Carson's office had never seemed so uncomfortable before.
Elizabeth would not look at anyone. John snuck a glance at her. She was staring at the floor, face blank, a visible curtain over her thoughts.
Oh, God. They were in so much trouble.
The first alien-influenced kiss had been bad enough. This one had been so, so, so much worse.
Because it hadn't ended.
It was a very pleasant reception with their newest allies. As seemed to be common practice, the new friends had obligingly brought their own special moonshine to the impromptu banquet. John had always held his liquor pretty well, and Elizabeth was always too polite to say no. It had never been a problem before. Normally, it just ended up with a prety-much-sober John walking a dizzy, flushed, bright-eyed Elizabeth back to her room while she tried to convince him she didn't need his help, and he left his hand on the small of her back just a second too long as she walked into her room and said goodnight.
This night had started no different from the others, except she'd gotten disoriented a little more quickly than usual. The Galichii wine was stronger than the stuff she was used to. Towards the end of the night, she'd gone out to the usual balcony to get some fresh air and try to clear the dizziness from her head. The door had opened, he'd joined her, and before either of them knew what was happening or why, she was pressed hard up against the wall and his tongue was down her throat. Her hands were on his belt buckle when their earpieces had crackled, breaking them apart with a message neither had actually heard. She'd bolted, leaving him so frustrated and worked up that he skipped the rest of the party and didn't come back to walk her to her room.
That was bad enough. Much later, after the party ended, he woke up to his door chime. She walked in. The door closed behind her. She didn't walk out.
No one had seen or realized anything. It had only been discovered the next day when a poor unsuspecting junior security officer was sent to fetch the colonel, who was late for a meeting. The young Marine had knocked politely and called him on radio, as she'd been trained, and finally opened the door. She walked in to find her commanding officer and his boss in bed, naked, twined around each other, unconscious and completely unresponsive.
Naturally, the "in bed" and "naked" parts of the story had circulated the entire city before the two of them were even in the infirmary. And no one had trouble connecting the dots. Everyone had noticed how awkwardly the two of them had been eyeing each other through the entire party.
Carson had immediately put them on strong medication to flush the new chemical from their bloodstreams. Too little, too late. The damage was done. They woke up in scrubs in the infirmary hours later – the worst thing about the small infirmary was the lack of separate rooms – and taken one look at each other before blushing, looking away, and refusing to look at each other any more. Ever. For eternity.
And now they were in Carson's office, answering what were, hands down, the most awkward questions they'd ever been asked.
"Look. I know this is very uncomfortable for both of you."
Elizabeth offered him a half-hearted attempt at a smile. "Yes."
"It was that wine they brought," John mumbled.
"I agree. And obviously, it affected you more strongly than we thought it would."
"Ya think?"
Normally, that might have earned him an eyebrow twitch. But she couldn't look at him. Couldn't even begin to turn her head. Because she knew that he knew, just as well as she did, that the "drugged" explanation was neat, tidy, and almost completely false.
Yes, they'd been drunk on something. Yes, it had messed with them because it was new to their metabolism and they'd never had anything like it before. Yes, that had apparently included increasing their sexual performance to earth-shattering new heights. No, they wouldn't have done it if they'd been sober.
But there were gaping holes in that explanation. Like the fact that several others had drunk the stuff, and while one scientist had sprained an ankle falling down a staircase, no one else had fallen into bed.
And the fact that while yes, they'd drunk it, kissed, and then had sex, an hour separated the first two events and two had separated the second and third. Damn stimulant with alcohol-like effects. At least alcohol might have made them tired. This stuff had just given them more energy.
It explained the first hour. Not the four that followed. It explained the wall. And the floor. Not really the bed. Or the shower.
It explained the bruises all over her wrists and thighs. It explained the bite marks on his shoulder and scrapes down his back. It didn't explain the way he had slowly run his fingers through her hair as she fell asleep against his chest, or the last soft kiss he'd gently pressed to her lips, or the warm tingle it had sent down her spine. Or the last three words she'd heard him whisper as she finally drifted off into a deep, sated slumber.
