Fic: Four Times Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne Blow Up Something, and One Time They Don’t (Stargate)
Title: Four Times Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne Blow Up Something, and One Time They Don’t
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Recipient: arwen_lune
Prompt: Stargate, Laura Cadman/Evan Lorne, He tried to pinpoint the moment when her enthusiasm about blowing things up had gone from disturbing to - god help him - endearing.
Summary: The first time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman blow something up together, he doesn’t even know who she is yet.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme. This year's flash!fic (hopefully the only one because it probably cost me a couple nerves I actually was attached to ;)) and too many words or at least... a lot of them. I hope that they aren't too many and I hope they're the right ones ;)
Four Times Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne Blow Up Something, and One Time They Don’t
“This is it, boys, this is war - what are we waiting for?
Why don't we break the rules already?
I was never one to believe the hype - save that for the black and white
I try twice as hard and I'm half as liked, but here they come again to jack my style.”
Fun, “Some Nights”
I
The first time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman blow something up together, he doesn’t even know who she is yet. They are both still at the SGC and she almost singes his eyebrows with a drop of highly volatile fluid explosives in one of the labs.
Technically, of course, they hadn’t blown it up together but he’d come into the lab just before she’d probably tested something from the scary cauldron the Blow Jobs called their lab. But it had been his goddamn eyebrows. So the only thing he’s able to snarl to the red-haired company grade that looks way too pleased with herself is, “ What, in God’s fucking name was that, Lieutenant?”
For a moment, just one short moment, she blinks and looks very much like “What the fuck are you doing here, you idiot field grade?” is her chosen way of answer and for some reason he so, so wishes she’d say that. Just to give him a reason to punish someone for the crappy day he just had.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t give him that satisfaction. “Testing a new compound that will hopefully pacify pissed off Ori and Goa’uld overlords a lot faster than bullets and C4.” She blinks. “Sir.” Fuck, he thinks. Couldn’t she at least… “And please excuse me but what are you doing here again, Major…” he sees her squinting at his name tag during the almost cleared smoke the explosives left behind, “Lorne?”
That is none of her business, whoever she is. She has to be one of the new ones because she hadn’t been here before he’d left for the beta site to support the training detachment there four weeks ago. And he will most certainly not explain himself in front of some little Lieutenant that nearly blew up the lab. Not after having searched for the team member they just threw at him, only five minutes after returning from the beta site and not finding her anywhere. “You are aware that a field grade officer does not owe you an explanation why he is just about anywhere, right?”
“Oh, I am, sir,” she says cheerfully and something about that rubs him wrong. Maybe it’s that she didn’t tell him that he’s right. “It’s just that there’s a very clear warning taped to the door.”
Seriously? He saw that “warning” and it sounded exactly like someone who worked too long in a lab where chemical substances are being kept and experimented with. That is to say, pretty much silly, deranged and delusional. The Lieutenant, however, looks like she expects him to… what? Apologize? Oh come on, she doesn’t really… she… actually has a point. He growls. “It wasn’t there four weeks ago.”
That makes her… grin? Oh dear God, can’t she just stop with that? First, it’s really bad form, second it’s insolent and third there’s a spark in her hazel eyes that makes the entire room seem a little brighter. That is just really, really bad. “I wasn’t here four weeks ago.” Yeah… so?
He waits for her to elaborate but nothing… happens. “Uh, Lieutenant?” She looks expectantly at him and with every minute he believes more that she is so mocking him. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
She smiles, a little too sweetly to be genuine but not enough to warrant disciplinary action. Damn. “It means that the door was closed and the explosives lab’s pet company grade was conducting an experiment.” Huh? “That would be me, sir. The “pet company grade”, to be precise.”
Okay, he knows he shouldn’t laugh and he isn’t laughing but damn, why does she have to say that in such a non-nonsense voice? Whoever she is, she’s dangerous and that’s not because she handles volatile substances on an apparently regular basis. He clears his throat and tries to rein in his temper. He’s pretty sure it’s never shown at the SGC like that before but he never had his eyebrows singed off in a single search for his newest team member before.
Anyway, reining in temper. “It’s… alright, Lieutenant. I, uh, I was just… looking for someone. But I guess she’s not here, so, uh, excuse me please…”
She smiles again but… there’s nothing artificial or mocking about it this time. It’s small and a little amused but seems to be all genuine, because it lights up her eyes and there’s this making the whole room seem brighter thing again. There’s only his returning dignity as a field grade officer that keeps him from nervously tugging at his t-shirt’s collar.
“You know, sir,” she says and tilts her head to the side, just a bit and it looks adorable, “you are nothing like what people told me about you.”
Huh? “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but who told you what about me?”
“Oh, one of your former team members told me.” Uh-huh. Why exactly did any of his old team members tell some random Lieutenant about who or what he is? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. “Said you’re easygoing, laid back, real good in a fight…”
Seriously? “Did I just really just sound like I was laid back, Lieutenant…”
“Cadman, sir.” What? “First Lieutenant Laura Cadman, United States Marine Corps.” Oh God. The confusion and vague feeling of embarrassment that followed her statement - it’s just not fair that she can be so casual and professional about it - makes him totally overlook the fact that she just interrupted him. Oh Jesus fucking Christ. “I’m supposed to be your new explosives expert. Pleased to meet you, sir.” Almost in a daze, he takes her extended hand and doesn’t even realize fully she just said United States Marine Corps.
That is just. He was looking for her and he even found her and shouted at her because he’d been too pissed off about just having a new team member sicced on him without any further information than rank and name that he didn’t even bother reading a sign saying clearly he was walking into danger. And having his eyebrows singed off wasn’t even the worst of it.
He lets go of her hand, clears his throat again and awkwardly sits down on the chair opposite her lab table. “I, uh… guess that wasn’t exactly how a meeting between commanding officer and team member should happen, huh?”
She grins again and he resolves to become immune to that as soon as possible. He’ll never be able to serve alongside her for long if he doesn’t. “That’s alright, sir. I’m said to have a bit of a temper, too and when I heard that you were so laid back and in control, it made me worry if we could get along.”
So she’s… glad he just yelled at her for something that was clearly his fault? He makes a face, not really knowing how to handle this. “I’m glad to hear that. I guess.” This just isn’t how his first ever conversation about someone joining a team he commands was supposed to go. However… at the SGC, they don’t chose people for being indecisive and unable to improvise. So he tries something they always told him wasn’t quite his forte and live up to what the SGC wants from their people.
He improvises. “So, Lieutenant… ah, Cadman… Marines, huh?” Apparently, he’s a lot better at that than he thought because at that her eyes light up and she starts telling him right away how she ended up in the Corps, what kind of education she went through, where she’s coming from…
And he learns very fast that he loves listening to her. Hopefully, that’ll teach him never to dismiss a warning sign saying “Do not come in when door is closed. Experiments in progress. Trespassers will be fed to our pet company grade!” at the explosives labs door as nonsense again. He is so, so screwed.
II
The second time Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne blow something up together, she wishes they hadn’t. Actually, she wishes she’d never been asked to join the SGC, join a team, join Lorne’s team. Because if she hadn’t, she maybe wouldn’t have botched her only chance to be part of the second Atlantis Expedition contingent.
Okay, so it wasn’t her only chance. But certainly her best. And she just had to go and mess up the one explosives job in all the six months she’d been part of SG-14 that had actually mattered. She should never have let that mercenary goad her into showing off and she should not have reacted to his groping her damn ass with blowing up his damn ship.
That had been rather satisfying, though.
Ah, shit. She groans and lets her head drop on her arms on the counter. Only seconds later, there’s the quiet thud of another glass of whatever the barman deemed appropriate for a slightly banged up female Marine that nearly blew up her fucking boss because she was pissed next to her.
She briefly considers looking up and telling him three bottles of beer were enough for a while now but then again, this is a bar full of military and ex-military types - no SGC personnel, though, she’d made sure of that before she decided to stay here after aimlessly browsing The Springs for about two hours - and the moment she’d walked in, she could see in their eyes that they expected her to keel over after two sips from a glass of white wine. Chauvinistic assholes, the lot of them.
So she keeps contemplating what happened on that fucked up mission. For about two hours, things had been tense but fine. They’d been sent to scout out a possible new naquadah source. Uninhabited planet, they’d said and more or less shoved them through the ‘Gate. They’d established a perimeter, she and Sergeant Goodenough, while Lorne and Sergeant Winters had taken soil samples for the lab rats to examine.
God, that had been boring… right until the moment a ship of unknown classification had swooped down from the sky and landed right inside their perimeter. The guy who’d emerged had been a very sleazy version of Han Solo. Actually, a very sleazy version of a wannabe Han Solo. Unfortunately, he’d blocked their escape road, shot Goodenough and taken her hostage, about a second after emerging from his fucking ship.
