It was half midnight and they'd snuck (well...) out of the mountain for good coffee and maybe something other than endless blue jello. Sumner -- Marshall --Mack's car was old and well loved, and she'd smoothed her hand along the door by the window and felt out of place in her crumpled shirt and trousers she could swear she'd been wearing for three days (she hadn't).
There was so much to do and not enough time to do it, but he'd smiled at her (crooked to the right, like he always did, and she wondered when she'd noticed that and filed it away) and jangled his keys over her desk and...well, maybe they had time. Maybe they did. So there she sat, watching his hands on the steering wheel.
It had occurred to them about five minutes after getting into the car that at that time of night, all the good coffee places were closed. She told him in no uncertain terms that they weren't going to a bar, and he'd laughed, low, quiet and genuine. He didn't say anything after that, not for a while, just changed gears and switched directions and she wondered where he was taking her all the way into his concrete drive.
He had good coffee, he'd promised, and she'd followed him in half because of that and half because she'd found herself dying of curiosity about what this man's personal space looked like. He was right about the coffee and she was right about his house, and the conversation began about the expedition and sidled into more personal territory as the drinks got cold and when did he get all the way over here, Elizabeth had wondered, pushed back against his sofa by his body, his hands settled on her hips and his mouth moving over hers like he knew exactly how to kiss her and she'd wondered and maybe he'd wondered and then it was over.
"We shouldn't."
"No, ma'am."
He'd kissed her again. And again, and again, and the next morning saw her in that crumpled shirt and the same pants, so she caught a taxi back to her apartment at 4am for a change of clothes and a moment of clear headedness. When Simon asked her where she'd been all night, she muttered working and it wasn't entirely a lie, she supposed.
Elizabeth remembers all of this, and that's why she doesn't fight it when Simon tells her he met someone else. So had she -- and she'd lost them both.
***
Elizabeth wasn't sure what was going on.
The evening started out innocuously enough -- or as innocuously as it could get -- with Teyla deciding, firmly, that Elizabeth needed to unwind, and since they were on Earth, they could kill two birds with one stone (she wondered briefly if Teyla picked that phrase up from them or if they'd more in common with the Athosians than she thought). So, Elizabeth's relaxation turned into 'showing Teyla the highlights of Earth culture' and that, somehow, landed them in a bar for thirtysomethings called the Star. She'd been here twice before with Simon -- which is why she wasn't shocked to see him.
Or his new girlfriend. She hoped, in the moments that followed, that she was at least being subtle about how uncomfortably embarrassed she was, and, oh God, was he coming this way?
That was when Teyla kissed her, open mouthed and insistently lazy (which reminded her of John, although she'd never kissed him and didn't plan on it, not that she planned on this, and what was this again?). Elizabeth's eyes opened and then closed, Teyla's hands holding her in place with one on the small of her back and one in her hair, and she was so strong for such a small woman.
She didn't have time to process any of this before aforementioned small woman was drawing her into her side and smiling, like a cat, at Simon. "Hello."
Later, Elizabeth blamed the tequila shots. She had no explanation for why Teyla produced a bottle of the same later in the week and smiled at her, wordless.
***
"Colonel, I assure you I am quite capable of handling myself for at least another month--"
"Goddamnit, Emmagen, it's my damn baby too and I don't want you taking it into combat situations. Maternity. Leave. That is the end of it."
Teyla drew breath. "My people--"
He cut her off sharply. "I heard you the first hundred times."
"You were not listening." Her voice was low and dangerous.
"My people don't put children into the line of fire. You live under my roof, then you will damn well do things my way." His jaw set in a way she was familiar with -- it meant he wasn't willing to brook any more argument, and it had never stopped her before.
This time, though...under the hard and rough edges that made Colonel Sumner who he was, she believed she could see genuine fear in the man's eyes, the kind of fear that came only from love. It wasn't a word they'd used -- not because she didn't feel it, but because she recognised early on it wasn't one he was entirely comfortable with. She took in the tense lines of his shoulders, his hands clenched on the edge of the table, and his not quite cold blue eyes assessing. He was poised as if to fight, and recoiled a little when she began to rise.
"Very well." She ignored his sharp intake of breath, smoothing her hand carefully down his back and imagining she could feel the tension easing from him with each breath before he answered her.
"We're agreed, then?"
"I will take missions only on secure planets." Compromise was a good way to get around Mack Sumner -- she'd learned that watching him interact with Elizabeth, in the days long before this one. He raised his head as if to argue the point further, and she pressed her fingertips to his lips. "Secure planets that you have approved."
He subsided, and then he was shifting back into his seat and pulling her into his lap. "You're one hell of a damned woman, Emmagen, you know that?"
"Some days, I believe you have forgotten my given name."
He laughed, unexpectedly easy after the fight that had been going on for many days now, and drew her into a kiss that reminded her why she put up with his (Laura Cadman's words) "macho hard man bullshit". His hand slid down her body to rest over where their child grew, and she knew that although she didn't need his protection, she had it.
Whether she wanted it or not, sometimes.
