through the day.
John is gentle with her this time, so gentle. Warm kisses along her stomach, mouth taking in the full weight of her breasts one at a time, then he moves to her neck, skin soft and taut as Elizabeth stretches up to give him better access to the spot where her pulse beats. Gentle hands slide over her belly, between her legs; soft and slow, every moment a silent reverence to her body.
“John, now. Now, please.”
When he pushes inside of her, he swallows her moan with his mouth, kissing her deep and long and hard, matching his thrusts to the same tempo. She whimpers, and he digs his fingers into her hips, thrusting slow and drawn out, his hips moving into the cradle of hers, her underwear shoved to the side but not off. His arms move to brace against the mattress on either side of her, holding him upright, his face inches apart from hers as he works in and out of her. Her breasts rub against his chest as the rhythm stays steady, stays slow, fighting the carnal urge to just piston into her.
“Elizabeth,” he breathes. “God, fuck you feel so good.”
Elizabeth braces herself against the mattress, pushing herself up into him, and they both groan. He winds a hand in her hair and wrenches her head back so he can suck at her throat. The back of her hand brushes against his dick, and he bucks up against her with a desperate growl.
She comes first, her muscles betraying her with spasms and her voice choking off a muted gasp. She goes limp with exhaustion, but he's still thrusting, and grunting, cursing her name as he fights to find release - and then he’s coming, white noise, eyes closed, grunting and panting until he’s spent, fatigued, boneless over her body.
“John?” she whispers softly, but she doesn’t say anything else because he already knows.
Next time, he thinks, he won’t waste these opportunities. He won’t screw this up with her again. He won’t allow it.
He whispers her name back in a soothing tone as he moves off to the side. Numbly John thinks he should leave now; the longer he stays, the harder it will be. But it’s so tempting, to stay there, warm in her bed. They fall asleep shortly thereafter, tangled up in sweaty limbs and bed sheets.
In the morning when she wakes, she finds an empty bed instead of a warm body. He thinks briefly about writing a note, but the truth is he can’t think of anything to say. He just fumbles around for his discarded clothes, changes in the dark and slips out of the bedroom just as the sun rises.
“Take care of her,” he tells Sedge, just before he steps foot out the front door.
Eight months later, he gets a phone call.
Author: ed_84
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s)/Characters: Sheppard/Weir, John, Elizabeth, Cameron Mitchell, Samantha Carter
Warning(s): Angst; Lots of sex; language
Prompt: For the S4/S5 Fix It Challenge @ john_elizabeth; prompt: "Fuck you, John!"/"You did that already, remember?"
Summary: Elizabeth can’t do this anymore; they’ve danced this number once too many - and how many times can you decide to self-destruct anyway? There should be a limit on that.
Disclaimer: SGA does not belong to me.
A/N: This is a complete AU where the last two years of SGA went vastly different. Read to find out how.
Elizabeth doesn’t answer the phone when she sees who the call is from; rationalizes while a song plays out on her car radio that her conversations with John never end well. She’s doing better by him if she ignores him, and though it’s stinging remark, it’s only been fact for nearly a year.
When her phone doesn’t blink with a new message, she exhales sharply and drops the cell to the side seat, her eyes returning fully to the miserable rain-sleeked road ahead of her. She reminds herself they’re better off apart and alone, than together. Things get… messy when they’re together.
But the seconds tick by, and Elizabeth tries and fails to place the time when he last tried to contact her. It’s been… what, six months? Maybe seven? She remembers it was near Christmas, and he’d sounded drunk over the phone. Elizabeth also remembers getting into a fight within five minutes of saying hello.
Her hand grips tightly around the steering wheel, willing composure and strength. One mere phone call from him - not even answered - and just look at her. An emotional wreck. There are days when she can function just fine and act as if everything is normal. Days when her mother or her brother or her new friends in her new life would never suspect the crushing guilt and sadness she lives with everyday. During those days, when she has them, Elizabeth never thinks about former Lt. Colonel John Sheppard and the city they ran. She never lets her mind drift to Atlantis. She can handle her survivor’s guilt better when she’s alone.
She’s positive that it’s the same with him.
Another few seconds tick by, and Elizabeth curses under her breath, and picks up the phone. She hits speed-dial #4 before she can change her mind. It’s been a year of estrangement, and she still has him on her speed-dial.
A second ticks by, and he answers. “Elizabeth?”
She takes a breath, and answers.
He has her meet him at a bar. A damn bar.
For a moment, she wonders if he’s drunk again, still drowning his sorrows in the nearest bottle of Jack Daniels. She doesn’t think she can handle that again, but over the phone he sounds sober and serious, and it’s his tone more than anything that convinces her to meet him.
What the hell is he doing in D.C. anyway? The last she heard, he was on the west coast secluding himself to a southern California beach house that cost more money than he made in the three and a half years working at Atlantis, hazard pay and all. She wonders where he got the money, then remembers that she’s not supposed to care anymore.
Of course, if she really didn’t care, she wouldn’t be here, now would she?
She parks her car on a gravel-paved parking lot out back, a billboard looming over the building that announces the establishment’s name as Carson’s. A dull ache goes through her. She knows John picked this bar for the name alone. She fixes her hair in the rearview mirror, then climbs down from her SUV and approaches the side entrance. When she pushes open the heavy oak door, the waft of stale beer and cigarette smoke fills her senses.
She hates bars; John knows that.