No more stupid thing had ever happened to a female SGC Marine. Or, at least not to her. Lorne had been forced to negotiate and he’d a passable job… right until the idiot mercenary had starting groping her and fumbling around her front rack. There’d been a weird tightness in Lorne’s posture all of a sudden, and Winters hadn’t seemed too happy with it, either. One of the very few good things about patriarchic America, their being offended enough at having their female soldiers molested that they’d cease with the useless diplomacy and get into action, she’d thought. Because damn, Lorne’s precision had been frighteningly accurate when he’d put a bullet through the mercenary’s shoulder.
She’d have preferred to elbow him in the solar plexus and knee him bad enough that reproduction wouldn’t be an issue for him anymore but she could do with him writhing in pain and blood running out of his wound just fine. She can’t resist hammering her head down on her arms just two or three times.
That should have been enough. They should have packed up Goodenough, hightailed it out of there and written their mission reports. But no, Lieutenant Laura Cadman had been so pissed at being manhandled - first time ever in the field and she can already tell that she handled it really, really bad - and being overthrown by such a little piece of shit that she had to blow something up.
As it happened, Slime Bag seemed to have been rather attached to the ship because the moment she’d started taping C4 and detonators to the hull, his shoulder wound seemed to have been forgotten. He’d nearly shot her, if Lorne and Winters hadn’t subdued him. Fortunately, that also kept them from dragging her away from the ship.
At first, that is. After making sure Slime Bag would stay down long enough for them to escape, Lorne had practically rushed over to her and tried to wrestle the remote detonator from her hand. It must have looked ridiculous and it most probably hadn’t exactly made them look like responsible and seasoned officers to their Sergeants but the worst thing was that it was over pretty fast. It was over the moment they both pushed the detonation lever at the same time and half of Slime Bag’s ship got in their faces.
Literally, actually.
She groans again. That had been so stupid, stupid, stupid. She’s not really hurt, just a little banged up from some debris that had to be picked out of her cheek and a few odd bruises. Most of Lorne’s body had been shielding her. They’d immediately carted him off to the infirmary the moment she and Winters had managed to drag him and Goodenough back through the ‘Gate so she doesn’t know how bad he’s injured but it really didn’t look good. Not to mention that he’d been pissed at her, even worse than after her miracle compound had exploded in his face the first time ever they met. There went her chance to see another…
“You know, someone once told me Marines really know how to celebrate a victory in style. They must have been lying.” …the hell?
To her eternal dismay, the moment she heard that voice, she practically bolted to sit upright and almost knocked over the glass… tumbler of apparently whiskey the barman had put next to her when she’d been wallowing in self-pity. She blinks. Good God.
The first thing she nearly blurts out is, “You seriously look like shit, sir,” but something tells her that would have been a bad idea. Even if he does. Face badly cut up, right arm in a sling, a big gauze patch across the crook of his neck… she swallows. “I, uh…” clearing her throat, stalling, really, “wasn’t aware that there… was a victory to celebrate?”
Unfortunately, instead of answering right away, he first tries to hop on the bar stool next to her but it ends in an awkward climb and once he visibly winces when the counter’s edge touches the arm in a sling. She resists raising an eyebrow and waits patiently for him to reply something. She gets rewarded for it after all, once the barkeep wordlessly sets down a beer in front of Lorne. She does raise her eyebrow now but before she can get to blurt out “Here often, sir?” he says, “It’s a miracle, actually.”
Huh?
Oh. Her incomprehension must have shown because he puts the beer he was just about to drink back on the counter to say, “As you might have noticed, people weren’t really happy about what happened on our last mission,” understatement of the year, “but there’s been… developments since the infirmary released me from their grip.”
She swallows. “Sir, I… I’m really sorry…”
He makes a face. “It’s alright, Lieutenant, I’ve been through worse.” She wonders what that might have been but she’s a little too busy with being relieved that he doesn’t just bust her ass - there’d been some serious threads when they’d dragged him back to the SGC about that from him - that she misses her chance to ask him. “Huh, and here I thought you wanted to know what kind of developments there were.”
Um. She blinks. “Develop… sure, sir. What developments were there?”
He grins and she wishes he wouldn’t do that. No superior officer should be allowed to look so hot when he grins, especially not being as banged up as he is. “Turned out you did the female population of the galaxy a huge favor. The guy who’s ship you blew up is wanted on five planets for various forms of sexual harassment and in one case rape and had his ass kicked a couple times by various tribal women. As soon as word got out that you took out his main form of transportation after I shot him, people were congratulating us all over.” He pauses, the grin fading and being replaced by an unreadable expression. “You’re a hero, Laura.”
That. Uh. Wasn’t really what she’d expected that he’d say. She’s not sure what she expected him to say but that wasn’t part of it. “I’m… not sure what to say to that, sir.”
“Really? Well, that’s a first.” Okay, that was hitting below the belt. Actually, that was… “The great Laura Cadman being silenced. I thought I’d never live to see that.” Seriously, sir? What’s going on here? “And all I had to do for that is call her a hero. Now, if I’d known that, I would have…”
“What exactly is your point, sir?” Oops. That wasn’t supposed to come out of her mouth, Actually, nothing was supposed to come out of her mouth as a response to that because there is really no reason whatsoever that this deserved to be dignified with a response.
Ha, apparently, he just realized it himself because he is very, very quiet all of a sudden. Serves him right. And then it starts to dawn on her that… there might have been a reason to the taunting after all. Because he can’t look at her now, concentrates on his beer and that tells her that his reaction… is it possible that he just wanted to cover up something entirely else? If so… “My point, Lieutenant, is that we’ll be stuck with each other for another couple of years. In another galaxy, even.” Huh? “The Atlantis Expedition, Lieutenant. I approved your request. And Landry approved mine, apparently.”
Apparently, she’s not quite equipped to understand the relation between insulting her as a blabbermouth and having her request to go to Atlantis - fucking Atlantis, holy fucking shit - approved. Or maybe she just lacks understanding because, oh my fucking God, request to be transferred to Atlantis was fucking approved, by the guy she nearly blew up because she was just so pissed off no less. She swallows again and looks at the glass of whiskey she still hasn’t touched.
“Cadman?”
She tries to say something but it just doesn’t happen. Mostly, because she’s not sure what to say actually. So there’s only one possible course of action. Downing the damn whiskey. Thank God it was just half an inch of it because holy shit that burns.
But at least she knows what the fuck to say now. Grinning at Lorne while motioning towards the guy behind the counter, she offers, “Another one for me and Sir here. He’s gonna need it once he realizes what being stuck with me several thousand miles away from home actually means.”
There’s a new glass for each of them and when Lorne raises his with the words, “We’ll see about that,” she raises hers, too and he clinks his against it, she thinks there could be worse people to be stuck with several thousand light years from home than Major Evan Lorne. If nothing at all, it’s gonna be a blast.
III
The third time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman blow something up together, it actually doesn’t involve any conventionally known explosives. Instead, it involves the Atlantis kitchen.
It all started when he was on his way to the mess hall for the snack sideboard the evening kitchen crew always leaves for the graveyard shift. He excused himself from the rest of the control room crew, asked if anyone wanted something picked up for them and then headed off on his way. That is, after making them swear about not telling anyone about his abandoning the “no food in the control room” SOP because honestly, there’s just five of them and it’s actually a bit spooky in the mess hall all alone so it’s a damn hindrance for moral to be kept up.
Anyway, so he went down to the mess hall, expecting the floors, the mess hall itself and the kitchen deserted. Which it isn’t. The kitchen, that is. He heard it as soon as he stepped into the mess hall. There was also light switched on and about three swear words uttered in the two minutes he tried to decide how to continue.
Then his sense of duty - he is the commanding officer of this week’s graveyard shift detachment after all - and alright, his curiosity, too won out so now he’s standing in the kitchen’s entrance, watching Laura Cadman rummage around the cupboards, storage boards and fridges. What in God’s name… wait. He frowns.
She told him about that once. He’s pretty sure she did. It was one of their first missions back at the SGC, some mind-numbingly boring babysitter mission that had them degrade into stupid things such as truth or dare and other crap only Marines could think were fit for grown-up conversation. And she’d told him that she likes… she likes to bake when she can’t sleep.
He’d told her straight away that he thought she was bullshitting him - Laura Cadman and baking? Sure as hell not - but here she is, in t-shirt, track pants and, dear God, barefoot, too, apparently looking for something. Currently, her bottom is sticking out of a floor level cupboard and he can see skin peeking out at her midriff where her t-shirt slipped up too high to cover everything.
He wishes she didn’t have such a nice bottom and weren’t wearing such a short t-shirt. The sight of her crouching on the floor and swearing like a sailor is almost doing him in. He fervently hopes it’s the week of graveyard shift and sleeping days, working nights that has his brain muddled enough to think stuff like that because the alternative would be a horrific thing.
