Work Text:
Of all the places John would have expected to find accomplished intergalactic diplomat Dr. Elizabeth Weir on a Wednesday night on Earth, a little nondescript bar tucked between a dry cleaner and an H&R Block office on the far side of Colorado Springs isn’t it.
For a few seconds, he thinks about leaving. She clearly came here to be alone. So did he, come to think of it. There are plenty of little bars where he could get a drink, relax, and not bother–
She looks up from her half-empty glass, and the minute she sees him, her face softens. And any thought he had of escaping is totally, completely gone.
He gets a beer from the bar and comes to join her, taking the empty seat across the table. She settles back in the booth. “How’d you find me?”
“I didn’t.” At her confused look, John shrugs. “Just needed to get away from the base. Clear my head.”
She smiles softly. “Yeah, me too.”
They both ended up at the same dive bar, but there’s probably nothing to read into it. He really only picked this one because he saw a sweet red convertible parked outside, and it seemed as good a sign as any to stop here and grab a beer.
There’s a long silence as they both sip at their drinks, and finally he decides to break it, just to make things slightly less awkward. “When’s the ceremony?”
“Tomorrow. I’m not sure what time.” She pauses. “Probably morning. We have personnel meetings straight through the afternoon.”
“Fun.”
“You have meetings, too.” She nods at him. “You’ll be choosing your new security recruits.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.”
John looks up, realizing that he’s been staring off into the distance, and finds her gaze fixed on him. There’s such a directness in it. Sometimes he wants to look away. Tonight, he doesn’t let himself.
“Congratulations,” she offers.
“Thanks.”
He’s still a little dazed. Of all the things he expected from this trip back to Earth, promotion seemed among the least likely. It was right up there with winning the lottery and getting a call from Dad.
It’s too big a topic to think about, so he takes a long drink of his beer and focuses on Elizabeth instead. She looks tired. She’s often tired, he knows, but right now she seems weary. She looks unhappy, like she’s putting on the smile for him, not for herself.
He doesn’t want to pry, but he thinks he should probably be a better colleague than he is most of the time. “You okay?”
Elizabeth freezes. “What do you mean?”
“You just–” He’s not sure if he’s overstepping. “You seem a little off.”
She hesitates. Her glass is on the table; she turns it with one hand, round and round, letting the ice clink gently against the sides. “My fiancé–I mean, my ex-fiancé. Turns out he’s decided not to join the expedition.”
John didn’t know there was a fiancé, let alone one on the short list for Atlantis. Something twists inside him at the thought, though he doesn’t know why. “Sorry.”
“He’s not.” She smiles wryly. “He’s already moved on.”
“Asshole.”
“It’s not quite like it sounds. I told him to move on with his life, if he wanted.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t the best long-distance relationship. We were just… too far apart to make it work. His life is here, and mine isn’t.”
(Nancy filed for divorce while he was deployed. You’re never home, she told him. And even when you are home, you’re not really here.)
“I’m really sorry.”
“I don’t think either of us handled it well,” she says with a sigh. “I wish he had been honest with me. But it wasn’t fair to expect him to drop everything.”
“He should have.”
“John–”
“He’s an idiot.”
“You don’t even know him.”
John has had just enough alcohol that he needs her to understand this, and he’ll keep talking until she does. “If he wouldn’t come with you, he’s a fucking idiot.”
“You almost didn’t come,” she points out. “I had to convince you, remember?”
“Yeah.” Sometimes it hits him: he almost made that truly cosmic mistake. “I was an idiot, too.”
Her eyes look darker than usual in the warm, hazy bar lighting. She’s staring at him, head cocked, some kind of curiosity on her face that he can’t quite place.
There’s something about the way she’s looking at him–something, he doesn’t know what, he can’t name it, but he feels lighter. Warmer.
She’s looking at him like he’s a much better man than he is, and he wishes, more than anything, that he deserved it.
An hour later, he’s not drunk. He’s not even buzzed.
John is clear-headed and fully aware when Elizabeth pulls him into a dim nook in the alley beside the bar and he pushes her back against the brick wall to kiss her.
At exactly 10:04 the next morning, he’s starched and pressed in his dress blues in the CO’s office at the SGC, as Elizabeth pins a silver oak leaf to the epaulet on his left shoulder.
