skidmo_fic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skidmo_fic) wrote2007-04-21 12:07 am
skidmo_fic) wrote2007-04-21 12:07 am
Entry tags:
- fics,
- het,
- lorne,
- lorne/teyla
Desperation Song (PG-13)
Title: Desperation Song
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Pairing: Lorne/OFC, mention of Lorne/Teyla
Word Count: 3325
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me...sadly
Feedback: yes, please.
Summary: Lorne has trouble adjusting to life on Earth. Set during The Return, pt. 1
A/N: title comes from a song by Carbon Leaf.
Lorne stood in front of his open closet feeling vaguely like a thirteen-year old girl before a junior high dance. It wasn’t that he cared so much what he wore tonight; it was just that he was still unused to having so many options.
In Atlantis his closet had been full of mostly uniforms. One service dress, one BDU, Earth-standard, and several Atlantis uniforms. For civilian clothes, he had three button-down shirts, four t-shirts, three pairs of pants (black, khaki and jeans) and a sports jacket, just in case. He hadn’t once needed anything else.
He’d been back for a little over a month now, and he still couldn’t get used to the options. He wasn’t a clotheshorse by any means, but he did have a well-stocked closet. He sighed, gave up, and reached in, grabbing the first shirt his hands could find.
It was his blue button-down from Atlantis.
He sighed again, crumpled it up and decided to go for a t-shirt. Rifling through his dresser drawer, he pulled out a soil-colored shirt and smiled ruefully. He hadn’t brought this one to Atlantis, but after seeing McKay’s “I’m with genius” shirt, he’d wished he had. Seemed he couldn’t get away from reminders today.
Feeling somewhat defeated, he pulled the shirt over his head and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d have enjoyed watching McKay try to explain this one to Teyla and Ronon. He smiled again, this time there was only a hint of wistfulness in the amusement as he slid his fingers over the blue letters proclaiming “Geologists do it in the dirt.”
For his purposes tonight, it was weirdly appropriate.
***
Earlier that day, he’d come back to the SGC after another hellish mission and headed straight for the locker room to change after his post-mission physical and debriefing.
All his missions were hellish these days. When he’d left for Atlantis, his team had thought he was crazy.
“Space vampires, man.” Janson had said, as though they hadn’t been fighting cliche-spouting drama-queen aliens who posed as gods from every conceivable polytheistic Earth religion for the past seven years.
And when he’d first come back, he’d thought they were right. He’d been out there, doing things, saving two galaxies from a fate worse than death, one he’d witnessed too many times not to be jaded about everything else. Nothing the SGC was doing could possibly compare to facing down a Wraith hive ship. And he’d have given anything to be back there, even if it meant coming face to face with a Wraith queen again.
He’d been wrong though. Not wrong to want to go back. He still wanted that. Wrong to think that fighting the Wraith was the most challenging job in two galaxies. Fighting the Ori was worse. Much worse.
When they’d been in Atlantis, though there was a feeling that if the Ancients couldn’t defeat the Wraith, they certainly didn’t stand a chance, there was still this sort of hubris that led them to believe that, eventually, they’d come up with something that would turn the tide in their favor. But with the Ori, Lorne just didn’t see that happening. The Ori and their armies had greater numbers (growing every day) and far superior technology, not to mention the superhuman abilities of the priors and the Orici. It was hard to see the war as anything but hopeless.
And then there was the secrecy. Sure in Pegasus they’d had to keep Atlantis’s survival to themselves, but they could talk freely about the Wraith and the stargate. As long as you didn’t talk to the natives about Earth or Atlantis, you never had to worry about slipping up. And there was never that awkward, “So, what do you do for a living?” question. Having the secret of the entire stargate program hanging over his head was beginning to wear on him.
He walked across the room and stood in front of his locker.
His locker.
Colonel Edwards had gone so far as to make sure Lorne had the same locker he’d had when he left. Somehow that little familiarity felt even stranger than everything that had changed.