A sweep of a gaze across the inside shows Elizabeth that the place is mostly empty. A few patrons sit in corner tables, another couple in back playing pool, but Elizabeth’s eyes immediately seek out the lone figure sitting at the bar on one of the tacky green stools.
She braces herself with a deep breath, and slides into the seat beside him. “Gin and tonic,” she orders from the bartender.
John studies her, his gaze starting at her face then down to the floor and back up again. Elizabeth pretends to be indifferent under the stare; she can’t even face him yet. They sit quietly side by side for several moments, the silence between them familiar. Elizabeth studies the bar again, eyes discreetly passing by the couple making out in the back.
She finally, finally, turns to look at him; his left eye is slightly swollen and purple. A dark bruise discolors the flesh below it. His hand is bleeding too, wrapped tightly in a bundle of soiled paper towels.
She tries her best to stay calm and impassive, but she’s never quite managed that particular bluff. “What happened to you, John?”
The bartender returns with her drink. “That’ll be $86, for your drinks and his. Now take this piece of shit and get the hell out of here, would you?”
A bar fight, she realizes. Elizabeth is, apparently, his free ride.
Stifling a low curse, she quickly retrieves her purse to angrily toss down a hundred dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she murmurs, then snags the glass by the rim, and tosses back her gin and tonic with a few gulps. She turns back to John, and orders, “C’mon. Let’s get going.”
After a beat, she’s aware that John is following her out the door without a word.
Nearly a year.
Nearly a year and she can barely recognize this man from who he was before. Lt. Colonel John Sheppard had been a lot of things, but a drunk son of a bitch had never been one of them. Elizabeth drives through the steady rain with her eyes fixed on the road ahead of her, afraid that if she opens her mouth, old reprimands will spill loose. They’ve had this fight too many times; it’s the reason they stopped seeing each other in the first place.
She pulls up to her apartment complex and parks her SUV under the canopy nearby. Together, silently, they enter the building, wait in the lobby, ride up the elevator and arrive at her doorstep. All without a single word or even a glance exchanged. Though they’ve barely spoken a word to each other thus far, Elizabeth recognizes the mood hanging in the air. They’re fighting.
Damn it. When you stopped sleeping with a person and broke off a relationship, weren’t you supposed to stop fighting?
She gets her key in the door, pushes it open and enters first. By the time she finally has it closed again, she twists around to face John and without entirely knowing who initiates it, finds herself kissing him. Their lips fuse together, tongues toying angrily, fists in hair, clothes disheveled, and John pushes her back against the door with his body pressing into her.
His mouth taste like beer, and she hates beer. The kiss is sloppy and desperate, and John is either more drunk than she realized or better at covering it up these days. He lacks the finesse he usually possesses, the normal primal heat that often leaves her defenseless against his advances. She thinks of all the ways this meeting is a bad, bad idea. That list is probably longer than the list of charges at his court martial.
It’s stupid and foolish, but this too is familiar. When they don’t talk, when they don’t fight (and even if they do), it all invariably leads back to this. She thinks she’s had more angry sex with John Sheppard than is healthy for any countless number of relationships, but she really can’t claim that any of her relationships since Atlantis have been healthy. Elizabeth knows the routine of this as much as she knows the length of his zipper and the feel of his half-mast erection beneath his jeans.
The thought sobers her, tempering the dark heat of the kiss. Elizabeth can’t do this anymore; they’ve danced this number once too many - and how many times can you decide to self-destruct anyway? There should be a limit on that.
She pulls back and rips herself free of his embrace, stumbling down the hallway a little to put distance between them. They can’t do this. Not now.
“Eliza-”
“Don’t,” she warns him, and he stills with one look at her.
She wanders down the hallway and turns the light on in her living room.
It started with a routine callback to Earth, and two weeks later ended with a devastating conversation with the President of the United States. “I’m sorry,” he says. “We don’t have the resources and manpower to do what you’re asking us to.”
“If we don’t do something,” Elizabeth protests, “our people back there will-”
“It isn’t just my decision,” the President argues. “China, Russia, the other Gate Alliance members agree. Without a ZPM, and our ships preoccupied with defending the Milky Way against the Orii, there’s no way we can mount the rescue mission they need. We can’t afford to lose anymore people on a lost cause.”
Her eyes grow steel. “A lost cause? What about our people there? You can’t just abandon them!”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Weir. They’re on their own for the moment.”
That was two years ago, and they haven’t heard a word from Atlantis since. She doesn’t have codeword clearance anymore, but General Landry assures her that he’ll inform her if anything ever comes up. Elizabeth teaches now in Georgetown University, and in her spare time, officially does consultant work for the SGC whenever they need her negotiating skills. It’s a token offer though, for a woman that ran a city once.
John, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. After they’d exhausted all avenues and fought against all sides, he’d tried one last reckless attempt to storm the Stargate. His colorful service record now ends in a court marshal and dishonorable discharge. If you ask him now, he’ll tell you the end was inevitable. Fifty-fifty odds on whether he would be KIA or screwed over by the powers that be. At the time, though, the shock of being stripped of his rank and uniform had left him spiraling into a dark abyss.
Elizabeth knows it well; she held his hand on the way down.
Elizabeth circumvents the couch, unwrapping her scarf and unbuttoning her coat. John studies her new apartment, eyes gliding over the tasteful furniture and rows of photo-frames resting on the corner table. Elizabeth picks up dirty dishes from the dinning room when she sees him reach for the photo of his team; the one with Elizabeth in the background waving to the camera.