Her perfume is subtle, something delicate, between floral and citrus. Her hands are so deft, so light, he can only just feel her touch through his uniform jacket and shirt.
(Nancy did the pinning when he made captain. By the time he made major, she didn’t bother coming to the ceremony.)
When Elizabeth finishes pinning on his new rank, she looks up, one hand still on his shoulder. Her eyes meet his, and for a second everything stops. It’s dead silent here in Landry’s office, and there’s nothing but her, her eyes, and the memory of kissing her breathless in a dark alley last night.
Kissing her until they were both hot and bothered, until a car horn blaring nearby stopped them just long enough to come to their senses.
“General Landry will now readminister the oath of office.”
John blinks sharply, tearing his gaze away from Elizabeth to where Landry is waiting, watching them with an unreadable expression.
“Raise your right hand,” Harriman instructs him. John complies, turning to face the general directly.
Lieutenant Colonel. Who’d have thought I’d get here?
“Repeat after me,” the general instructs him, holding up the oath card.
I, Jonathan Hudson Sheppard, having been appointed a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force…
The silver leaves aren’t even an hour old on his shoulders when John finds himself in the conference room with Landry, Caldwell, and a stack of personnel files. Wonderful. A two-star who’s skeptical of him, a full colonel who very clearly resents him, and his least favorite thing in the world: paperwork.
Happy promotion to me, he thinks.
After a long afternoon of paperwork and meetings, the little Atlantis leadership team all agree to meet up for dinner at a nice place in downtown Colorado Springs. They might as well enjoy their per diems. The view may not be as good as Atlantis, but the food is considerably better.
John’s last meeting with Landry runs long, so he’s behind the others. He checks out a fleet car from the motorpool and heads downtown to meet them.
The variety of textures on Earth is overwhelming.
On Atlantis, everything is temperate and slightly humid, the salty sea air always moving in a light breeze. The whole city has the same finish, the same architectural lines. It’s cohesive in a way no city on Earth could be.
John hadn’t really thought before this, but now, walking alone in downtown Colorado Springs, it strikes him. So much. So many different things. Brick, stucco, metal, cement, wood, fluorescent lights clashing with the warmer tones of streetlamps. Buildings and sidewalks and windows and cars and–
–and Elizabeth’s mouth, hot and eager against his in a way he shouldn’t know, but will never forget now.
He takes a deep breath and walks into Paravicini’s. It was a stupid mistake. A one-time lapse in judgment. He’s just not going to think about it anymore.
After a delicious dinner, Elizabeth is barely half done with her dessert and John is nursing the last of his wine when Rodney checks his watch and groans. “It’s late.”
“What do you mean?” John asks. “It’s only eight-thirty.”
“Maybe I should have said, tomorrow is early. Dr. Atwater only has a two-hour window between missions,” Rodney grumbles. “So we have to meet at 6:15. In the morning! It’s ridiculous.”
“I’ve got a 7am myself.” Carson sighs. “Probably best be getting back.”
“Oh–I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” Elizabeth reaches for her napkin. “I didn’t mean to make you stay.”
“It’s okay if you guys want to go.” Even as John says the words, he knows it’s a bad idea, but when has that ever stopped him? “I’ve got a car. I can drive Elizabeth back.”
His three dinner companions all turn to look at him. Elizabeth looks like she’s considering her words carefully. “You don’t mind?”
He shrugs. “No trouble.”
“Thanks.”
“Enjoy your dessert,” Carson tells her fondly. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good night. And congratulations again, Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard.”
“Thanks.”
John holds the door for Elizabeth as they walk out of the restaurant. It’s a short walk down the street to where he parked.
“I know you did this,” he says finally.
“Dinner?”
“The promotion.”
She shrugs. “It was Landry’s call, not mine.”
“You made it happen,” he says.
“You deserved it,” she insists. “All I did was tell them that.”
He opens the passenger side door for her, then takes the driver’s seat.
John stares at the steering wheel for a moment. He still feels unsettled. Uncentered. His internal compass is still trying to find north, and being in a car with the woman he (stupidly) kissed yesterday isn’t helping.
He turns on the ignition, and just as he’s about to shift into drive, Elizabeth puts her hand on his, warm and sudden and real, there atop the gear shift.
