Title: "Drunk Tank Pink"
Rating: PG-13
Category: Sheppard/Weir, fun!fic
Summary: As with every pairing, it eventually comes down to drunken sex.
Author's Note:
muldy,
natushka and
delgaserasca wanted me to write Sparky pr0n involving the briefing room table and those automated briefing room doors. This is that, but without the pr0n. Sorry. Thanks to
mspooh for general enabling.
sign up for the sheppard/weir ficathon! In their defense, they were drunk.
"Drugged," Elizabeth corrects. It's the only word she has said to him in half an hour.
She's right, though. Drunk would be an understatement for what that single glass of ceremonial alien "seed wine" did to them. John has done drunk before. He's actually done drunk before with her, and the worst that ever came of that was a rather dopey conversation on the balcony where she confessed she'd grown up with a crush on Hawkeye and he told her that her eyes were very, very pretty, and that her hair looked soft.
All of that was rather harmless. Awkward, maybe, for a few days following as they half-heartedly mocked each other about their inability to hold their liquor, but that was all.
He never before had, say, almost had sex with her on the briefing room table.
Would have done so, too, if it hadn't been for Caldwell, and for the automatic doors, and... oh, God. It's all fuzzing in and out a bit, but they had definitely been very, very naked, and very much on top of each other, and the entire guest list of their celebratory post-treaty gala had been in the control room, and...
John casts a quick glance over at Elizabeth, sitting with her arms crossed amid heart-monitor cords and an IV tube on the next bed, glaring straight ahead. Oh, yeah. She is never speaking to him again, ever.
The silence is icy and oppressive, and it makes him want to tear out his own IV and bounce around the room to release some of the nervous -- okay, frustrated -- energy. He's starting to wish Carson would come back. Even though the doctor spent the whole examination looking rather scandalized, at least he spoke to them.
Reed, one of the Daedalus-based security officers, is standing against the far wall -- put there, John suspects, just in case he and Elizabeth decided to fling themselves at each other again -- but he is clearly trying to be as invisible as possible, and so a poor source of distraction. He hasn't looked either of them in the eye since he arrived.
Dammit. John picks at the medical tape holding the IV in place and tries not to openly sulk. It'll probably be a few weeks before anyone can look them in the eyes again.
In their defense, they were drugged.
Unfortunately, there is an awful lot of evidence against them. Like how they didn't just randomly jump the first people they came across, for one thing. Or how the rumor mill on the base has had them naked in that briefing room on and off for the past three years. Or how he likes her. Really likes her.
He doesn't usually admit that much, even to himself, given how confusing it makes everything, but Carson predicted the effects of the drink wouldn't totally wear off for another few hours.
The briefing room table certainly wouldn't have been his first choice of venues, but there's no way he can pretend that, sober, drugged or otherwise, he ever would have said no.
He sneaks another glance at Elizabeth. She's still glaring straight ahead, jaw tight, cheeks flushed and hair still a total mess from what his hands did to it. His stomach sinks at the way this will probably clam her up, how embarrassment and his exposed secret (amid the drunken groping and moaning, he had definitely said more than a few damning things) will probably drive her back into the cold, professional shell that he'd only just begun to genuinely crack.
Touching her had been incredible. Mind-blowing. After a year (two years, if he's honest... maybe two and a half...) of pretending hard not to want her, John liked to comfort himself with the idea that there was absolutely no way that it could be as good as all that in real life. There was Elizabeth and there was a guilty fantasy, and the two were really nothing alike.
That night -- before their rude awakening, anyway -- blew every single one of his fantasies out of the water.
The drugs helped, maybe, flared his senses as well as dulling his ability to reason the difference between the briefing room and a bedroom, but it was her. Every time she touched him, he felt the same unrelenting care and compassion that she shows him every day, the same things he had doubted in her for so long because he'd never before encountered anyone in authority willing to back him up like that. He kissed first, but she kissed back, and something inside of him snapped.
It felt like she was looking at him as he touched her, really seeing the John Sheppard she had come to know so well over the past three years, not just some guy in uniform or an alien visitor or whatever else he was to the other women he's slept with. The feeling was so powerful that he blurted out all kinds of things he regretted.
That he wanted her, really. That the drink really had nothing to do with it. That he'd never met anyone like her before in his entire life. That he didn't think he could go back again now that he knew what she felt like, what she tasted like, now that he'd seen her look at him like that.
And then she was kissing him, and naked, and her body...
She has an incredible body, on top of everything else. He's doomed. She fit against him in all the right ways -- well, all ways except the way, which he hadn't had a chance to discover, thanks to Caldwell's impeccable timing.
Which was -- though the drug still in his system is screaming in horny protest -- actually for the best. He's reasonably sure that she wanted him, at least a little. They had never gone this far, had never really gotten physical at all, but they have been flirting with each other more than casually for quite a while. But still, if it turned out it had just been the seed wine talking and Caldwell hadn't seen fit to open the briefing room doors looking for them just when he had... John really would never have forgiven himself.
Which would have some nice symmetry, since he has a bad feeling from looking at her that she's never going to forgive him anyway.