He’d tried to pinpoint the moment when her enthusiasm about blowing things up had gone from disturbing to - God help him - endearing but he never did find it. It just kind of… happened. Which is the scariest thing about it because with Major Evan Lorne, things never “just happen”. So he gave up, for his own sake as probably as much as hers.
Watching Lieutenant Laura Cadman half disappear into the storage cupboard is a lot more fun, anyway.
Until she says, still without looking up, “You know, instead of just standing there, how about you help?” that is. Before he can even take a breath for an answer , she continues, “And yes, I know that it’s you, sir.” Holy… composure. Composure is most important now.
He leans against the door jamb and crosses his arms. “So you really do bake when you can’t sleep.” He can’t believe that she actually popped up from behind the cupboard’s door and stuck her tongue out to him, just to disappear again. The fuck?
For a moment, he’s tempted to bust her down because no one sticks her tongue out at Major Evan Lorne, most of all not that scrawny, red-haired Lieutenant. But then again, that scrawny, red-haired Lieutenant is probably the only one who can get away with sticking out her tongue at him - because she’s got him wrapped around her little finger, people are whispering behind his back, he knows that - so he just sticks his hands in his pockets and saunters over to her, looking down on her and pointedly ignoring all that skin that’s showing between the waistline of her track pants and the hem of her t-shirt. “What are making?”
“Red velvet cupcakes,” he gets from the depth of the storage cupboard and what is she doing there? “Or at least I was going to but then I went looking for the muffin pan and it’s just - not - there.” She reappears again and there’s some dust on her freckled nose. Additionally to the slightly pissed off face she makes, she looks fucking adorable and that is so wrong on so many levels. “Some asshole must have hidden the damn thing.”
Actually, he’s pretty sure he saw it just last week… he frowns. Yes, that’s it. He had seen it last week. At a party hosted by the biology department and he really doesn’t want to know what they were keeping in that. He clears his throat. “Uh, you know, it might have been irreversibly contaminated by the biologists last week…” he can see that she’s on to another round of cussing like a sailor that he forestalls with holding up his hand, “but I know that there’s a cake pan somewhere in here… let me have a look.”
Why did he just crouch down next to her on the floor and start rummaging round himself? Oh, that’s right because she’s his team’s second in command and has saved his ass more than he can count with her slightly disturbing, mysteriously endearing love for explosives. He heaves an inner sigh and goes digging a little further… there it is. Holding it up triumphantly, he can’t help grinning at her. “Here you go. Leave it to your commanding officer to find the thing you need.”
That just… earns him raised eyebrows, rolling her eyes and a murmured “Thank you, Smee.” Then she goes back to the counter she lined up her ingredients on and… wow, he’s never seen anyone whisk up cake batter as fast as she just did. She didn’t even need ten minutes. Then again, he also hasn’t anyone seen whisking up batter so messily. For all her Marine-ynes, she sure has some splotching issues with viscose material, it seems.
“Yes, I’m a messy baker. Drove my mom and my roommate at LSU and the girl I was rooming with in The Springs mad that I couldn’t once bake a cake and leave the kitchen spotless without blocking it for extensive renovation afterwards at least once. Anything else you’d like to say?” Wow.
That was certainly, erm, educational. Also, a little terrifying because of the look she just threw him. He clears his throat again. “No, uh, you explained that pretty well, thank you.”
There’s an interesting sound coming from her as she fills the batter into the ban. A kind of snort crossed with a giggle and it’s the most wonderful sound her ever heard. He hopes that this is just something temporary. She puts the pan into the oven and then leans against the counter opposite the oven. “So… what are we going to do now?”
She gives him another look, this one slightly sarcastic. “You, I guess, are going back to the control room and I will…”
“Is that supposed to happen?” He hadn’t meant to interrupt her, but really, the way the batter just started to bubble up does not look well. At least, red velvet cake never looks like that when his sister makes it.
There’s a blink from her, then a frown as she looks at the oven, then she almost lunges for the temperature regulator… and then everything goes to hell. There’s a sort of… wet sound and then there’s an almighty splash against the oven’s door and possible a shriek from Cadman, too. First thing he’ll do tomorrow is hunt for the security camera footage and keep it as possible blackmail material. Laura Cadman actually makes it a point not to shriek and this…
“Ah, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I knew I shouldn’t have used alien vinegar and Professor Mindelar would probably hit me on the back of my head for that… oh Jesus fucking Christ, that was stupid, stupid, stupid…” Alien vinegar? Alright, that might explain a few… “I’m sorry, sir.” Huh? “I shouldn’t be keeping you and now I really need to take care of this mess…” Ah, Cadman.
Before he knows what he’s doing, he gently pries the wiping cloth out of her hand and cautiously inches closer to the oven. “It’s alright, Lieutenant. They’re not expecting me for another twenty minutes and it’s my job to take care of emergencies, anyway. And my second in command in dire need of cleaning help definitely qualifies as an emergency.”
There’s a very small, very tentative smile on her face, trying to drag the corners of her mouth further up and if he hadn’t decided to help her on the spot already, he’d have done so now. Damn her for surprising him in the most inconvenient moments. “That’s really not…” he ventures as far as giving her a look and it seems to take effect, “Thank you, sir. That’s really… let’s… let’s get to work, huh?”
He nods and bends down, desperately trying to keep a grin from his face when she fetches herself another wiping cloth and readies herself for a very messy battle with batter. There are worse ways to spend a night.
VI
The fourth time Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne blow something up together, C4 is not involved either. Fairy lights are.
Thanksgiving’s just over and since there’s no Black Friday in Atlantis - sadly, alien market sellers could never be convinced to offer those strange Lantians discounts on that one day in the year they eat a strange bird making strange sounds and that they only share with the Deluvians and no one wants to talk about their traditions involving that day - they have to occupy themselves with something else. She chose volunteering for the annual Holidays decoration team.
She usually does it because it’s fun and she knows she’d totally monopolize the entire kitchen if she volunteered for baking and demolitions, and chemistry asked her never to join the experimental firecrackers team again. Apparently, they just can’t deal with mildly competitive people.
So disentangling fairy light chains it is. She already did twenty yards worth of disentangling and tucking them against the ceiling in the last two hours and she’ll be damned if anyone is better than her at this. She knows for a fact that all other fairy light team members are at least a yard behind her. Laura Cadman so totally rules this.
“Did you just pump your fist in triumph up on that ladder, Lieutenant?” Holy crap. One day, she will tape bells to his ankles. There has to be some way to keep him from sneaking up on her like that.
“Didn’t I tell you…” Damn, withering look again. She rolls her eyes. “Didn’t I ask you not to keep sneaking up on me?”
He gives a mock sigh, then says, “I guess presuming you’d hear my combat booted feet clang along this corridor over your… “singing” was asked too much.”
Against better judgment, she sticks out her tongue and mutters, “I’ll give you “singing” when I’m done with this.” Raised eyebrows now and arms crossed in front of his chest. “Sir.”
She knows he wants to grin very badly and she loves how she can make him lose composure - alright, in this case almost lose composure - and if she actually allowed herself to think about that, she’d be royally screwed. “What are you doing there, Cadman?”
The temptation to roll her eyes and ask him what it’s looking like is very, very strong but she knows she already used up her contingent of insolence for the rest of the day with that tongue thing. “Decoration duty, sir.” At his genuinely enquiring gaze, she adds, “I’m disentangling fairy lights and tucking them to the ceiling. And I’m the ahead of everyone else on the team.”
That does make him grin and she knows he appreciates that. People would never think it but he’s a very competitive team leader. “Well done, Lieutenant. Need a hand?”
Usually, he wouldn’t ask because he knows she’d never say yes, so that surprises her enough to say, “Uh… not really but if you’re offering, I’m not declining.”
He nods. “I am. So… how about you drop that bundle you’re working on down and I’m going to do the disentangling for you?”
That doesn’t sound so bad, actually. She smiles. “Sure thing, sir. Thank you.”
For a while, they work alongside, chatting about this and that and she tells him the one thing she really misses from home is all the snow at Christmas, being from rural Minnesota and all and he tells her he misses opening presents on Christmas Day with his nephews and she can’t help smiling a private little smile about that because it just seems to be so… him to miss family the most.
And then, just like that, there are no more fairy lights to disentangle and she has done all the tucking. “So,” he says.
“So,” she answers and they look at their work with a kind of justified pride, grinning at each other in mutual understanding that she would love to keep reveling in. That scares her and so she determines that the best course of action is to suggest, “How about we see how it looks?”
He nods and she takes out a remote, presses a button to switch on the fairy lights… and gets a long, long row of spectacularly exploding tiny light bulbs. Holy shit. The only reason she actually stayed rooted to her spot was that she was completely taken by surprise by this. And she’s pretty sure the only reason Lorne stayed rooted to his spot was the same. And maybe a dash of not wanting to be outdone by her, as well.