She sets her plates in the kitchen sink, and braces her hands against the countertop for a moment. Willing composure, it takes her a moment to regain the strength she needs to walk back out there and face him.
When she returns, Elizabeth finds that Sedge has found her way into the living room. She’s pawing at John with her tale and tongue wagging eagerly, barking with enthusiasm. John looks just as happy to see her, bent over so that he can rub the back of her ears. The sight stops Elizabeth short for a good five seconds, mind abruptly cast back to those precious moments of domestic bliss they all used to share together. Sedge loved John; she barely ate for a week after he left.
Things weren’t always bad; they had plenty of good times too. Great times, even.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” she recovers, trying for casual, as she picks up discarded junkmail and drops them into the waste bin. “How long have you been in town?”
He rises up and Sedge barks protests. “Sedge, down girl.” The dog obeys immediately. “A few days,” he answers.
“What are you doing here, John?”
“Meeting with some old friends.”
She wonders if he means herself, or someone else. But then again, she doesn’t think John has many friends left. He winces when he settles on her couch, holding his sides awkwardly with a badly bandaged hand. His speech is slurred, and his movements have been sluggish. She wonders if it’s even worth it to get into a real conversation with him in this condition.
“What was it this time?” Elizabeth asks anyway, referring to his fight. “The guy bump into you and refuse to say sorry?”
“Something like that,” he muses.
There’s a long stretch of silence, then she retreats to her bathroom to retrieve the first aid kit. When she returns, she quietly lifts the lid and pulls out the antiseptic and rolls of bandages. Sedge is circling around Elizabeth’s feet, fervently moving back and forth between her and John with enthusiasm that she hasn’t seen from her dog in a long time.
“Sedge,” John warns again, kindly. “Down girl.”
“She’s excited to see you.”
“I’m glad someone is.”
Elizabeth’s hands still just as she’s tearing open a new package of bandages, but she doesn’t say a word. John doesn’t offer one either when she starts undoing the pathetic bundle of paper towels wrapped around his fist.
She does his hand first, then retreats to the kitchen to get a bag of ice for his black eye. When she’s coming back to the living room, she finds him awkwardly holding his sides again.
“How many?”
He looks up at her, blankly.
“How many guys did you fight, John?” she goads. “No way you’d get this mangled by just one guy unless it was Ron-” She stops herself just before finishing, but it’s too late. She recovers a second later. “How many?”
“Three,” he finally answers. “Probably four. I don’t really know.”
“Did you even try walking away?”
“They started it,” he slurs in sudden anger.
Elizabeth wants to be angry with him so badly. She wants to be furious enough to kick him out of her apartment, actually. That would probably be better for the both of them. Except she can’t. Her feelings for this man have always been a weakness, and she stares at John and her chest aches. Her entire body aches, overcome with the urge to protect and comfort him.
But they’ve been here before, a dozen times over.
She tosses the ice bag to the couch, and quickly retreats to the kitchen before John can see her face crumble. She turns the faucet on so that it covers up her breath hitching. Sobs threaten to let loose, but Elizabeth braces her hands against the kitchen sink and tries to force herself calm.
After a few minutes, she’s aware that John enters the kitchen and Elizabeth can’t turn around when he comes up right behind her. His body draws so close to hers that she can feel the heat from him, can faintly smell the alcohol on his breath when he leans forward, his breath tickling her neck.
He finally rests his chin on her shoulder, wrapping her up in his arms, and it’s frightening how much better Elizabeth feels from that single action. She instinctively leans back into his embrace, his hands on her belly, her fingers over his, and that ache stems just for a moment.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispers to her.
Elizabeth lets her eyes fall shut.
She finishes fixing him up, then prods him towards her bedroom so he can get some rest. When she helps him lift up and remove his shirt, her throat constricts at the sight of the purple and blue bruises on his abdomen. Cursing, she opens her mouth to suggest maybe they go to the hospital to check him up, but one hard look from John immediately quells the proposition.
He’s starting to sober up, she thinks, but his movements are still jerky and he’s gonna be in ten types of pain in the morning when he wakes up. She watches as he strips himself of clothing, and a quiet hunger goes through her, a familiar heat pooling between her thighs. But he’s drunk and uncoordinated, not to mentioned bruised, and the thing Elizabeth craves most in that moment is to make him feel better. So when, invariably, he finally turns to her and kisses her, hands threading through her hair to keep her close, she gently prods him towards the mattress so he can lie down.
She’s careful - oh, so careful of his bruises. Even as she presses him back against the bed, she keeps her body hovered over his, arms bracing her on either side of his body. They kiss, hands fumbling, mouths latching onto patches of exposed skin, just long enough for him to grow half-hard, to feel his breath turning heavy with expectation, and then Elizabeth starts sliding down his body towards his waistline. She places light kisses to his chest and over his abdomen, while her hand finds the elastic band on his boxers.
Elizabeth slides her hand under the waistband and palms his erection, watching, enraptured, as his expression darkens with gratification. He looks glorious to her in this light, the bruise below his eye faded, his face twisted in a pleasurable grimace, and the faint moonlight from her bedroom window highlights the sharp angles of his jaw. He groans her name when she begins to pump his shaft, knowing the rhythm is too slow for his preferences but selfishly she wants to draw this out.
His hips buck up, timed with the movements of her hand, and eventually Elizabeth slides his boxers free. She’s still entirely dressed, a thing that hasn’t escaped his notice because Elizabeth can feel his hands fumbling for the hemline of her shirt. She ignores it, and moves down until she’s straddling his thighs.
