A/N: Hi! Welcome back. Sorry for the delay. I took a big international trip a few weeks ago (it was amazing) and didn't write at all while I was away, so it took me a while to get back into the swing of things.

Hope you enjoy this next one! Thank you again for reading, reviewing, and all of that good stuff. It's been wonderful to read all of your comments and to gain new readers! I'm happy you're enjoying my work.

He awoke with a start, pressing his eyelids shut to block out the early rays of sun that reflected harshly off the morning ocean and into his bedroom. Had he heard something…or felt something?

It was probably just Rogers, a faint voice in the back of his mind reminded him.

As memories of the night before rushed back to him, he sat upright in his bed and cast a hopeful glance to the other side. But she wasn't there.

Slowly, he lay back onto the pillow, let out a deep sigh, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. But as soon as he had begun to convince himself that it had all been a dream, he caught a distinct whiff of lavender emanating from the sheets. Stretching a hand out to feel the spot where she had lain, he found that it was still warm, making him wonder just how long ago she had left.

Skipping breakfast earlier that morning had perhaps not been the best idea. But at the time, she hadn't been hungry and she did have a lot of work to catch up on, after all. Her decision had been in no way motivated by a fear that she would run into a certain Satedan who tended to haunt the commissary…whose bed she had shared the night before, whose arms had held her the entire night, whose mere but solid presence made her at last feel safe. No. It was definitely the work. Besides, coffee counted as breakfast, didn't it?

Her stomach growled its protest but she drowned it out with a long sip from her mug.

"Hey!"

Emma jumped in her seat, sloshing a bit of hot coffee onto the desk. "Alan! Christ! You scared me." She reached for the nearest box of tissues and began mopping up the mess.

"Sorry about that," her colleague said. "I just ran into Dr. McKay; he wanted me to give these to you."

The tissues landed with a soggy splat at the bottom of the trashcan and she wiped her hands on her pants before taking the folder.

"What are they?"

"They're readouts from Eva's tracking device." He passed them to her.

"More of them?" she asked incredulously. "We haven't even made it through the first batch."

"There was a lot of data, I guess."

"All right," she sighed as she opened the folder, flipping through page after page of Wraith text.

Rather than head to his side of the lab, Alan lingered at the edge of her desk and tilted his head as he looked at her. "You feeling better?"

"Hm?" She glanced up at him, but quickly returned her gaze to the endless lines of Wraith in front of her. "Oh, yeah. I uh…finally got some sleep last night."

"Sleep," he nodded, clearly unconvinced. "Sure."

She snapped the folder closed and set it on the desk, sat up straight and looked him square in the eyes. "What are you implying?"

"Nothing," he shrugged. "Just that I heard one of the guys saying he saw you heading back to your quarters pretty early this morning…out of uniform."

"One of the guys?" She primly folded her hands in her lap. "Since when are you 'one of the guys,' Alan?"

He walked away and took a seat at his desk across the room. "Hey, I just thought you'd want to know what other people are saying about you."

"And what exactly are they saying, Alan?" she barked. His mockery of her, disguised as concern for her reputation, was trying her patience.

Alan had the decency to look at least a little abashed. "A few things that I know better than to repeat. But…if you're curious, it was Corporal Hanson who had the most to say about the matter."

Despite the hot beverage she had been nursing, a chill ran up her spine. "Well, you know Corporal Hanson. That man shoots off his mouth so much he must eat bullets for breakfast," she said, irritated. "I wouldn't believe a damn thing he says about me."

"Who eats bullets for breakfast?"

Emma turned her head so quickly to the source of the new voice, she made herself dizzy. With a hand on his hip and smirk on his face stood Sheppard at the entrance of the lab; but it wasn't the colonel's unexpected appearance that caused her stomach to do a backflip. It was that he hadn't come alone – her bedfellow from the night before was right at his side.

The mere sight of him made her instantly recall how she had woken up in his arms, head tucked under his chin, leg draped over his own, the fabric of his shirt balled tightly in her hand. She hadn't remembered falling asleep like that; in fact, she was quite sure their bodies weren't even touching when she had finally closed her eyes. But this morning, she had awakened to find herself utterly tangled up in him. It had taken her over a minute to carefully extricate herself without waking him up.

"No one," she stammered with a quick shake of her head. "Can I help you, Colonel?"

He gestured over to Ronon whose gaze flitted aimlessly about the lab as he avoided any and all eye contact with Emma. "We were on our way to breakfast, but first wanted to swing by and make sure you had gotten the next set of data from Eva's tracker. It would have come from McKay."

Emma held up the folder in question. "Got it right here."

"Good," he nodded. "Woolsey says those are Priority Alpha; they take precedence over anything else you might be working on."