After the last bulb exploded possibly a mile away and subsequently the rest of Atlantis went dark, as well, she takes a deep breath and says, through clenched teeth, “Someone is going to pay for this.”
“Ah, Lieutenant…” Huh? What? “Why exactly do you have murder in your eyes?”
Isn’t that obvious? “Because this was not supposed to happen. Someone going by the name of Rodney McKay apparently misjudged something in the city’s circuits so that flipping on one switch put the entire city out of commission.” Which wouldn’t be so bad, actually, if it didn’t come down to one special thing. “And he’s going to blame it all on me.”
Which just wouldn’t be true. “Are you sure, Lieutenant? You did offer to…”
“Please, sir, do not mention that.” Seriously, if anyone knew that it was not a good idea to mention that ordeal with her being in McKay’s head two months ago, than it should be Lorne. Most of all not her offer of letting go and fading out of existence if push came to shove. As she had learned pretty fast, McKay would not have deserved that.
“Uh, sorry, Lieutenant, I didn’t mean to…” She can hear him clear his throat and for some reason it does touch her that he seems to be genuinely sorry for making her remember that. “Anyway, uh, what do we do now?”
Huh. Her commanding officer asking her what to do. That is certainly something new.
Okay, no, actually it isn’t. After that one outburst the day they met the first time - and a couple afterwards, though granted both of them had them - he’d always treated her with respect and almost as an equal. So. Well. What do they do now?
Mh.
Ah, yes.
“How long since you had a good long look at this planet’s star constellations, sir?” She’s pretty sure that even with the very low lighting from one of the few windows lining the corridor she can see him frown, in a “What is that crazy Lieutenant up to now?” way. She almost rolls her eyes.
He does surprise her, though. “Too long, I think. If I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”
“That hiding from McKay and letting him fix his own mess just for once is a good idea? Totally.” She might be mistaken but she’s pretty sure that that was not what he’d been thinking. If that really is the case, she sure as hell doesn’t want to know what he’d been thinking.
“That’s not… that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.” Crap. This isn’t good, this just can’t be good, this… “Lead the way, Lieutenant. I’ve been told Marines can see in the dark as well as in light without night vision goggles. I’d love to see if that is true.”
She snorts. “You will, sir. Just follow me.” And with that, they set off for one of the balconies she knows must be close to where they are now. Even though she knows it’s probably a bad idea, but what the hell. Everything is better than being forced to endure hours of Rodney ranting about whoever busted the city’s power circuits. Yeah, that’s it, she thinks. That’s why she suggested that thing. Only that.
V
The fifth time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman are about to blow something up together, they never actually get to it. It’s in the city, on a pier and it’s supposed to be a demonstration, to show that the Explosives Department knows more about how blowing shit up than any other department. Chemistry has had their greedy eyes on their equipment since this expedition started. And Physics has already been making grabby hands for that wonderful container field they… anyway.
How it was supposed to go was this: Cadman prepares mini-rafts with packages of specially developed explosives, sends them out on the water and detonates them remotely. The steam cloud is several yards high and everyone is really, really impressed.
What happened was this: Cadman gets to the pier for a few minutes alone for last minute preparations, encounters Rodney and a couple people from all the departments making greedy eyes at the Blow Jobs’ equipment and funding and starts a snark battle. A couple minutes later, he gets onto the pier and finds her ready to punch Rodney in the face for telling her as Head of Science, he and he alone decides where funds, equipment and labs go and would she please buck up, grit her teeth and stop so hostile because otherwise he’ll be forced to…
He never did get to hear what Rodney wanted to do if Cadman didn’t stop giving him dirty looks and mentally cracking her knuckles. Someone had to practically drag her off the pier to stop her from doing something really, really stupid.
So now he’s standing on a balcony with her, far away enough from the pier so no one can hear them. Which is imperative since she’s been ranting about Rodney and his completely lacking people skills and no really, that’s just a goddamn euphemism. He doesn’t interrupt her because after having known Cadman for over three years, almost four, he gave up being stupid enough to try and reason with her when she’s in that mood.
And it’s not that he doesn’t understand her. In fact, he perfectly agrees with her, having had his share of battles with McKay. Mostly over her, but he never told her about them. McKay is still integral to the success of this expedition, despite his non-existent social skills. But damn, she’s pissed off and shouting at him and pacing and could she just stand still?
“Laura…”
“I can’t believe he told me to buck up. I’ve been bucking up for two years while he keeps draining us of money, equipment, people… I am so fucking tired of bucking up and listening to that little piece of…”
“Lieutenant…”
“No, I mean, Rodney fucking McKay is nothing more than a…”
“Lieutenant Cadman, I really think you should…”
“He’s a stupid, arrogant, overbearing, patronizing piece of…” Goddammit.
Years later, they will still be fighting over who started it, over why it happened that day precisely and why they waited so long. Right now, he’s kissing her as if his life depends on it. He’s kissing her, pressing her against the railing, marginally noticing that her arms wound themselves around his waist. The fact that she’s pouring as much into this kiss as he is, is a lot more important. Oh God, this is good, so good, why didn’t he do this long… Shit.
Shit shit shit.
Gasping at the realization that he’s still her fucking superior officer, he breaks the kiss, sputtering, “Jesus fucking Christ, Cadman.”
To her credit, she doesn’t immediately jump away… but confused blinking and still keeping him in her embrace for at least a second discretely stepping away aren’t exactly better. That she says, “Absolutely agree, sir,” isn’t helping, either.
Something rubs him wrong about that, though. And it’s not that she just agreed with him about whatever he’d wanted to say with swearing about that kiss. He blinks. “Evan.”
“Excuse me?” Huh. Yes, that was actually it. The fact that she still kept calling him sir.
Somehow, that helped him find some ground to stand on - for just a tiny, tiny moment kissing Cadman had felt like hovering four inches above ground - and he manages to say reasonably casually, “Evan. My first name. You should probably call me by it.”
That makes her blink again - could she just stop that? - and looking a little dazed and confused. Her asking, “Why?” just tells him he was right about her confusion. In a corner of her mind, it satisfies him greatly that he could manage to rattle the great Laura Cadman enough to reduce her to one syllable answers.
He tries to look all serious. “Because I just kissed you. And you goddamn kissed me back.” Because she so goddamn did. And it felt like something he’d been waiting for for a very long time. Ever since he met her. It still scares the shit out of him.
It still hurts a little, though, when she starts saying, “I’m sorry, sir, I…” and fumbling for words.
Suddenly, he can’t bear that she thinks she needs to apologize to him for kissing him back. He started that kiss and if there’s anyone going to suffer career retributions for it, it’s going to be him. So he actually surprises himself when he cuts her off and says, “And because I’m going to do it again.” And then he realizes that he means that. He swallows. “And again. And again.”
She frowns. “You are?” Well. At least she didn’t tell him to get lost. There’s still hope.
“Damn straight I am.” So, he hadn’t actually planned to say that with so much conviction in his voice but…
“Thank God.” The… what?
Huh.
Up until now he hadn’t really thought she might reciprocate his feelings, even though she kissed him back and he suddenly remembers all the instances when she sat next to him a little too close, sat at his infirmary bed a little too long, held his hand when she was a stretcher a little too tight… and then she kisses him. For a moment… nothing but that counts. It’s so cliché it hurts but just for a moment, he’s all hers and all that he needs are her lips and the arms she slung around him again and the hands that keep pressing against his shoulder blades and her hips under his hands, so wonderfully hers and… aw, fuck. Stupid UCMJ engraved into his brain. He breaks the kiss again.
“We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t…”
She nods and tenderly kisses the corner of his mouth. “It’s alright. We’ll find a way. Just not now. We can…” He bends down to kiss her again, shut her up, like he wants to shut up his suddenly very loud bad conscience and… “Stop it, Evan. I’ll leave Rodney be, if you leave the UCMJ be. Just for today.”
Well. That actually sounds like a plan. Even if most of his mind is fixed on the fact that she really seems to want the same he wants. He nods. And grins. Because damn, she wants what he wants. Also, there’s an idea. “You know… how about I’ll help you with Rodney,” oh God, that grin. If he hadn’t thrown caution to the wind and kissed her just to shut her up, he would do so now. Except that there’s still a condition open, “if you’ll help me with the UCMJ?”
She sticks out her tongue and this time he makes true on his desire to kiss her every time she does it. It makes her giggle and he’s surprised to see that it feels even better than it sounds when she does that. “Alright,” she says in the end, “I’ll help. Now, about Rodney…”
Damn. Can’t she let that go? “Later,” he growls, “ now, I’ll…”
Whatever he wanted to says, it’s cut short by her pushing him against the wall behind them and one of her hands crawling underneath his t-shirt and later, there will be fireworks. Just not the ones planned for today. Those happening, he will discover later, will be a lot better anyway. Amazing, that.