“Elizabeth,” he moans, and she takes his dick into her mouth.
He grunts something incoherent, hand falling to fist in her hair. She takes a moment to adjust to the familiar length and width of him, then slides her mouth down the base of his erection, taking him in as fully as she can. He curses harshly, his hips bucking up into her mouth involuntarily. She keeps on him, working her hand up and down his shaft in time with the journey of her mouth. John leans back on the pillows and when she pauses for a breath, she looks up.
He looks blissed-out, without a single care in the world except for his carnal desires and Elizabeth between his legs. It’s cliché but true, but as she goes back to sucking him off, she realizes that she relishes having this power over him. It’s seductive in its own right to be able render John Sheppard so helpless - defenseless, and really, that’s something they only are around each other in bed these days.
“Elizabeth,” John eventually protests. “I can’t… I can’t hold off… don’t…” he groans.
He wants her to stop. John, in his foolish state, probably thinks penetrative sex is an option for him tonight. Elizabeth continues to suck him off, staying on him relentlessly, coaxing a quick release that will hopefully let his abused body fall to slumber afterwards. Though there’s a persistent want between her thighs, Elizabeth stubbornly ignores it. Tonight won’t be about her.
The groans soon turn to curses, No, no, no, no you don’t have to - you don’t - fuck, Elizabeth, fuck yes. She speeds up and his hips start to thrust unsteadily. John curses her name once more, and then he comes with a rough bark that leaves Elizabeth swallowing several times.
When she pulls back, John’s heavy breathing is just starting to even out. He’s spread before her, spent and satiated, his eyes closed and his body naked. She thinks fiercely, possessively, that she wants to keep him in her bed forever. Things are always easier when they’re like this.
His eyes start to fall shut, exhaustion abruptly overcoming him just like she knew it would. “Elizabeth,” he stutters out. “That wasn’t what I wanted tonight.”
She stretches over him to press a soft kiss to his lips. “Tomorrow,” she promises. “Now go to sleep.”
He mumbles heavily, “I’ll make it up to you.”
“You bet your ass you will,” she replies affectionately, and he laughs against her lips. “Go to sleep, John.”
He’s left with no defenses in place against her, so he lets her maneuver him under the covers without protests. Elizabeth suspects he’s asleep before she’s even done, and she lies beside him for a little while, pressed alongside his back.
It amazes her that he still feels like home.
When the bedside clock strikes a quarter past six, she climbs out of bed and reaches for the phone resting nearby. “Hey,” she greets when the other end picks up. “Is this line secure?”
“Hold on,” Samantha Carter answers, then Elizabeth hears a click. “Go ahead.”
She looks to John, debating the foolish choice just for another second before she gives in with a sigh. “We need to have a meeting today at the remote site, and I’m bringing along a guest.”
The sensations of pins and needles prickle his body as John slowly regains consciousness. He blinks, vision ebbing, muscles protesting, and the mother of all hangovers blinds him until he faceplants back into the pillow. After a beat he groans again, and shifts, glancing around to discover he’s naked in an unfamiliar bedroom.
Elizabeth, he suddenly remembers.
It takes him a few moments to drag himself up, but the waft of coffee and something cooking in the kitchen motivates him. He cleans up in the bathroom first, though he can’t do anything about the rough beard that’s shadowing his face. His eyes are slightly pink, and he scrubs one hand through his wayward hair and gives up. He looks like shit, but he gargles his mouth, brushes his teeth with Elizabeth’s spare toothbrush, and does his best to look somewhat presentable before he goes back out.
Elizabeth’s place is a big apartment with an open floor plan, windows and French doors onto the balcony flung open to let the fresh breeze through. It all feels a little too familiar to John, reminding him of lazy Sunday mornings together in his old apartment in Colorado, and he stops short at the reflection.
He’s setting himself up for a hard fall all over again. They both are, merely by sharing the same space. They should know better by now.
He finds her in the kitchen, making scramble eggs and cooking strips of bacon. She doesn’t hear him when first he comes in, so he uses the opportunity to halt at the doorway and study her. Her hair is long and wavy, down to her lower back, and she has on pink pajamas and a white tank top. For a moment, he just stares at the pale skin on her shoulders, the faint traces of freckles. He doesn’t recall too much of the night’s events, but he remembers enough. He knows they slept together - sorta, kinda. The details are fuzzy.
She turns around and spots him. “Hey,” she greets, head titled aside. “Was wondering when you were going to get up.”
He isn’t sure if he’s allowed to kiss her good morning, so he goes over to stand near the stove, then leans across her to snag a strip of beacon from the spare plate. She pivots towards him, resting a hip against the counter, and meets his eyes.
“Hey,” he finally greets. “How’re you doing?”
She smiles like he just did a neat trick. “You didn’t ask me that last night.”
He shrugs a little, because he’s fairly sure there were a lot of things he didn’t do last night, not the least of which was normal human conversation. They stand in her kitchen for a while, making awkward small talk when all he really wants to do is reach over and brush his lips against hers. Even after all this time apart, Elizabeth still holds that sway over him. His head may be thrashed from a hangover, and there are parts of his body that protest the mere existence that he’s alive, but this morning he woke up to Elizabeth cooking breakfast for him. There aren’t many better ways to start the day.
“Eat quick,” she tells him. “We have plans for the day.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “For what?”