She bit her lip. This was very, very bad.
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I need to know everything."
John made a very uncomfortable face. "Is that really necessary?"
"I'm sorry, Colonel, but I have to insist." Carson paused. "I could question you separately if you prefer."
"Just get it over with." Elizabeth finally spoke up. "We were both there, Carson. We're adults."
"Very well." Carson looked down at his notebook. "We have a partial timeline. The party ended at 11. Lieutenant Martin found you at 9:15 this morning."
Elizabeth stifled a groan. Poor Martin. Scarred for life.
"Elizabeth, do you know what time you went to Col. Sheppard's room?"
"Not exactly." She thought for a moment. "1, maybe, or 1:15. I'm not sure."
"So you were there a while." Carson thought through a moment. "Do you know what time you fell asleep?"
They both shook their heads.
"Can you estimate how, uh, how long it took?"
They both shook their heads.
Carson sighed. "I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I have to ask. How many times?"
John squirmed in his seat. There was a long, long silence. Finally, he looked away. "I don't remember."
"I don't either." False. Completely false. She remembered exactly how many times she'd screamed his name. Carson didn't need to know. He probably wouldn't believe them if they told him, anyway.
Carson's eyebrows went up (he'd known them both long enough to know when they were lying), but he said nothing, merely scribbled something on his chart that looked suspiciously like a number that was uncomfortably close to the correct one.
"I assume you didn't use protection?"
They both shook their heads.
"Well, there shouldn't be anything to worry about there anyway. SGC health screenings are very thorough. We'll run bloodwork just to be sure." He capped his pen. "I don't mean to make this situation more uncomfortable. But we do need to be careful about this."
"Could you be – I mean, do we need to – do you – is it possible we –" John was squirming even more than before, his entire face twisted with worry.
Elizabeth knew what he couldn't bring himself to ask. "No. It's not."
"Okay." John let out a long breath, looking a little relieved.
Carson ended up letting John go, holding Elizabeth back just a few minutes longer to double-check that her birth control was still on schedule. She walked out, but John was gone. Not that she'd expected him to wait for her. He hadn't once met her eyes in Carson's office. And they never had conversations without copious eye contact. Now they couldn't even look at each other. And she couldn't stop thinking about him naked. Couldn't look at him without seeing the way he had looked at her, feeling his fingers drifting hot and urgent over her bare skin, shivering at the way his rough, unshaven jaw scraped across the sensitive skin of her –
Damn it.
This was not good.
John swallowed hard, sitting gingerly on his bed.
Elizabeth was a screamer.
As they'd sat down in Carson's office, she'd leaned back in her chair, letting her head relax, and for a moment, he stared at the long line of her throat, seeing her writhing helplessly beneath him, begging him breathlessly as her thighs tightened around his waist and she let out a long, strangled moan. Oh, God. This was bad. He could feel himself tightening just thinking about how willing, how eager and responsive she had been, arching against him with every touch. He still wanted her. But the wine was long gone.
He put his head in his hands.
Damn it straight to hell.
If she had intended to talk to him, she would have come to see him after talking to Carson. John knew that. Minutes ticked by, and she didn't come to his door, didn't call him on the radio. Then it occurred to him – for one thing, she always did all the talking. It would be nice to give her a break; this situation was far outside her area of expertise. And for another, she probably wouldn't want to talk about this in his room. The last time they'd been alone there, it hadn't involved talking.
Or clothes.
"Elizabeth? Can we talk?" He ignored the two computer analysts walking by, pretending not to stare at him and failing miserably, as he stood outside her room. They were going to have to get used to it, after all. "Please. We need to talk about this."
There was a long, uncomfortable pause, before he finally heard her sigh heavily. "All right."
He had been really, really rough.
She had liked it.
Her face flushed as a rush of sensation washed over her, memories flooding back with overly-vivid sensory detail.
They had had sex. A lot of sex. A lot of really damn good sex. The mind-blowing, headboard-cracking, screaming obscenities kind of good. So good that her throat was hoarse, the hickey spread across her throat (which matched the one on his) looked like a coarse sandpaper burn and she'd woken in the infirmary so sore it had taken an hour before she could really walk.