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Recipient: arwen_lune
Prompt: Stargate, Laura Cadman/Evan Lorne, He tried to pinpoint the moment when her enthusiasm about blowing things up had gone from disturbing to - god help him - endearing.
Summary: The first time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman blow something up together, he doesn’t even know who she is yet.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme. This year's flash!fic (hopefully the only one because it probably cost me a couple nerves I actually was attached to ;)) and too many words or at least... a lot of them. I hope that they aren't too many and I hope they're the right ones ;)
Four Times Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne Blow Up Something, and One Time They Don’t
“This is it, boys, this is war - what are we waiting for?
Why don't we break the rules already?
I was never one to believe the hype - save that for the black and white
I try twice as hard and I'm half as liked, but here they come again to jack my style.”
Fun, “Some Nights”
I
The first time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman blow something up together, he doesn’t even know who she is yet. They are both still at the SGC and she almost singes his eyebrows with a drop of highly volatile fluid explosives in one of the labs.
Technically, of course, they hadn’t blown it up together but he’d come into the lab just before she’d probably tested something from the scary cauldron the Blow Jobs called their lab. But it had been his goddamn eyebrows. So the only thing he’s able to snarl to the red-haired company grade that looks way too pleased with herself is, “ What, in God’s fucking name was that, Lieutenant?”
For a moment, just one short moment, she blinks and looks very much like “What the fuck are you doing here, you idiot field grade?” is her chosen way of answer and for some reason he so, so wishes she’d say that. Just to give him a reason to punish someone for the crappy day he just had.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t give him that satisfaction. “Testing a new compound that will hopefully pacify pissed off Ori and Goa’uld overlords a lot faster than bullets and C4.” She blinks. “Sir.” Fuck, he thinks. Couldn’t she at least… “And please excuse me but what are you doing here again, Major…” he sees her squinting at his name tag during the almost cleared smoke the explosives left behind, “Lorne?”
That is none of her business, whoever she is. She has to be one of the new ones because she hadn’t been here before he’d left for the beta site to support the training detachment there four weeks ago. And he will most certainly not explain himself in front of some little Lieutenant that nearly blew up the lab. Not after having searched for the team member they just threw at him, only five minutes after returning from the beta site and not finding her anywhere. “You are aware that a field grade officer does not owe you an explanation why he is just about anywhere, right?”
“Oh, I am, sir,” she says cheerfully and something about that rubs him wrong. Maybe it’s that she didn’t tell him that he’s right. “It’s just that there’s a very clear warning taped to the door.”
Seriously? He saw that “warning” and it sounded exactly like someone who worked too long in a lab where chemical substances are being kept and experimented with. That is to say, pretty much silly, deranged and delusional. The Lieutenant, however, looks like she expects him to… what? Apologize? Oh come on, she doesn’t really… she… actually has a point. He growls. “It wasn’t there four weeks ago.”
That makes her… grin? Oh dear God, can’t she just stop with that? First, it’s really bad form, second it’s insolent and third there’s a spark in her hazel eyes that makes the entire room seem a little brighter. That is just really, really bad. “I wasn’t here four weeks ago.” Yeah… so?
He waits for her to elaborate but nothing… happens. “Uh, Lieutenant?” She looks expectantly at him and with every minute he believes more that she is so mocking him. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
She smiles, a little too sweetly to be genuine but not enough to warrant disciplinary action. Damn. “It means that the door was closed and the explosives lab’s pet company grade was conducting an experiment.” Huh? “That would be me, sir. The “pet company grade”, to be precise.”
Okay, he knows he shouldn’t laugh and he isn’t laughing but damn, why does she have to say that in such a non-nonsense voice? Whoever she is, she’s dangerous and that’s not because she handles volatile substances on an apparently regular basis. He clears his throat and tries to rein in his temper. He’s pretty sure it’s never shown at the SGC like that before but he never had his eyebrows singed off in a single search for his newest team member before.
Anyway, reining in temper. “It’s… alright, Lieutenant. I, uh, I was just… looking for someone. But I guess she’s not here, so, uh, excuse me please…”
She smiles again but… there’s nothing artificial or mocking about it this time. It’s small and a little amused but seems to be all genuine, because it lights up her eyes and there’s this making the whole room seem brighter thing again. There’s only his returning dignity as a field grade officer that keeps him from nervously tugging at his t-shirt’s collar.
“You know, sir,” she says and tilts her head to the side, just a bit and it looks adorable, “you are nothing like what people told me about you.”
Huh? “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but who told you what about me?”
“Oh, one of your former team members told me.” Uh-huh. Why exactly did any of his old team members tell some random Lieutenant about who or what he is? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. “Said you’re easygoing, laid back, real good in a fight…”
Seriously? “Did I just really just sound like I was laid back, Lieutenant…”
“Cadman, sir.” What? “First Lieutenant Laura Cadman, United States Marine Corps.” Oh God. The confusion and vague feeling of embarrassment that followed her statement - it’s just not fair that she can be so casual and professional about it - makes him totally overlook the fact that she just interrupted him. Oh Jesus fucking Christ. “I’m supposed to be your new explosives expert. Pleased to meet you, sir.” Almost in a daze, he takes her extended hand and doesn’t even realize fully she just said United States Marine Corps.
That is just. He was looking for her and he even found her and shouted at her because he’d been too pissed off about just having a new team member sicced on him without any further information than rank and name that he didn’t even bother reading a sign saying clearly he was walking into danger. And having his eyebrows singed off wasn’t even the worst of it.
He lets go of her hand, clears his throat again and awkwardly sits down on the chair opposite her lab table. “I, uh… guess that wasn’t exactly how a meeting between commanding officer and team member should happen, huh?”
She grins again and he resolves to become immune to that as soon as possible. He’ll never be able to serve alongside her for long if he doesn’t. “That’s alright, sir. I’m said to have a bit of a temper, too and when I heard that you were so laid back and in control, it made me worry if we could get along.”
So she’s… glad he just yelled at her for something that was clearly his fault? He makes a face, not really knowing how to handle this. “I’m glad to hear that. I guess.” This just isn’t how his first ever conversation about someone joining a team he commands was supposed to go. However… at the SGC, they don’t chose people for being indecisive and unable to improvise. So he tries something they always told him wasn’t quite his forte and live up to what the SGC wants from their people.
He improvises. “So, Lieutenant… ah, Cadman… Marines, huh?” Apparently, he’s a lot better at that than he thought because at that her eyes light up and she starts telling him right away how she ended up in the Corps, what kind of education she went through, where she’s coming from…
And he learns very fast that he loves listening to her. Hopefully, that’ll teach him never to dismiss a warning sign saying “Do not come in when door is closed. Experiments in progress. Trespassers will be fed to our pet company grade!” at the explosives labs door as nonsense again. He is so, so screwed.
II
The second time Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne blow something up together, she wishes they hadn’t. Actually, she wishes she’d never been asked to join the SGC, join a team, join Lorne’s team. Because if she hadn’t, she maybe wouldn’t have botched her only chance to be part of the second Atlantis Expedition contingent.
Okay, so it wasn’t her only chance. But certainly her best. And she just had to go and mess up the one explosives job in all the six months she’d been part of SG-14 that had actually mattered. She should never have let that mercenary goad her into showing off and she should not have reacted to his groping her damn ass with blowing up his damn ship.
That had been rather satisfying, though.
Ah, shit. She groans and lets her head drop on her arms on the counter. Only seconds later, there’s the quiet thud of another glass of whatever the barman deemed appropriate for a slightly banged up female Marine that nearly blew up her fucking boss because she was pissed next to her.
She briefly considers looking up and telling him three bottles of beer were enough for a while now but then again, this is a bar full of military and ex-military types - no SGC personnel, though, she’d made sure of that before she decided to stay here after aimlessly browsing The Springs for about two hours - and the moment she’d walked in, she could see in their eyes that they expected her to keel over after two sips from a glass of white wine. Chauvinistic assholes, the lot of them.
So she keeps contemplating what happened on that fucked up mission. For about two hours, things had been tense but fine. They’d been sent to scout out a possible new naquadah source. Uninhabited planet, they’d said and more or less shoved them through the ‘Gate. They’d established a perimeter, she and Sergeant Goodenough, while Lorne and Sergeant Winters had taken soil samples for the lab rats to examine.
God, that had been boring… right until the moment a ship of unknown classification had swooped down from the sky and landed right inside their perimeter. The guy who’d emerged had been a very sleazy version of Han Solo. Actually, a very sleazy version of a wannabe Han Solo. Unfortunately, he’d blocked their escape road, shot Goodenough and taken her hostage, about a second after emerging from his fucking ship.
