"Are you telling me that if I turned up at your door completely pissed, you'd take me back to my quarters and tuck me into bed?"
Kara Hopkins had one eyebrow raised and was looking at Chuck sceptically.
"Well…stand up. Let me get a good look at you," he replied.
She stood and turned in a circles, ignoring the snickers coming from her left as her friend, and Chuck's Gateroom co-worker Alex, tried her best not to laugh at the scene before her. As she finished her twirl, Kara placed her hands on her hips and cocked one eyebrow.
"No, still wouldn't," Chuck replied, turning back to his console.
"You have been on Atlantis with no sex for over three years and you would turn this," she indicated to her body, "down?"
Chuck laughed. "I might be desperate, but I also like my body exactly as it is, intact and unbroken. If I did anything with you, Lorne would make sure they never found the body,"
Alex choked down another giggle and added, "He does seem to see you as something of a little sister,"
Kara rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure if it's a gift or a curse,"
"He just a bit protective," Alex protested.
"M6X-534. I get leered at once, just once by some guy who isn't really important and the next thing I know we running for the gate because Lorne points a gun in his face,"
"So maybe he's very protective, but-"
"No. No ifs, no buts. I have to accept that fact that while Lorne and I are both here, I'm not getting any action,"
"Kara," came the call from the Gateroom below.
"Speak of the devil," Kara said, walking to collect her gear that she'd dropped by the door to the control room when she'd arrived ten minutes earlier. She was about to leave when she spun and said, "Ali, girls night tonight. You all set?"
"I bring the chocolate and the film, I know," Alex replied.
"Sometime today Captain," Lorne called from below.
Kara rolled her eyes and descended the stair to find her team assembled and ready for departure. "Relax Major, we still have thirty seconds," she said consulting her watch, "until we're supposed to leave. Keep this up you'll give yourself a stroke you know,"
"I should write you up for insubordination," Lorne told her, ignoring the other two members of his team who were covering smiles by looking at the floor.
"And yet, you're not going to,"
"One day I will you know,"
"Of course you will, and one day I will get married and have kids, but that day is not today and it's not even going to be tomorrow, it's going to be some time in the very distant future,"
Lorne sighed and looked up to the walkway that connected the control room to Colonel Carters office. She was watching them, an amused look on her face.
"Dial it up," she called to Chuck.
The team moved out of the way as the stargate activated and stabilised.
"Good luck Major, I'll see you in a few hours," she called, watching the team do their final checks before leaving.
Kara looked up to the control room balcony to see Alex watching her. She blew her friends an exaggerated kiss and Alex pretended to catch it and press it to her cheek. Miles and Conner stepped through the gate first, Lorne and Kara not far behind. "When are you going to stop doing that?" he asked just before they stepped through.
"When you finally ask her out?" was the reply, voiced just as they stepped over the event horizon and were demolecularised and pulled across space to a planet a few hundred light years away.
Kara had first met Alex when she'd been assigned to the Apollo for its first mission to Pegasus galaxy. She'd been working with the stargate program for nearly four years in one way or another, from being a liaison with the Tok'ra for six months, two years as part of two different SG teams, another six months in 302 flight training and the last year moving between Odyssey, Dedalus and Apollo depending on which ship needed pilots.
She liked Apollo, Colonel Ellis was nice, but she'd spent the most time on Odyssey and still found it hard to walk onto a bridge that was the same as the Odyssey but had a different captain.
She'd been part of the ground crew that had been left on Atlantis when the Apollo had left the nuke the replicator shipyards. Finding herself bored she'd ended up in the mess hall and struck up a conversation with Alex. When her lunch break had finished, she invited Kara back to the control room so they could continue their talk until the Apollo returned.
Kara had been pleasantly surprised to find Chuck there. She'd met him when she'd worked as part of SG-9 and he'd been assigned to the SGC as a technician. By the time that Apollo returned, Kara knew how Alex, a Brit, had come to be on Atlantis (she was an expert in Ancient language and so often had to translate what things meant in the control room) that she had one older sister and that her hair was actually naturally blonde but after one too many jokes from Chuck she'd dyed it to its current mahogany brown.
Kara had reciprocated the information with some of her own, she'd joined the air force at eighteen and been taken under the wing of a General Landry (now in charge of the SGC) and quickly been inducted into the officers programme, she had no siblings that she knew of (she'd been in foster care most of her life) and her red hair was as natural as it came.
It was only later, as they helped to clean up the wreckage caused when the energy beam hit the city that Alex and Kara really got to know each other, propping each other up, keeping each other going as the ZPM's power ran lower and lower. It was at this point that Kara also found out that she had the ATA gene. She accidentally turned on a life signs scanner that was lying around on one of the controls. And so she been rounded up and herded into a jumper to shoot down asteroids along with some very nervous scientists.
It was only when they talked about it later that the women realised the bond that formed that day. Turns out nearly dying together is a great way to forge a friendship.
It was later, once Atlantis was safely floating on the waters of her new home that Kara had run into Lorne. They'd met briefly while he was at the SCG, working one mission together along with their respective SG teams. He remembered that she'd made him laugh during the dull hours spent on a miserable planet waiting for a Jaffa informant to show up.
He also remembered that, while only being small, was a pretty good fighter and had enjoyed sparring with her when they'd gotten bored to the point of tears. Actually, she'd spared with all the men there and bested most of them. They spent the rest of that night in the gym, Lorne working out his frustrations at the situation, Kara working through the fear that still remained in her mind after the near death experience from earlier that day.
It was after they finally stopped, at about five in the morning when Lorne had said, "Dr Weir's been after me for months to find a forth member for my team. I've been searching through files of SGC personnel but no one seems to jump out at me,"
Kara had met and held his gaze. "It'd been a while since I was assigned to an SG team, but I'll help anyway I can,"
Lorne had cocked his head to one side. "Actually I was thinking about you,"
"I'd kill you within a week," she'd stated.
"Is that a wager?"
She'd sat up from were she'd been lying on her back and propped herself up on her elbows. "If you survive…?"
"You have to stay here and be part of my team permanently,"
"And if you don't?"
"Then you can leave and return to earth,"
"That's hardly incentive,"
"Fine if you win and you end up killing me, I'll make my dying wish to see you promoted to Major and charge of a team of your own,"
"Oh that's a deal," she'd said, shaking hands on it.
And he'd survived, so she'd stayed. Colonel Carter had replaced Dr Weir as head of the expedition and signed the orders for Kara to stay. Kara had slowly been introduced to the other members of the expedition, with Alex inviting her to girls poker night her first official day on Atlantis and Lorne introducing her to Steve Miles and Michael Conner before throwing her into fight training against the marines. To the surprise of everyone she'd held her own against almost all of the military men (losing only to Lorne, Connor, Colonel Sheppard, a marine called Garwin and Ronon and Teyla) and won a substantial amount of chocolate at poker night, which she had then graciously shared with her new friends.
And so, her new life on Atlantis began. Most of it was pretty regular, missions off world to meet new people and set up trade agreements, being pulled out of bed every morning by Lorne for extra training until she could hold her own against everybody but Ronon and Teyla (the latter of the two giving her private lesson to help her improve more) and getting calls every half an hour from McKay or Zelenka asking her to come and try to make some ancient artefact or another work (apparently her ATA gene was almost as strong as Sheppard's). Occasionally there would be a life or death situation, but they survived almost all relatively unscathed.
And so it was that about three months later Kara was going on another mission to another planet in another galaxy and for the first time in her life, actually felt like she was doing something useful.
Life in Pegasus was good, and she just hoped it stayed that way.