He sucks in a sharp breath, his whole body tightening as a bolt of sheer, hot desire goes through him.
There are moments, back in Atlantis, when he could swear she hears what he’s thinking. He doesn’t know how, but she’ll just look at him, like she’s tuning into a radio broadcast from his mind. Maybe it’s written on his face. Maybe it's obvious. Or maybe she’s the only one who can read him.
He wonders if she knows what he’s thinking right now.
She says, “We don’t have to go straight back.”
They make out like horny teenagers in a dark, empty parking lot near Garden of the Gods.
It’s no tentative, shy thing, either. The minute he shuts off the car’s ignition, they’re on each other. It’s probably for the best that this car has a stick shift. If there wasn’t a gearbox in between them, there’s a pretty fair chance they’d be making a much worse decision than this one.
This isn't a fantasy he would have expected to experience with Elizabeth Weir, PhD, general voice of reason in their chaotic world. But she's all over him, her hands frantic and searching, her tongue searching for his. He can feel himself getting hard almost immediately, his body reacting instinctively to the situation that feels like the inevitable conclusion of their stupid, heated minutes against that brick wall last night.
“We should stop,” she says finally, though she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t push him back, doesn’t stop unbuttoning his shirt.
“Probably,” he agrees, chasing her mouth for another kiss. She sighs into his mouth, her tongue hot against his. He slides a hand up her thigh and the soft, hitching breath she takes in is making him consider how much public indecency they’re willing to risk when she puts a hand on his chest. It’s solid. Certain.
“John.” She takes in a shaky breath. “We have to stop.”
She’s right. Of course she’s right.
Fuck.
(Or not.)
John shuts his eyes for a second. “Yeah.”
“It’s a bad idea.”
It’s a spectacularly bad idea. She just put her neck on the line for his promotion; John may not have as much experience in the political world as she does, but he’s been in the Air Force long enough to know Caldwell wanted the military command post on Atlantis.
If Caldwell finds out what they're doing in the front seat of this government-issue car–
“I’m sorry,” John mutters, scrubbing his hands over his face, willing his dick to calm down and understand that there will be no sex happening tonight. “You’re right. This was a bad idea.”
“I’m just as much at fault,” she sighs. “We’re not thinking clearly. Let’s just–go back to base.”
“Right. Yeah.”
He re-buttons his shirt, pointedly not watching her tuck her messy curls back into place and tuck her blouse back in.
The drive back to Cheyenne Mountain is silent for the first four minutes, until Elizabeth seems to realize that they have twenty more, and she turns on the radio, scanning through static until she finds a classical station.
After six more minutes, John comments, “Music’s nice.”
“It is.”
Whatever the music is, it ends, and they listen as a soft-spoken NPR host gently assures them their pledges will support important classical programming in the greater Colorado Springs area.
At the main gate outside the base, they show their ID’s to a bored-looking guard who waves them in without comment. John cruises the car smoothly into the parking garage. Elizabeth clicks off her seat belt, then stops, looking at him. “Are we okay?”
He’s going to think about those frantic minutes in the front seat of this car until–
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
He follows her out of the garage, stopping to sign the car back in, and over to the elevators. It would probably be wise for them to separate, but their guest rooms are in the same hallway, so they walk together.
What were they thinking? Were they going to fuck in the SGC, with time-stamped cameras along every corridor to clearly document them walking into the same quarters and staying there all night? Were they going to get a hotel room together with one of their government-issue credit cards? Making out in that car really was the least terrible idea they’ve had tonight.
That’s a sobering thought.
Her room is three before his. She pauses outside her door, looking up at him like she wants to say something. He stops. “What?”
Elizabeth hesitates, then shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh.”
“Thanks for the ride.”
She didn't mention the detour, so he doesn't. “Sure.”
“Congratulations, Colonel Sheppard.”
She kisses his cheek, so soft and quick and light that he’d swear he imagined it.
And for all the guilty fantasies in the world, for all the messy, frantic minutes they spent in a deserted parking lot, this is the dangerous thing.
This is what’s going to ruin them.
Because they're going back to a floating city, a galaxy away, with no SGC, no 24/7 monitoring, and no car horns to distract them.
She smiles at him, small and secretive, and in that moment, John Sheppard knows, without question: he’s so very, very screwed.