No more stupid thing had ever happened to a female SGC Marine. Or, at least not to her. Lorne had been forced to negotiate and he’d a passable job… right until the idiot mercenary had starting groping her and fumbling around her front rack. There’d been a weird tightness in Lorne’s posture all of a sudden, and Winters hadn’t seemed too happy with it, either. One of the very few good things about patriarchic America, their being offended enough at having their female soldiers molested that they’d cease with the useless diplomacy and get into action, she’d thought. Because damn, Lorne’s precision had been frighteningly accurate when he’d put a bullet through the mercenary’s shoulder.
She’d have preferred to elbow him in the solar plexus and knee him bad enough that reproduction wouldn’t be an issue for him anymore but she could do with him writhing in pain and blood running out of his wound just fine. She can’t resist hammering her head down on her arms just two or three times.
That should have been enough. They should have packed up Goodenough, hightailed it out of there and written their mission reports. But no, Lieutenant Laura Cadman had been so pissed at being manhandled - first time ever in the field and she can already tell that she handled it really, really bad - and being overthrown by such a little piece of shit that she had to blow something up.
As it happened, Slime Bag seemed to have been rather attached to the ship because the moment she’d started taping C4 and detonators to the hull, his shoulder wound seemed to have been forgotten. He’d nearly shot her, if Lorne and Winters hadn’t subdued him. Fortunately, that also kept them from dragging her away from the ship.
At first, that is. After making sure Slime Bag would stay down long enough for them to escape, Lorne had practically rushed over to her and tried to wrestle the remote detonator from her hand. It must have looked ridiculous and it most probably hadn’t exactly made them look like responsible and seasoned officers to their Sergeants but the worst thing was that it was over pretty fast. It was over the moment they both pushed the detonation lever at the same time and half of Slime Bag’s ship got in their faces.
Literally, actually.
She groans again. That had been so stupid, stupid, stupid. She’s not really hurt, just a little banged up from some debris that had to be picked out of her cheek and a few odd bruises. Most of Lorne’s body had been shielding her. They’d immediately carted him off to the infirmary the moment she and Winters had managed to drag him and Goodenough back through the ‘Gate so she doesn’t know how bad he’s injured but it really didn’t look good. Not to mention that he’d been pissed at her, even worse than after her miracle compound had exploded in his face the first time ever they met. There went her chance to see another…
“You know, someone once told me Marines really know how to celebrate a victory in style. They must have been lying.” …the hell?
To her eternal dismay, the moment she heard that voice, she practically bolted to sit upright and almost knocked over the glass… tumbler of apparently whiskey the barman had put next to her when she’d been wallowing in self-pity. She blinks. Good God.
The first thing she nearly blurts out is, “You seriously look like shit, sir,” but something tells her that would have been a bad idea. Even if he does. Face badly cut up, right arm in a sling, a big gauze patch across the crook of his neck… she swallows. “I, uh…” clearing her throat, stalling, really, “wasn’t aware that there… was a victory to celebrate?”
Unfortunately, instead of answering right away, he first tries to hop on the bar stool next to her but it ends in an awkward climb and once he visibly winces when the counter’s edge touches the arm in a sling. She resists raising an eyebrow and waits patiently for him to reply something. She gets rewarded for it after all, once the barkeep wordlessly sets down a beer in front of Lorne. She does raise her eyebrow now but before she can get to blurt out “Here often, sir?” he says, “It’s a miracle, actually.”
Huh?
Oh. Her incomprehension must have shown because he puts the beer he was just about to drink back on the counter to say, “As you might have noticed, people weren’t really happy about what happened on our last mission,” understatement of the year, “but there’s been… developments since the infirmary released me from their grip.”
She swallows. “Sir, I… I’m really sorry…”
He makes a face. “It’s alright, Lieutenant, I’ve been through worse.” She wonders what that might have been but she’s a little too busy with being relieved that he doesn’t just bust her ass - there’d been some serious threads when they’d dragged him back to the SGC about that from him - that she misses her chance to ask him. “Huh, and here I thought you wanted to know what kind of developments there were.”
Um. She blinks. “Develop… sure, sir. What developments were there?”
He grins and she wishes he wouldn’t do that. No superior officer should be allowed to look so hot when he grins, especially not being as banged up as he is. “Turned out you did the female population of the galaxy a huge favor. The guy who’s ship you blew up is wanted on five planets for various forms of sexual harassment and in one case rape and had his ass kicked a couple times by various tribal women. As soon as word got out that you took out his main form of transportation after I shot him, people were congratulating us all over.” He pauses, the grin fading and being replaced by an unreadable expression. “You’re a hero, Laura.”
That. Uh. Wasn’t really what she’d expected that he’d say. She’s not sure what she expected him to say but that wasn’t part of it. “I’m… not sure what to say to that, sir.”
“Really? Well, that’s a first.” Okay, that was hitting below the belt. Actually, that was… “The great Laura Cadman being silenced. I thought I’d never live to see that.” Seriously, sir? What’s going on here? “And all I had to do for that is call her a hero. Now, if I’d known that, I would have…”
“What exactly is your point, sir?” Oops. That wasn’t supposed to come out of her mouth, Actually, nothing was supposed to come out of her mouth as a response to that because there is really no reason whatsoever that this deserved to be dignified with a response.
Ha, apparently, he just realized it himself because he is very, very quiet all of a sudden. Serves him right. And then it starts to dawn on her that… there might have been a reason to the taunting after all. Because he can’t look at her now, concentrates on his beer and that tells her that his reaction… is it possible that he just wanted to cover up something entirely else? If so… “My point, Lieutenant, is that we’ll be stuck with each other for another couple of years. In another galaxy, even.” Huh? “The Atlantis Expedition, Lieutenant. I approved your request. And Landry approved mine, apparently.”
Apparently, she’s not quite equipped to understand the relation between insulting her as a blabbermouth and having her request to go to Atlantis - fucking Atlantis, holy fucking shit - approved. Or maybe she just lacks understanding because, oh my fucking God, request to be transferred to Atlantis was fucking approved, by the guy she nearly blew up because she was just so pissed off no less. She swallows again and looks at the glass of whiskey she still hasn’t touched.
“Cadman?”
She tries to say something but it just doesn’t happen. Mostly, because she’s not sure what to say actually. So there’s only one possible course of action. Downing the damn whiskey. Thank God it was just half an inch of it because holy shit that burns.
But at least she knows what the fuck to say now. Grinning at Lorne while motioning towards the guy behind the counter, she offers, “Another one for me and Sir here. He’s gonna need it once he realizes what being stuck with me several thousand miles away from home actually means.”
There’s a new glass for each of them and when Lorne raises his with the words, “We’ll see about that,” she raises hers, too and he clinks his against it, she thinks there could be worse people to be stuck with several thousand light years from home than Major Evan Lorne. If nothing at all, it’s gonna be a blast.
III
The third time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman blow something up together, it actually doesn’t involve any conventionally known explosives. Instead, it involves the Atlantis kitchen.
It all started when he was on his way to the mess hall for the snack sideboard the evening kitchen crew always leaves for the graveyard shift. He excused himself from the rest of the control room crew, asked if anyone wanted something picked up for them and then headed off on his way. That is, after making them swear about not telling anyone about his abandoning the “no food in the control room” SOP because honestly, there’s just five of them and it’s actually a bit spooky in the mess hall all alone so it’s a damn hindrance for moral to be kept up.
Anyway, so he went down to the mess hall, expecting the floors, the mess hall itself and the kitchen deserted. Which it isn’t. The kitchen, that is. He heard it as soon as he stepped into the mess hall. There was also light switched on and about three swear words uttered in the two minutes he tried to decide how to continue.
Then his sense of duty - he is the commanding officer of this week’s graveyard shift detachment after all - and alright, his curiosity, too won out so now he’s standing in the kitchen’s entrance, watching Laura Cadman rummage around the cupboards, storage boards and fridges. What in God’s name… wait. He frowns.
She told him about that once. He’s pretty sure she did. It was one of their first missions back at the SGC, some mind-numbingly boring babysitter mission that had them degrade into stupid things such as truth or dare and other crap only Marines could think were fit for grown-up conversation. And she’d told him that she likes… she likes to bake when she can’t sleep.
He’d told her straight away that he thought she was bullshitting him - Laura Cadman and baking? Sure as hell not - but here she is, in t-shirt, track pants and, dear God, barefoot, too, apparently looking for something. Currently, her bottom is sticking out of a floor level cupboard and he can see skin peeking out at her midriff where her t-shirt slipped up too high to cover everything.
He wishes she didn’t have such a nice bottom and weren’t wearing such a short t-shirt. The sight of her crouching on the floor and swearing like a sailor is almost doing him in. He fervently hopes it’s the week of graveyard shift and sleeping days, working nights that has his brain muddled enough to think stuff like that because the alternative would be a horrific thing.