She picked up the nearest pen and drew an α on the outside of the manila folder. "Then we'll get started on them right away," she smiled.

With Ronon in tow, Sheppard made moves to leave, but after only three short steps, turned back around and centered his gaze on Emma. "There something different about you, Rogers?"

"That's what I said!" Alan chimed in.

Her eyes widened in surprise. Did she really look that different this morning? "No. I don't think so."

"You sure about that?"

"Just well rested, Colonel. It's been a rough week and I…I finally got some good sleep last night," she confessed. "That's all."

Ronon's eyes finally met hers and her heart skipped a beat. She saw the faintest flush of color reach his cheeks, but he bowed his head to hide it from the others. Meanwhile, she could tell that her own face was on fire.

"Yeah…that must be it," Sheppard said, leaving with a wink.

"You think someone finally got lucky with her?" Sheppard asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the linguistics lab.

Ronon simply grunted in reply, trying to keep his thoughts focused on the route to the commissary. He found that the promise of breakfast quelled the uneasy feeling in his stomach that he tried to tell himself was hunger-related and nothing else.

"Wait a minute…"

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder to see that Sheppard had fallen a few paces behind.

"She wasn't with you last night, was she?"

Ronon crossed his arms across his chest. "You think I screwed Rogers?"

Sheppard narrowed his eyes and gave him a scrutinizing look. "No," he decided, "you're right. You'd be less grumpy if you had."

Afraid that he might reveal something if he said any more, a grunt was once again the only response Ronon could think to give as they fell back into step with one another. He had to admit, though, Sheppard's assessment wasn't entirely inaccurate. Spending the night with her had been nice, he wouldn't lie; but the chasteness of it all had left him feeling as tightly drawn as a bowstring. Or maybe he was just hungry.

"I wonder who it was…"

"Maybe she just slept well," Ronon said, a bit too quickly, "like she said."

"If that's true, then I gotta find out what kind of miracle mattress she's sleepin' on because –"

"Hey! Wait up!"

Ronon felt his stomach slingshot into his throat as he heard her voice. How much of their conversation had she heard? Somewhat ashamed of the crudeness with which they had both spoken about her, he turned to face her, prepared to apologize if need be.

Unanticipated relief coursed through his veins like a drug when he realized that it hadn't been Rogers to call out to them, but Eva. Ancestors, did the girl sound like her mother.

"When are we gonna go back to that planet?" she asked without pretense or pleasantries, craning her neck back to see their faces.

Ronon and Sheppard exchanged a glance.

"You're talking about M5R-233?" Sheppard clarified.

She nodded eagerly.

"Look, I don't know how to tell you this, kid, but…Woolsey has temporarily denied our request to return."

"What? Why?"

"He thinks it might be a Wraith trap," Sheppard explained.

"But…but what about what Emma discovered? About the other realities? I might not even be from this reality, let alone this time period, and that lab is the key to getting me back home!"

"I wish I had better news for you Eva, but for the time being, those are our orders."

"But you're the ranking military officer here, aren't you? Can't you convince him to change his mind?"

"We're doing everything we can," Sheppard said, trying to soothe her. "Rogers and McKay are studying your tracking device as we speak to see if they can reverse engineer something that will take you back home."

"McKay has been studying that damn thing for weeks! So far the only thing he's figured out is how to access its black box."

"I know that Rodney's methods…at times…leave something to be desired. But don't forget, we've got Janus under our roof, too. Couple more weeks and Beckett says he'll be out of that coma. If that's the case, we may not even need to go back to his lab – we'll have the legend himself figure something out."

"Have you seen Janus lately?" She gestured vaguely toward the direction of the infirmary. "Because I have and I'm sorry, but he looks like crap. I'm not buying Beckett's 'couple more weeks' prognosis."

"You're just gonna have to have hope and a little bit of patience, Eva."

"This is bullshit," she muttered, turning her back to them and storming off.

"Hey!" Ronon scolded, speaking for the first time. "You get back here. That is not how you speak to a military officer."

She spun on the spot and marched back, glaring first at Ronon, then turning her attention to Sheppard. "This is bullshit, sir."

"Eva!" Ronon called after her as she walked away. "Eva!" With a growl, he started to go after her but Sheppard placed a hand on his arm and stopped him.

"It's fine," he said. "Let her go."

Ronon shook his head and shoved his hands through his hair.

"I get it. She just wants to go home," Sheppard said. "Let it go."

He let his hands fall limp at his sides. "Let's go eat," he sighed.

"Great idea."

The two walked in companionable silence for a few moments until Sheppard spoke again.

"Hey Chewie…"

"What?"

"Maybe it's a good thing you and Rogers didn't do it last night."

A/N: Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought! :)