Her expression turns guarded, and she simply shrugs. “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
One look at her, and he can already tell he won’t like the surprise ahead. He decides screw it. If the rest of the day is going to be horrible, then he’s at least going to milk this morning for all it’s worth. He reaches over to brush lips against hers, the faint tang of orange juice on her lips. Her hand rests against his chest for a moment, and then he pulls back.
They work together seamlessly in the kitchen, maneuvering around each other in old routine that comes rushing back. When he reaches for the bottle of Tylenol resting in the cupboard above the sink (she always keeps her medicine there), she’s already waiting with a glass of water.
They’re probably just biding time until the next fight, but John plans on enjoying this for as long as it lasts.
He wears the suit from yesterday because it’s the only thing with him: blazer flung open, top two buttons of his shirt undone, the entire thing wrinkled like he just rolled out of bed. Elizabeth drives them in her black four-door sedan, still refusing to tell him where they’re headed. He can read enough in the tense shoulders, though, in the way she avoids eye contact and keeps her sentences short. Something’s up, but he has no idea what.
The drive is mostly hushed, and John scrunches down in his seat and dozes off at some point, still working through the worst of his hangover. He doesn’t know how long the drive takes, but at some point Elizabeth is waking him up with a nudge. He blinks back some grogginess to discover an old cabin. They’ve driven past the city limits into a wooded area he’s never seen before.
“We’re here,” Elizabeth announces.
“Here?” John repeats, bewildered. “What is this place?”
He pulls open the door and takes in the breathe of fresh air; it’s been months since he’s inhaled something like this; he’s spent the last two years in one bustling city or another. For a moment, the fresh atmosphere reminds him of offworld missions, of pollution-free planets, of Atlantis even. He takes in another deep drag of air, the clean fresh smell lulling his senses.
Which makes what happens next all the more jarring.
Elizabeth hits some type of handheld device, and the cabin in front of them disintegrates like a mirage vanishing into the horizon. The area behind them alters too, the paved road winding another way, the trees less dense, more taller, and there’s a gate behind them that wasn’t there before.
The cabin is gone. Instead, there’s Cameron Mitchell and a four-door jeep, waiting. “He’ll take us the rest of the way,” Elizabeth explains with a side-glance, and then turns to greet Mitchell with a fond smile. “Hey, Cameron.”
“Lizzie,” Mitchell returns, grinning, and gives her a one-armed hug that belies friendship and intimacy. “You don’t call anymore. You don’t write. A man’s feelings could get hurt.”
John’s eyes narrow, and he stands there feeling like the world is playing a cruel joke on him, except they haven’t even gotten to the punch line yet. Cameron turns to greet John, a wry grin fixed on his lips. “Nice to see you again, Sheppard. Been a while.”
John’s eyes flitter to Elizabeth in confusion. “Yeah, long while.”
Cameron tosses John a small device. Scan your body, he mouths, the voice silent.
John gives him a bewildered look, then glances back at Elizabeth to discover she’s already doing something similar. With a disgruntled sigh, he runs the scanning device over his body and is acutely surprised when it beeps over his cufflinks.
“Here,” Cameron instructs, removing the cuffs. He walks back over to Elizabeth’s car and drops it inside, slamming the door closed. “There,” he says, as he walks back over. “Now we can talk in peace.”
“Who’s been listening in?” John demands, thrown.
“The SGC, the NID, who knows?” Cameron shrugs. “They’re all the same now anyway.”
Elizabeth and Cameron climb into the jeep, and after a short pause, John scrubs a hand through his hair and starts formulating theories. This obviously has to do with the Stargate. That’s the only reason for all this secrecy, for Cameron’s presence, for the concealed guilt in Elizabeth’s eyes. He’s surprised it took him this long to figure out.
“John?” Elizabeth says, holding his gaze. “C’mon. I’ve got a lot to explain, and we don’t have much time before they notice you’re off the grid.”
“Off the grid?” John repeats, incredulous. “Why are they bugging me?”
Elizabeth trades a look with Cameron, and then says, “Because they think you might be involved in a massive conspiracy to steal valuable alien technology from the SGC and Area 51 in order to create a separate interstellar traveling device of your own.”
John stares at her, eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Because,” Elizabeth answers, “That’s what I’m doing.”
John slides off his sunglasses and slips out of the jeep to stand on uneven ground. In front of him, there’s a large warehouse with a biometric scanner in front, fortified entrances, and security cameras running sweeps of the perimeter arc every twenty seconds. There’s another jeep and a vintage 1940 Indian motorcycle in the parking lot.
Elizabeth glances to the motorcycle, then back at Cameron. “Sam’s already here?”
Cameron nods. “Yep. Daniel, Teal’c and Vala couldn’t make it, though.”
“Jack?” Elizabeth asks, anxiously.
“Sorry, Lizzie,” Cameron finishes. “You didn’t give us any notice on this call. Your welcoming party is small this time.”
John can’t pinpoint why, but he really really dislikes that nickname for her. For a beat, he almost wants to correct Cameron, but a glance aside shows Elizabeth unruffled by the endearment. Repressing the urge to roll his eyes, John idly kicks a rock loose and sends it flying toward the front entrance. A laser beam from the top right corner of the building obliterates the rock before it ever hits the building, and John stares, blinking.
“Sorry,” Cameron says, rushing up to the bio-scanner. “Automated security is tight here. We have to make sure nothing gets in when there’s no body around to guard the place.”
John’s had just about enough of this. “Anyone want to fill me in already?”
“How much has Lizzie told you?”