So now she sat across from him, twisting her hands uncomfortably. She had no idea what to say. Graduate-level rhetoric, oddly, had not covered the topic of how to address a man who, after a dose of alien wine, had literally fucked you so well you couldn't remember your own name. And then done it again. And again. And again. And –
"Elizabeth?"
"I really don't want to talk about it."
"What are we supposed to do, pretend it never happened?"
She sighed. "No, John, it's just – what am I supposed to say?"
He looked nervous. "Did I – I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"No! No, of course not."
"I'm sorry, I just – I got kind of carried away – I, um, I was –"
"It's all right." He really had gotten carried away. He had been gruff and unshaven and crude. His usual easygoing personality had vanished, leaving her pinned between the wall and a dangerous, sexy man who was in complete control, making her body respond to every touch, keeping her gasping for air and pleading for release and –
Oh God. So bad.
He looked down, and for the first time, he noticed the bruises on her wrists, shaped faintly like fingers. "Oh, God, did I do that?"
She nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak. The bruises did come from him. He had tied her up and proceeded to torture her slowly with his fingers and his tongue, so slowly that she had screamed and begged him, hoarsely, to please just do it already. And finally, after bringing her so close again and again and again, he did. She came so hard she couldn't breathe.
And this was not a good time to be thinking about it.
"Look, Elizabeth, I – " he tightened his jaw and seemed to psych himself into saying the next words " – we did it because we were drunk. We both know that. But I didn't just fall into bed with you by accident. Drinking that stuff didn't change who we are."
"It took away our control. Carson said so himself."
"We weren't the only ones at that party," he hissed. "I walked right past Teyla, Lt. Martin, and a dozen other women to get to the balcony. I didn't even look at them. I came to find you."
"John – "
"You never told me to stop." His gaze was penetrating.
She closed her eyes. "I didn't want you to."
"Exactly. And I know you heard what I said when we fell asleep." She looked away. "Elizabeth, please. Look at me. I didn't say that because of the wine. I said it because I meant it."
"We can't –"
"We just did." He snorted. "Come on, Lizabeth. We slept together, but you don't want me to say that I care about you?"
"It'll only complicate things. It's bad enough already. We can't just – just leap into a relationship because we drank something."
"You came to my room, you know. Not the other way around. You came looking for me." She looked away. "Elizabeth, please. I'm not angry. But if all you wanted was to get laid, you could have just grabbed the first man you found. But you didn't. You walked down hallways to get to my room. You didn't get there by accident."
"I know."
"Look." Throwing caution to the wind, he reached forward and set his hand on hers. She looked up. "I'm sorry it happened like this. I'm sorry I didn't ever…do anything nice. I would have taken you to dinner. Or to see a movie. Or brought you flowers. Or something. I wouldn't have just mauled you."
"John –"
"But I'd be lying if I said that –" he swallowed – "if I said I never wanted you before last night."
Her heart was pounding. He couldn't be saying it. But he was.
"That was the best sex I've ever had. In my whole life. And it wasn't just because of the wine. I've been attracted to you since we met, Elizabeth. I respect you more than anyone. And yeah, last night, I lost control. But it was still me. And I knew it was you."
She wasn't used to being vulnerable. And the way he had taken control of her body…she'd never felt like that before. She hadn't realized she could.
"I don't take risks like that, John. We can't take this kind of chance. What if it all goes terribly wrong?"
"Elizabeth, we already crossed the line. Whether we like it or not, we're going to have to deal with the consequences. At this point, what do we have to lose?"
She looked up to find John looking at her with such earnest, wholehearted, hopeful sincerity all over his face that it took her aback for a moment. He had dealt with the situation, accepted what had happened, and was staking his happiness on her response.
Maybe…John was just as vulnerable as she was right now.
So – seeing as it wasn't really a secret anymore anyway – she leaned forward, setting her hand on his, and kissed him gently on the lips.
"We can start with dinner."
"You mean it?" His face brightened.
"Well, we already slept together. We may as well share a table."