He’d tried to pinpoint the moment when her enthusiasm about blowing things up had gone from disturbing to - God help him - endearing but he never did find it. It just kind of… happened. Which is the scariest thing about it because with Major Evan Lorne, things never “just happen”. So he gave up, for his own sake as probably as much as hers.
Watching Lieutenant Laura Cadman half disappear into the storage cupboard is a lot more fun, anyway.
Until she says, still without looking up, “You know, instead of just standing there, how about you help?” that is. Before he can even take a breath for an answer , she continues, “And yes, I know that it’s you, sir.” Holy… composure. Composure is most important now.
He leans against the door jamb and crosses his arms. “So you really do bake when you can’t sleep.” He can’t believe that she actually popped up from behind the cupboard’s door and stuck her tongue out to him, just to disappear again. The fuck?
For a moment, he’s tempted to bust her down because no one sticks her tongue out at Major Evan Lorne, most of all not that scrawny, red-haired Lieutenant. But then again, that scrawny, red-haired Lieutenant is probably the only one who can get away with sticking out her tongue at him - because she’s got him wrapped around her little finger, people are whispering behind his back, he knows that - so he just sticks his hands in his pockets and saunters over to her, looking down on her and pointedly ignoring all that skin that’s showing between the waistline of her track pants and the hem of her t-shirt. “What are making?”
“Red velvet cupcakes,” he gets from the depth of the storage cupboard and what is she doing there? “Or at least I was going to but then I went looking for the muffin pan and it’s just - not - there.” She reappears again and there’s some dust on her freckled nose. Additionally to the slightly pissed off face she makes, she looks fucking adorable and that is so wrong on so many levels. “Some asshole must have hidden the damn thing.”
Actually, he’s pretty sure he saw it just last week… he frowns. Yes, that’s it. He had seen it last week. At a party hosted by the biology department and he really doesn’t want to know what they were keeping in that. He clears his throat. “Uh, you know, it might have been irreversibly contaminated by the biologists last week…” he can see that she’s on to another round of cussing like a sailor that he forestalls with holding up his hand, “but I know that there’s a cake pan somewhere in here… let me have a look.”
Why did he just crouch down next to her on the floor and start rummaging round himself? Oh, that’s right because she’s his team’s second in command and has saved his ass more than he can count with her slightly disturbing, mysteriously endearing love for explosives. He heaves an inner sigh and goes digging a little further… there it is. Holding it up triumphantly, he can’t help grinning at her. “Here you go. Leave it to your commanding officer to find the thing you need.”
That just… earns him raised eyebrows, rolling her eyes and a murmured “Thank you, Smee.” Then she goes back to the counter she lined up her ingredients on and… wow, he’s never seen anyone whisk up cake batter as fast as she just did. She didn’t even need ten minutes. Then again, he also hasn’t anyone seen whisking up batter so messily. For all her Marine-ynes, she sure has some splotching issues with viscose material, it seems.
“Yes, I’m a messy baker. Drove my mom and my roommate at LSU and the girl I was rooming with in The Springs mad that I couldn’t once bake a cake and leave the kitchen spotless without blocking it for extensive renovation afterwards at least once. Anything else you’d like to say?” Wow.
That was certainly, erm, educational. Also, a little terrifying because of the look she just threw him. He clears his throat again. “No, uh, you explained that pretty well, thank you.”
There’s an interesting sound coming from her as she fills the batter into the ban. A kind of snort crossed with a giggle and it’s the most wonderful sound her ever heard. He hopes that this is just something temporary. She puts the pan into the oven and then leans against the counter opposite the oven. “So… what are we going to do now?”
She gives him another look, this one slightly sarcastic. “You, I guess, are going back to the control room and I will…”
“Is that supposed to happen?” He hadn’t meant to interrupt her, but really, the way the batter just started to bubble up does not look well. At least, red velvet cake never looks like that when his sister makes it.
There’s a blink from her, then a frown as she looks at the oven, then she almost lunges for the temperature regulator… and then everything goes to hell. There’s a sort of… wet sound and then there’s an almighty splash against the oven’s door and possible a shriek from Cadman, too. First thing he’ll do tomorrow is hunt for the security camera footage and keep it as possible blackmail material. Laura Cadman actually makes it a point not to shriek and this…
“Ah, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I knew I shouldn’t have used alien vinegar and Professor Mindelar would probably hit me on the back of my head for that… oh Jesus fucking Christ, that was stupid, stupid, stupid…” Alien vinegar? Alright, that might explain a few… “I’m sorry, sir.” Huh? “I shouldn’t be keeping you and now I really need to take care of this mess…” Ah, Cadman.
Before he knows what he’s doing, he gently pries the wiping cloth out of her hand and cautiously inches closer to the oven. “It’s alright, Lieutenant. They’re not expecting me for another twenty minutes and it’s my job to take care of emergencies, anyway. And my second in command in dire need of cleaning help definitely qualifies as an emergency.”
There’s a very small, very tentative smile on her face, trying to drag the corners of her mouth further up and if he hadn’t decided to help her on the spot already, he’d have done so now. Damn her for surprising him in the most inconvenient moments. “That’s really not…” he ventures as far as giving her a look and it seems to take effect, “Thank you, sir. That’s really… let’s… let’s get to work, huh?”
He nods and bends down, desperately trying to keep a grin from his face when she fetches herself another wiping cloth and readies herself for a very messy battle with batter. There are worse ways to spend a night.
VI
The fourth time Laura Cadman and Evan Lorne blow something up together, C4 is not involved either. Fairy lights are.
Thanksgiving’s just over and since there’s no Black Friday in Atlantis - sadly, alien market sellers could never be convinced to offer those strange Lantians discounts on that one day in the year they eat a strange bird making strange sounds and that they only share with the Deluvians and no one wants to talk about their traditions involving that day - they have to occupy themselves with something else. She chose volunteering for the annual Holidays decoration team.
She usually does it because it’s fun and she knows she’d totally monopolize the entire kitchen if she volunteered for baking and demolitions, and chemistry asked her never to join the experimental firecrackers team again. Apparently, they just can’t deal with mildly competitive people.
So disentangling fairy light chains it is. She already did twenty yards worth of disentangling and tucking them against the ceiling in the last two hours and she’ll be damned if anyone is better than her at this. She knows for a fact that all other fairy light team members are at least a yard behind her. Laura Cadman so totally rules this.
“Did you just pump your fist in triumph up on that ladder, Lieutenant?” Holy crap. One day, she will tape bells to his ankles. There has to be some way to keep him from sneaking up on her like that.
“Didn’t I tell you…” Damn, withering look again. She rolls her eyes. “Didn’t I ask you not to keep sneaking up on me?”
He gives a mock sigh, then says, “I guess presuming you’d hear my combat booted feet clang along this corridor over your… “singing” was asked too much.”
Against better judgment, she sticks out her tongue and mutters, “I’ll give you “singing” when I’m done with this.” Raised eyebrows now and arms crossed in front of his chest. “Sir.”
She knows he wants to grin very badly and she loves how she can make him lose composure - alright, in this case almost lose composure - and if she actually allowed herself to think about that, she’d be royally screwed. “What are you doing there, Cadman?”
The temptation to roll her eyes and ask him what it’s looking like is very, very strong but she knows she already used up her contingent of insolence for the rest of the day with that tongue thing. “Decoration duty, sir.” At his genuinely enquiring gaze, she adds, “I’m disentangling fairy lights and tucking them to the ceiling. And I’m the ahead of everyone else on the team.”
That does make him grin and she knows he appreciates that. People would never think it but he’s a very competitive team leader. “Well done, Lieutenant. Need a hand?”
Usually, he wouldn’t ask because he knows she’d never say yes, so that surprises her enough to say, “Uh… not really but if you’re offering, I’m not declining.”
He nods. “I am. So… how about you drop that bundle you’re working on down and I’m going to do the disentangling for you?”
That doesn’t sound so bad, actually. She smiles. “Sure thing, sir. Thank you.”
For a while, they work alongside, chatting about this and that and she tells him the one thing she really misses from home is all the snow at Christmas, being from rural Minnesota and all and he tells her he misses opening presents on Christmas Day with his nephews and she can’t help smiling a private little smile about that because it just seems to be so… him to miss family the most.
And then, just like that, there are no more fairy lights to disentangle and she has done all the tucking. “So,” he says.
“So,” she answers and they look at their work with a kind of justified pride, grinning at each other in mutual understanding that she would love to keep reveling in. That scares her and so she determines that the best course of action is to suggest, “How about we see how it looks?”
He nods and she takes out a remote, presses a button to switch on the fairy lights… and gets a long, long row of spectacularly exploding tiny light bulbs. Holy shit. The only reason she actually stayed rooted to her spot was that she was completely taken by surprise by this. And she’s pretty sure the only reason Lorne stayed rooted to his spot was the same. And maybe a dash of not wanting to be outdone by her, as well.