John scowls. “Lizzie’s been a little tight-lipped, apparently.”
“Let me just show you,” Elizabeth cuts in, sending John a pleading look to play nice.
Two minutes later they’re inside the building and John is staring up at a sight that shocks him silent. It's small - a quarter of the regular size - but the shape and look of it is unmistakable. In the center of the factory room is a mini-Stargate. John can barely comprehend it.
“Colonel Carter reverse engineered this,” Elizabeth explains, “from a prototype built several years ago by an alien named Orlin, who used everyday household items to create a mini-Stargate.”
“Everyday household items?” John repeats, incredulous. “To build a Stargate?”
Behind him, Carter’s voice ring outs to announce her presence. “If you can believe it, it fit in my basement. And trust me, no one was more surprised than me when it originally worked.”
“Where did you get the energy to run it?” John asks, bewildered.
Carter stops beside the group and stares up at the mini-Stargate. “The original prototype was capable of interfacing with local energy sources but the power was insufficient in running the device to its full capacity. However, the use of purely earth materials and the lack of naquadah meant that the device burnt out and became useless after a short time, at which point the wormhole collapsed. It took me roughly the last seven years to reverse engineer the basic components of it, and I’m still not complete.”
Elizabeth adds, “We’ve been able to smuggle out various alien technology from Area 51, and SG-1 has been acquiring small pieces of naquadah bit-by-bit. We’re hoping to get enough to gate to the midway station.”
Cameron waves his hands towards the Stargate with a flourish. “And tada! Here we are.”
John feels vaguely like he needs to sit down to absorb everything. He trades looks with Elizabeth, unable to keep the incredulity off his face. It’s obvious what was happening here: the underground Stargate, SG-1’s involvement, Elizabeth - they’re all trying to reestablish contact with the Pegasus Galaxy.
Elizabeth releases a tense exhale. “And we’re close, John. Really close.”
Cameron grunts. “Yep. Got another, what? Six months? Seven?”
“Eight,” Carter declares. “And that’s if we manage to keep below radar. Security has been closing in on us lately.”
“How long have you been working on this?” John asks.
“Roughly a year,” Carter answers, “but I’ve been trying to reverse engineer this mini-Stargate since the original one died in my base-” Carter’s cell phone rang, cutting her off. When she turns away to answer it, John lets the enormity of the situation settle on his shoulders. The implications sink in fairly quickly. “Cameron,” Carter calls. “We gotta go. There’s a situation developing at the SGC.”
“You have to leave now?” Elizabeth asks anxiously.
Carter nods. “Emergency.”
Cameron jogs quickly to the corner to retrieve something. “Lock up when you’re done,” Cameron says, passing some alien device to Elizabeth. He presses a kiss to her cheek, and rushes to catch up with Carter who’s already halfway out the door. “See ya later, Sheppard!” Cameron hollers as he retreats. “We’ll talk more later.”
The metal door clangs shut after them.
“Well,” Elizabeth says. “I guess I can answer all your questions by myself. Just don’t get too technical, because I can’t answer-”
“I just have one question,” John cuts in suddenly, eyes turning hard. “You’ve been doing this for a year, and you’re telling me just now?”
His tone is sharp and cutting, and Elizabeth attempts to ward off his anger with a hand. “You were being watched, John. Ever since you got yourself thrown out of the Air Force, you’ve been under surveillance. Not constant, but enough so that none of us felt comfortable approaching you until we had more than a pipedream.”
“A year,” he simply repeats, accusing. “You could have told me for the last year.”
“I’ve barely seen you in the last year!” Elizabeth volleys back, incredulous. “You’ve been drunk and pissed off and-”
“Maybe finding out about this would have changed my attitude some!”
A flash of an emotion akin to grief streaks across her face. “And I’m supposed to hold out hope for that, when nothing else has managed to get through?”
“You should have told me,” John barks furiously. “I had a right to know about this! You’ve got SG-1 in on this, and you couldn’t even-”
“SG-1 is the only reason we’ve gotten this far!” Elizabeth cuts in, voice rising to match his. “You have any idea what they’re risking? What we all are? This can be seen as treason, John. High treason, and you can bet your ass we won’t get a fair and public trial before being tossed into a windowless 8-by-8 cell for the rest of our lives. SG-1 is risking everything to help us.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t leave a man behind,” Elizabeth declares. “Much less a city. No matter what the bigwigs in Washington say.”
John jerks away, staring up at the mini-Stargate, almost wanting to strangle something with his bare hands. The idea that he’d been left out of the loop with this - Atlantis was his home, his people, as much of his responsibility as Elizabeth’s. She should have contacted him immediately, not waited until he stumbled upon her half-drunk and decided in her infinite charity that it was finally okay to throw him a bone. He should have been the first to know about this.
“You’ve got two options, John. You can stand there and be angry, or you can accept that I made a judgment call.”
“A call that left me in the dark for a whole fucking year!”
“I wish I could have brought you in earlier-”
“Why didn’t you?” John demands, snidely. “Having too much fun looking your nose down at me? You’ve always liked being the smart and capable one. Wanted to hold that high ground a little longer, Miss Goddamn Perfection?”
She just stops and stares at him, eyes welling with tears. “Fuck you, John.”
“You’ve done that already,” he lobs back, before he can stop himself. “Now I want answers.”
Elizabeth bites her lip, angrily brushing away a tear that spills down her cheek. “I can’t speak to you when you’re like this.”