His body tingles all over when he thinks about how it felt (a bad thing to think about when he's lying in a bed five feet from hers, very bad). He's had his share of sexual encounters, drunk and otherwise, but he's never felt anything quite like this, or quite like her. He can probably spend the next five years running over that memory and not get tired of it.
Still, it isn't worth losing her.
"Elizabeth..."
She doesn't look at him.
"Shit. Elizabeth, we have to talk about this."
That gets her attention -- he rarely, if ever, swears around her. It doesn't actually occur to him until it's out of his mouth, but now he's wondering if perhaps his Aunt Ethel's insistence that he conduct himself like a gentleman in her house and in the presence of ladies might have taken root in his subconscious, hiding beneath all his years around soldiers.
"Yes, we do," Elizabeth agrees. "But maybe we should wait until after we're... totally ourselves." Her eyes are wide and green, still extra-bright from the seed wine, and their intensity alone makes him want to leap over the bed railing and grab her.
Yes, he thinks, taking a few calming breaths. She definitely has a point. He's said enough under the influence already.
Then she licks her lips -- hopefully by accident -- and he chokes back an actual moan as he yanks his gaze away from hers. The Ancient walls are flawless -- without even a paint chip or two to focus on -- so he stares at the IV drip meant to help flush this thing out of his system and vows not to look at her anymore.
She laughs, and he breaks his vow on the spot. Dammit.
"What?"
"Look at us." Her head is thrown back against her stack of pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. John wants to check out what's so interesting up there in the light fixture, but her neck is exposed and he can't imagine anything else could be worth looking away.
"Huh?"
"We're adults, right? And yet, we have to be doped to the gills to even touch each other."
John looks over at Reed, who seems to be taking great pains to pretend he's not actually there at all. He then looks back at Elizabeth. "I thought we weren't going to talk about this until we're thinking straight."
She turns her face his way, and he gulps, damning the wine, his hormones, and the infirmary blankets that are probably far too thin for proper disguise if she continues looking at him like that.
"John, if we were thinking straight, we'd never talk about this."
Not precisely true. He thinks about this all the time when sober. If they were thinking straight and he wasn't absolutely sure that she'd shoot him down in the face of all the command complications that would arise, they would have had this conversation two years ago. And repeatedly since then, preferably while naked.
Mmm. Naked.
"Isn't that... don't you want that?"
Definitely still drugged. As a rule, he doesn't open himself up to rejection quite that blatantly when all cylinders are firing. Even to women other than Elizabeth.
She frowns. "No."
Were it not for the absence of life-sign monitor alarms, John would think his heart had stopped. She doesn't? She...? "Oh."
They're quiet for a long minute. He's desperately trying to keep from thinking of the possible ways to free her from her IV, escape Reed, and have his way with her. By her intense expression, her thoughts are probably traveling a similar path.
"We can't," she finally says.
"Why not?" He's honestly asking. Logical reasoning isn't exactly easy to piece together at the moment, but he remembers they must have some good reason for keeping themselves apart and frustrated this long.
"People would talk."
John glances at Reed again. "They're already talking."
"I give you orders."
"I already disobey them when I disagree." Up until now, John figured that the seed wine was just some kind of hormone explosion. Now he wonders if it might be a truth serum.
"You shouldn't," she points out, and he suspects that means she's sobering up. "It would add complications."
He already just about wants to rip the universe apart with his bare hands whenever she's in danger. He's not sure how much more complicated it can really get. "We can deal with them."
"And Caldwell?"
Caldwell, he thinks, will probably be too scandalized to mention anything about it for at least the next few months. It'll also probably take the Colonel at least that long to be able to look at either of them again while meeting in the briefing room. "I'm not sure he'd believe us if we denied it at this point, actually."
She sighs. "It's still a bad idea."
He wants to kiss her. Not maul her, not drag her into the nearest closet and make her scream for God, just... kiss her, until the worried, embarrassed expression on her face has been washed clean and she looks at him again in that way she has, the one that makes him feel like he's really worth all the trouble he causes her.
He wants to say he loves her, like he really never has anyone else before, but the drug is wearing off and he keeps that thought to himself.
"I'm tired," he announces instead, sleep drawing at him sharply as the hormonal rush subsides.
"Me, too." Elizabeth pulls the infirmary blanket closer to her chin. "The drug must finally be wearing off."
"Thank God," he snorts, but he doesn't entirely mean it. When they wake up, she'll be Elizabeth again, unwilling to rip his clothes off in the briefing room -- or anywhere -- or talk to him this openly about it.
"No kidding."
He yawns. "I don't want to sleep," he admits, in deference to their night of confessions. Or his night of confessions, at any rate. Although the drug definitely rid Elizabeth of most of her clothes, her secrets remain (relatively) intact and just as frustrating as ever.
"S'okay," she encourages, smiling warmly. There is five feet of open space between their beds, but she feels a lot closer than that. "I'll keep an eye on you."
That should be his line. "Promise?" He wants her to promise other things -- that they won't ignore this for another three years, that she'll talk to him like this someday without an alien influence, that she'll still forgive him his part in all of this even after the rumor mill tries to tear them apart.
"I'm not going anywhere," she assures him.
For now, that's enough.
"Am I forgiven?"
"Forgiven for what?" She says this part louder, perhaps for Reed's benefit, "We were drugged."
*end*