After the last bulb exploded possibly a mile away and subsequently the rest of Atlantis went dark, as well, she takes a deep breath and says, through clenched teeth, “Someone is going to pay for this.”
“Ah, Lieutenant…” Huh? What? “Why exactly do you have murder in your eyes?”
Isn’t that obvious? “Because this was not supposed to happen. Someone going by the name of Rodney McKay apparently misjudged something in the city’s circuits so that flipping on one switch put the entire city out of commission.” Which wouldn’t be so bad, actually, if it didn’t come down to one special thing. “And he’s going to blame it all on me.”
Which just wouldn’t be true. “Are you sure, Lieutenant? You did offer to…”
“Please, sir, do not mention that.” Seriously, if anyone knew that it was not a good idea to mention that ordeal with her being in McKay’s head two months ago, than it should be Lorne. Most of all not her offer of letting go and fading out of existence if push came to shove. As she had learned pretty fast, McKay would not have deserved that.
“Uh, sorry, Lieutenant, I didn’t mean to…” She can hear him clear his throat and for some reason it does touch her that he seems to be genuinely sorry for making her remember that. “Anyway, uh, what do we do now?”
Huh. Her commanding officer asking her what to do. That is certainly something new.
Okay, no, actually it isn’t. After that one outburst the day they met the first time - and a couple afterwards, though granted both of them had them - he’d always treated her with respect and almost as an equal. So. Well. What do they do now?
Mh.
Ah, yes.
“How long since you had a good long look at this planet’s star constellations, sir?” She’s pretty sure that even with the very low lighting from one of the few windows lining the corridor she can see him frown, in a “What is that crazy Lieutenant up to now?” way. She almost rolls her eyes.
He does surprise her, though. “Too long, I think. If I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”
“That hiding from McKay and letting him fix his own mess just for once is a good idea? Totally.” She might be mistaken but she’s pretty sure that that was not what he’d been thinking. If that really is the case, she sure as hell doesn’t want to know what he’d been thinking.
“That’s not… that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.” Crap. This isn’t good, this just can’t be good, this… “Lead the way, Lieutenant. I’ve been told Marines can see in the dark as well as in light without night vision goggles. I’d love to see if that is true.”
She snorts. “You will, sir. Just follow me.” And with that, they set off for one of the balconies she knows must be close to where they are now. Even though she knows it’s probably a bad idea, but what the hell. Everything is better than being forced to endure hours of Rodney ranting about whoever busted the city’s power circuits. Yeah, that’s it, she thinks. That’s why she suggested that thing. Only that.
V
The fifth time Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman are about to blow something up together, they never actually get to it. It’s in the city, on a pier and it’s supposed to be a demonstration, to show that the Explosives Department knows more about how blowing shit up than any other department. Chemistry has had their greedy eyes on their equipment since this expedition started. And Physics has already been making grabby hands for that wonderful container field they… anyway.
How it was supposed to go was this: Cadman prepares mini-rafts with packages of specially developed explosives, sends them out on the water and detonates them remotely. The steam cloud is several yards high and everyone is really, really impressed.
What happened was this: Cadman gets to the pier for a few minutes alone for last minute preparations, encounters Rodney and a couple people from all the departments making greedy eyes at the Blow Jobs’ equipment and funding and starts a snark battle. A couple minutes later, he gets onto the pier and finds her ready to punch Rodney in the face for telling her as Head of Science, he and he alone decides where funds, equipment and labs go and would she please buck up, grit her teeth and stop so hostile because otherwise he’ll be forced to…
He never did get to hear what Rodney wanted to do if Cadman didn’t stop giving him dirty looks and mentally cracking her knuckles. Someone had to practically drag her off the pier to stop her from doing something really, really stupid.
So now he’s standing on a balcony with her, far away enough from the pier so no one can hear them. Which is imperative since she’s been ranting about Rodney and his completely lacking people skills and no really, that’s just a goddamn euphemism. He doesn’t interrupt her because after having known Cadman for over three years, almost four, he gave up being stupid enough to try and reason with her when she’s in that mood.
And it’s not that he doesn’t understand her. In fact, he perfectly agrees with her, having had his share of battles with McKay. Mostly over her, but he never told her about them. McKay is still integral to the success of this expedition, despite his non-existent social skills. But damn, she’s pissed off and shouting at him and pacing and could she just stand still?
“Laura…”
“I can’t believe he told me to buck up. I’ve been bucking up for two years while he keeps draining us of money, equipment, people… I am so fucking tired of bucking up and listening to that little piece of…”
“Lieutenant…”
“No, I mean, Rodney fucking McKay is nothing more than a…”
“Lieutenant Cadman, I really think you should…”
“He’s a stupid, arrogant, overbearing, patronizing piece of…” Goddammit.
Years later, they will still be fighting over who started it, over why it happened that day precisely and why they waited so long. Right now, he’s kissing her as if his life depends on it. He’s kissing her, pressing her against the railing, marginally noticing that her arms wound themselves around his waist. The fact that she’s pouring as much into this kiss as he is, is a lot more important. Oh God, this is good, so good, why didn’t he do this long… Shit.
Shit shit shit.
Gasping at the realization that he’s still her fucking superior officer, he breaks the kiss, sputtering, “Jesus fucking Christ, Cadman.”
To her credit, she doesn’t immediately jump away… but confused blinking and still keeping him in her embrace for at least a second discretely stepping away aren’t exactly better. That she says, “Absolutely agree, sir,” isn’t helping, either.
Something rubs him wrong about that, though. And it’s not that she just agreed with him about whatever he’d wanted to say with swearing about that kiss. He blinks. “Evan.”
“Excuse me?” Huh. Yes, that was actually it. The fact that she still kept calling him sir.
Somehow, that helped him find some ground to stand on - for just a tiny, tiny moment kissing Cadman had felt like hovering four inches above ground - and he manages to say reasonably casually, “Evan. My first name. You should probably call me by it.”
That makes her blink again - could she just stop that? - and looking a little dazed and confused. Her asking, “Why?” just tells him he was right about her confusion. In a corner of her mind, it satisfies him greatly that he could manage to rattle the great Laura Cadman enough to reduce her to one syllable answers.
He tries to look all serious. “Because I just kissed you. And you goddamn kissed me back.” Because she so goddamn did. And it felt like something he’d been waiting for for a very long time. Ever since he met her. It still scares the shit out of him.
It still hurts a little, though, when she starts saying, “I’m sorry, sir, I…” and fumbling for words.
Suddenly, he can’t bear that she thinks she needs to apologize to him for kissing him back. He started that kiss and if there’s anyone going to suffer career retributions for it, it’s going to be him. So he actually surprises himself when he cuts her off and says, “And because I’m going to do it again.” And then he realizes that he means that. He swallows. “And again. And again.”
She frowns. “You are?” Well. At least she didn’t tell him to get lost. There’s still hope.
“Damn straight I am.” So, he hadn’t actually planned to say that with so much conviction in his voice but…
“Thank God.” The… what?
Huh.
Up until now he hadn’t really thought she might reciprocate his feelings, even though she kissed him back and he suddenly remembers all the instances when she sat next to him a little too close, sat at his infirmary bed a little too long, held his hand when she was a stretcher a little too tight… and then she kisses him. For a moment… nothing but that counts. It’s so cliché it hurts but just for a moment, he’s all hers and all that he needs are her lips and the arms she slung around him again and the hands that keep pressing against his shoulder blades and her hips under his hands, so wonderfully hers and… aw, fuck. Stupid UCMJ engraved into his brain. He breaks the kiss again.
“We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t…”
She nods and tenderly kisses the corner of his mouth. “It’s alright. We’ll find a way. Just not now. We can…” He bends down to kiss her again, shut her up, like he wants to shut up his suddenly very loud bad conscience and… “Stop it, Evan. I’ll leave Rodney be, if you leave the UCMJ be. Just for today.”
Well. That actually sounds like a plan. Even if most of his mind is fixed on the fact that she really seems to want the same he wants. He nods. And grins. Because damn, she wants what he wants. Also, there’s an idea. “You know… how about I’ll help you with Rodney,” oh God, that grin. If he hadn’t thrown caution to the wind and kissed her just to shut her up, he would do so now. Except that there’s still a condition open, “if you’ll help me with the UCMJ?”
She sticks out her tongue and this time he makes true on his desire to kiss her every time she does it. It makes her giggle and he’s surprised to see that it feels even better than it sounds when she does that. “Alright,” she says in the end, “I’ll help. Now, about Rodney…”
Damn. Can’t she let that go? “Later,” he growls, “ now, I’ll…”
Whatever he wanted to says, it’s cut short by her pushing him against the wall behind them and one of her hands crawling underneath his t-shirt and later, there will be fireworks. Just not the ones planned for today. Those happening, he will discover later, will be a lot better anyway. Amazing, that.