Trouble in Paradise (first fight, make-up/make-up sex, jealousy, break-up and reconciliation)
A/N: Sorry this took so long to get up, but last month my modem got wiped out during a thunder storm and I had to get a new one, so I lost everything I'd written! After coming back, my muse demanded that I give my JLU fic it's due, so I did that. Now, I'm back to this, though! It'll be finished something this week, so that means you've got three new chapters coming! Plus, when I finish this, I'll start in on the other Ronon/Liz story I have up!
Chapter Three: The Trouble With Lust...It Makes You See Things That Aren't There
The entanglements of emotional relationships makes life on a colony hard. Atlantis was nothing, if not an Earth colony. All alone in a new galaxy, these people had only each other to rely on. They got all friendship, lust, and competition from each other, and in times of heightened awareness like stress or boredom, those feelings became hyper-sensitive, evoked by the slightest irregularity in the schedule.
It was only two weeks until the Hive ship arrived, and everyone was very aware of that fact. Infantry training schedules were tightened and doubled. Any missions to other worlds were cancelled, and all of the people on the mainland had been recalled. The city was busier and more crowded than usual, meaning that privacy was a privelage, and it was more often only received at night.
Maybe that was why Ronon and Elizabeth found themselves distant from one another. They'd all but forgotten the fight of two weeks ago, yet they hardly spoke. Whenever they were alone, which as of late was only at night, they immediately gave in to the physical needs, the yearning for the touch of flesh after a twelve hour day that more often than night exhausted them into a dreamless sleep. In the morning, one or the other would wake and find their mate gone. A schedule like this would make the strongest saint delusional, and neither Ronon nor Elizabeth was a saint.
He first saw them together at lunch. He hadn't planned on going in at the usual time of noon, because as of late the cafeteria had been increasingly loud and hectic. However, something had spurred Ronon to accept Carson's offer of saving a place for him. When he walked in, he didn't even see them at first. Then he smelled her. That soft, floral scent that came from her shampoo. He'd recognize it anywhere. Then he saw her. With him. Caldwell. Ever since the man had been found out to be that worm-thing, Ronon hadn't trusted him. Especially when the man had started to try and get into Elizabeth's good graces (read pants). He was touching her. His hand on her shoulder as he said something that made her laugh. Ronon's stomach tightened, and he wasn't hungry anymore. He wanted to go and smash in the balding man's face, then claim Elizabeth on the table where all could see and know she was his. He didn't though. A feeling, something he refused to name, stopped his movements. He was frozen, but seconds later he was moving. Leaving so that he didn't have to see her. See her forget him.
Elizabeth knew he watched, and had an idea of why he'd left so quickly. It made her smile. She knew it was evil, but she enjoyed his discomfort, enough that she put up with Caldwell's flirting. It was a small price to pay for amusement in these tense times.