FanFic100: #001 Beginnings
She can’t help it; she has to sneak him another look. She doesn’t even know his name yet - didn’t get close enough to read the name tag - but he already caught her attention. And because she doesn’t want it to appear like she’s ogling him, she pretends to be reading her instruction manual again. Officially it’s called “Orientation Guide to the Pegasus Galaxy”, but everyone started to refer to it as “The Most Useless Guide Ever” about two days after they started their journey on the Daedalus.
Unfortunately… the name fits. Lots of general blahblah, whole paragraphs that could be summed up with “We have no idea what we’re talking about, but that won’t stop us from forcing you to read this.”… so far she hasn’t encountered one piece of useful information. Inside, she curses herself for her reading choice. She should have brought something really interesting. At least that would have made it easier to keep herself from sneaking looks at the man sitting a few tables away, obviously engrossed in a stack of paper work.
It’s been two weeks on the Daedalus now and he keeps crossing her path, almost constantly. Granted, it’s not that hard to meet the same people over and over again here, since the amount of space to escape from each other is limited, as big as this ship might be. But… he always seems to pop up so unexpectedly. One moment she’s walking through the corridors, talking to one of her fellow Marines, and there he is, walking past her from behind. Or she’s standing in the food line, doing a little daydreaming and he enters the mess hall in the exact same moment that she accidentally looks at the entrance.
She knows he must belong to the military contingent because people keep saluting him, which she always does as well, of course, but she simply doesn’t get to see his name tag and she doesn’t want to look too closely, because that would seem really stupid. So she’s sitting here in the mess hall, two tables away from him, sneaking him looks every so often, watching him do some reading himself.
They’re almost alone and so she has a great and clear view of him sitting there, reading. Unfortunately she’s too far away to get a look at those… intriguing grey-green eyes - yes, she is aware of the slightly disturbing fact that she knows the color of his eyes but feels like staring at his name tag for a moment or two is embarrassing - but she can still see the striking pair of shoulders - not too broad, but looking solid and like something you can lean on - his concentrated face, the very correct hair she’d love to muss…
Damn, she’s been doing it again. Ogling an officer she doesn’t know and who’s probably her superior… and who just stopped reading and is now… oh crap. He’s looking straight at her, a hesitant little smile on his face and she feels kind of… paralyzed, at least for a moment. She’s never been the recipient of a smile from him before so she’s actually a little bit shocked that it looks so nice and so… He looks away again. Phew, is her first thought and the second thought involves a lot of swearing at herself for behaving like an idiot. The temperature of the skin on her face also tells her that she looks like an idiot as well. Just. Fucking. Great.
Okay, so usually she’s not one for beating a hasty retreat - in fact, she’s not one for retreats at all - but they do teach you knowing when to fold your cards at Marine OCS so she takes care not to appear too eager to leave the room while she gets her stuff together. Pointedly not looking at him, she gets up and prepares to walk past him, looking busy but not too busy… “Lieutenant Cadman, isn't it?”
Argh. She stops in front of his table and turns around, hoping he won’t smile again. “Yes, that’s correct…”
“Major Evan Lorne.” Oh fuck. She’d been making googly eyes at the future 2IC of Atlantis for the last two weeks. This is so not good. And that he gives her another smile doesn’t make it any better either. “Anyway, hope you don’t mind me asking but I just read your file…” He did what? Oh wait… reading her file is his job so that was probably just a coincidence. “I saw you graduated from Stanford University before getting sent to OCS.”
She’s just this close to saying “Yeah… so?” but can hold herself back because he sounded so nice saying it and because she’s still a little woozy because of those dimples so she simply says, “Yes, sir, that’s correct,” and tries a smile of her own.
It must have looked a lot less like a total failure than she thought because his smile brightens. “Oh great. So how’s Dr. Severing-Browntree?” What the…? For a moment, her mouth is hanging open a little and that just makes his smile turn into an amused grin. “Class of ’95, Lieutenant. Go Cardinal.”
Another moment she’s not quite sure if she just stepped into an alternate reality but then she gets a little bit of her groove back and gives him a smirk. “Old Sevvie’s doing just fine, I think. Last thing I heard was that he simply refused to give up his office to his designated successor.”
That makes the Major laugh a little and she finds herself wishing he’d reply something to keep the conversation going… “Really? Do me a favor and tell me all the juicy details, Lieutenant?”
Whoa, jackpot. She can’t quite believe her luck - at least she hopes it’s luck to be invited by your CO to sit around in the mess hall and talk about college teachers - but she’s got enough grip on herself again to be more like her usual confident self so she sits down, ignoring the butterflies in her stomach every time he looks at her with that smile of his. Otherwise she’d be certainly doomed and starting an assignment like Atlantis doomed? Not a good thing. She grins, “Sure, sir. Way I heard it, it went like this…”
~*~
TBC in Make Me Laugh.