She pivots on her heels and strides away without giving him another word. He watches her go, half his body screaming to catch up with her, but there’s some semblance of control that reasserts itself when he sees her tears.
There’s still a whole ton of rage bottled up inside him, but he thinks back - to his dishonorable discharge, the spectacular ending of his career with fireworks and all. It isn’t remotely surprising that he was considered a security risk to the SGC, but damn it all to hell, he thought he’d earned more than that from Elizabeth. She’d always been the one to believe in him, even when others hadn’t. The last few years, apparently, had changed that.
That stings more than John is willing to own up to.
It’s another hour before both of them calm down, and when John appears behind her, he looks aged and worn thin. “Tell me,” John says, and he sounds so tired. “Give me the real reason you kept me out of this.”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and quietly turns to face him. “We put it to a vote,” she eventually confesses, because she can’t stand that dejected look on his face. Never has managed to find any defense against it. “It was a six-to-one vote, everybody against me. They didn’t think we could take on the risk of getting you involved.”
“SG-1 didn’t want me in?” John says in realization.
“I tried to talk them into it, but yesterday was the first day I could get any headway in the argument.”
“What changed yesterday?”
She pauses. “My argument. I always wanted you involved from the beginning. Your full participation. But that can’t happen, can it? Not with your current status with the SGC. I told them yesterday I didn’t want that anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
Elizabeth exhales slowly. “You can’t stay, John. I brought you here so that you could see everything, but you can’t stay. You can’t help out. Not yet. Not until the mini-Stargate is up and running, ready to go.”
“That’s another eight months from now,” John protests.
“That’s another eight months you need to stay gone,” Elizabeth agrees. “Go back to where you-”
“You can’t expect me to just go back to the hellhole I came from. Not now. Not when I know there’s a chance we can get back to Atlantis-”
“You have to, John,” Elizabeth insists. “The others agreed to telling you, but you’re still too much of a security risk. It jeopardizes the operation.”
He clamps his mouth shut, jaw squared, and Elizabeth knows exactly what she’s asking him to do. Now that he knows, it isn’t going to be easy for him to sacrifice his involvement, but they have no choice. It’s too much of a risk. The deal with SG-1 was that she told him about the mini-Stargate; that was all. No further involvement.
“It’s only eight months,” Elizabeth reasons. “You can do that.”
He scrubs a hand through his hair, then glances up at her as another realization hits him. “What about us? Can I-”
“No,” Elizabeth declares, throat constricting. “After today, we can’t see each other again. As far as anyone watching is concerned, we had a one-night fling and then broke up again. You won’t contact me. I won’t contact you. It’ll be exactly like the last year of our lives.”
He stares at her, repulsed by the evolving situation. “So that’s it? You drop this bombshell on me, and I’m just supposed to accept it?”
After a beat, she answers bluntly, “Yes.”
“What if I say no?”
“You can’t say no,” Elizabeth refutes. “You do, and we might never see Atlantis again.”
The drive back to her apartment is awkward. John slips his cufflinks back on, and they stick to a script, the first few minutes of the car ride spent making mindless small talk about a fishing trip that serves as a cover story for the day’s events. After that, though, they don’t talk much. John can’t wrap his mind around the fact that he’s agreed to this - to leaving Elizabeth, to leaving this operation behind. It goes against every fiber of his being.
First thing that happens upon entering her apartment, Sedge pads up to them and starts barking excitedly. Her front legs climb up John’s pants, her tongue wagging happily, and John miserably thinks she’s going to be wondering why he went away again. The plan is to pick another fight tonight - loud and angry, and then John was supposed to storm off and vanish for the next eight months.
Sedge wouldn’t understand any of that. She’s just blindly loyal and loving, but at least Elizabeth has that type of presence in her life. God knows he hasn’t provided her with the same.
“So,” Elizabeth says, reaching down to rub Sedge behind her ears. Elizabeth looks up at him, crouched low, and takes a deep breath. “Good weather we’re having today.”
That’s a code phrase; he’s supposed to pick a fight with her now, about something or another: work, life, taking the dog for a walk, take your pick. It’s strange, but despite the fact they’d spent the majority of the last twenty-four hours fighting over one thing or another, now, suddenly, he can’t think of a thing to say that would precipitate an argument. He doesn’t want to fight. Irony of all ironies.
“John?” Elizabeth says pointedly, as she rises to her feet again. “I said, good weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
He remains rooted in his spot upon realizing just how close she is.
Fuck it. Change of plans.
John leans over to her, brushing a kiss against her mouth. She inhales sharply in surprise, but John snakes a hand around her waist, his touch slow and soft and light, her mouth sweet with cherries she ate on the car ride home. She's warmer than he remembered, blood-warm all over. His kiss slow and deep: like they've got all the time in the world, though the ticking time-bomb of eight months is flashing bright in the back of John’s mind.
“John,” she breathes, warning. “What are you doing?”
This isn’t part of the plan.
His voice goes a soft rumble, like gravel worn smooth. "Do you want me to stop?"
Elizabeth doesn’t move, staring at him for endless seconds. He waits, not ultimately sure how he wants her to answer. He still has to leave, and spending the night together is just going to make leaving in the morning just that much more painful.
After a beat, her hand falls to the center of his chest, along the dark blue buttons that line his wrinkled shirt. Without a word, she starts undoing them and John ducks his head for another kiss, permission granted, tongues toying, one hand in her hair while the other rests gently against her hip. Elizabeth works blindly, untucking his shirttail that was half hanging out anyway, and as he backs her towards the bedroom, she quickly works off his blazer, then his shirt, letting the items litter her hallway floor. The cufflinks fall with them, and John slams the bedroom door shut after him, blocking out any noise - and anyone listening - to everything that happens next.
He backs her up against the door of her room the moment it closes, hands pulling her blouse loose and then it's shocking, how much he wants this. How much he needs it. Drunk on the taste of her, John thinks about the last few months, the loneliness that he thinks Elizabeth could only understand, the only one who shares his burdens, and he doesn’t want to go back to that. He thinks about another eights months of that purgatory, and he presses his open mouth to Elizabeth’s neck, more suckle than a kiss, all pressure and wetness until he hears her whimper.
Another heated kiss, with his weight pressing her against the door, and they’re fumbling to discard clothing now. John untucks her shirt and pushes it off, fingers mapping the contours of her lacey red bra. It takes a bit of fumbling, but he finally unhooks her bra and slides it down her arms.
“John,” her breath hitches, head resting back against the door. “What do you want?”
He can’t think beyond the terms of you. Anyway, anyhow, always. Just you. It’s strange that he could have theoretically had her at any point during the last year; all he had to do was show up at her doorstep and the rest would always fall into place; it’s as inevitable as two magnets being drawn together.
He picks her up and carries her over to the bed; Elizabeth squeaks a bit for show when he drops her heavily onto the four-poster bed. He yanks her body to the edge of the mattress with one hard tug, flicking his wrist to undo the buttons of her jeans before he jerks the material roughly down her long toned legs. His palms blaze a pathway up her calves, her thighs, pushing her legs further apart until she’s spread eagle before him, the only thing covering her body is some thin red thong that doesn’t hide much.
John doesn’t even bother with removing the underwear. Fisting the material around his knuckles, he tugs the thong to the side, then begins to place light kisses up along her inner thigh. She moans his name, and he grins almost fiercely, thinking back to yesterday, to last night in bed when she’d given him a blowjob and gotten nothing in return. It’s time to repay the favor.
He kisses at first, mouth over her clit, soft pad of his tongue running over once, twice, before he latches on and sucks hard. Her hips buck up, and he plants a hand against her left thigh, holding her hips to the bedspread, but he quickly abandons that when he decides to use his hand to fingerfuck her.
“Don’t stop,” she moans, “Oh, god… John, don’t…”
Christ, he could do this all night.
He kisses and licks, fingers thrusting in, digits wet and slick, pumping into her as she writhes under him. He draws her clit into his mouth, and Elizabeth is bucking up against him so hard, the frantic fight for release, fingers tangled in his hair, moans in her throat. Her muscles spasm with a warning and when she comes, it’s with a soft cry and he holds onto her as she rides the tremors, ridiculously happy to be on his knees in front of her.
He slides off the bed momentarily to remove the last items of clothing, the entire time watching Elizabeth, naked, chest heaving as she gets her breathing back under control. She looks glorious like this, always has. He doesn’t understand why he can’t get this right with her on a daily basis; they work so good together, perfect in the bedroom, and he knows the issue isn’t love.
Eight months, he thinks. Eight months and he isn’t even allowed the hope of this. Sometimes, during his darkest moments, that’s all that’s gotten him through the day.
John is gentle with her this time, so gentle. Warm kisses along her stomach, mouth taking in the full weight of her breasts one at a time, then he moves to her neck, skin soft and taut as Elizabeth stretches up to give him better access to the spot where her pulse beats. Gentle hands slide over her belly, between her legs; soft and slow, every moment a silent reverence to her body.
“John, now. Now, please.”
When he pushes inside of her, he swallows her moan with his mouth, kissing her deep and long and hard, matching his thrusts to the same tempo. She whimpers, and he digs his fingers into her hips, thrusting slow and drawn out, his hips moving into the cradle of hers, her underwear shoved to the side but not off. His arms move to brace against the mattress on either side of her, holding him upright, his face inches apart from hers as he works in and out of her. Her breasts rub against his chest as the rhythm stays steady, stays slow, fighting the carnal urge to just piston into her.
“Elizabeth,” he breathes. “God, fuck you feel so good.”
Elizabeth braces herself against the mattress, pushing herself up into him, and they both groan. He winds a hand in her hair and wrenches her head back so he can suck at her throat. The back of her hand brushes against his dick, and he bucks up against her with a desperate growl.
She comes first, her muscles betraying her with spasms and her voice choking off a muted gasp. She goes limp with exhaustion, but he's still thrusting, and grunting, cursing her name as he fights to find release - and then he’s coming, white noise, eyes closed, grunting and panting until he’s spent, fatigued, boneless over her body.
“John?” she whispers softly, but she doesn’t say anything else because he already knows.
Next time, he thinks, he won’t waste these opportunities. He won’t screw this up with her again. He won’t allow it.
He whispers her name back in a soothing tone as he moves off to the side. Numbly John thinks he should leave now; the longer he stays, the harder it will be. But it’s so tempting, to stay there, warm in her bed. They fall asleep shortly thereafter, tangled up in sweaty limbs and bed sheets.
In the morning when she wakes, she finds an empty bed instead of a warm body. He thinks briefly about writing a note, but the truth is he can’t think of anything to say. He just fumbles around for his discarded clothes, changes in the dark and slips out of the bedroom just as the sun rises.
“Take care of her,” he tells Sedge, just before he steps foot out the front door.
Eight months later, he gets a phone call.