As he changed into his civilian clothes (an Air Force t-shirt and one of four pairs of jeans he now had access to), he ran over the past few days in his mind. It was the kids that got him mostly. In Pegasus, the children had been relatively safe. The Wraith didn’t want to feed on them until they reached adulthood, so the only worry they had was being orphaned, and most communities were quick to find them new homes if they were.
But the Ori were well aware that threatening someone directly isn’t half as effective as threatening their loved ones. So whatever plague or disaster the priors unleashed on a planet usually struck the children first. People were quick to accept Origin if they thought it would save their kids, and Lorne couldn’t say he blamed them.
The planet they’d visited today had been another loss. Another addition to the Ori’s growing foothold in the Milky Way. But the only thing Lorne could bring himself to regret was that the people hadn’t caved until after the little girl who’d been following his team around had fallen victim to a “sign from the gods.”
She was too damn young to die. The frustration of it all made him slam his locker shut, and the noise of it surprised him, but he was more surprised to find that he was not alone.
A marine sergeant stood in the middle of the room, watching him. Lorne nodded, “Sergeant.”
The marine nodded back, “Sir.”
Lorne read the name on his BDUs. Bates. Something clicked in his memory. Sergeant Bates had been with the initial group of expedition members. He’d been attacked just prior to the siege. Lorne thought he remembered something about a medically-induced coma, but he hadn’t heard anything more, except that Bates had been shipped back to Earth with the Daedelus to recover.
There were a lot of stories about Bates on Atlantis. Most of them were not flattering. He’d been a hard-ass. A stereotypical marine. And he’d been suspicious of Teyla, which hadn’t earned him many friends. But when the men from his team talked about their former leader, they had the same bright-eyed, hero-worshiping look that a lot of the science staff had when they talked about Sheppard. He didn’t leave men behind, and that was the highest compliment you could give someone in Atlantis.
It occurred to Lorne, as he stood staring intently at the sergeant, that here was a man who knew what he was going through. He’d been sent away from Atlantis against his will too. He’d been stuck here, fighting an unbeatable enemy in a world that was doing its best to make a place for people who didn’t fit anymore. If Bates had survived, maybe Lorne could too.
Lorne noticed that Bates was standing at attention and he said, “As you were, Sergeant.”
Bates’ shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly. Lorne couldn’t help but smirk. It was no wonder he’d made enemies on a base that adored Sheppard and his lazy, laid-back authority. Lorne wondered how Bates had lasted in the stargate program at all. Maybe that was the key.
There was an unspoken rule at the SGC that you didn’t talk about uncomfortable issues off-duty, so Lorne silently retrieved his duffle from the floor and made his way to the door. He was almost out, his hand hovering above the door handle, when he realized that there were some times when the normal rules simply didn’t apply, and this was definitely one of them.
He turned slowly towards Bates, who was still standing, nearly at attention, watching Lorne with a studiously blank face.
“How do you do it?”
Lorne didn’t have to elaborate. Bates knew exactly what he meant.
“You just do, Sir.”
Lorne sighed. It seemed that was all he would get today. But as he pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway, he heard a low whisper behind him, “And some days, you don’t.”
***
Lorne had chosen the bar for two reasons. One, it was within walking distance of his apartment, and he still hadn’t gotten around to buying a car. And two, it was a dive.
It wasn’t that hard to find a decent bar in Colorado Springs, but for Lorne’s purposes tonight, a dive would be more appropriate.
He had two reasons for going out tonight, and they corresponded with his reasons for choosing this particular bar. He wanted to get drunk (hence the walking, not driving, distance), and he wanted to get laid (hence the dive).
It wasn’t his usual MO. Whatever rumors had circulated Atlantis about his all-American look being the perfect cover for some deviant sexual behavior, Lorne was actually a decent guy. He wasn’t the type to go out looking for a one night stand. And he hadn’t been with anyone since he’d gotten back to Earth.
He’d tried dating, sort of. Janson’s wife had set him up with a friend of hers, but she’d caught him on a bad night, and, well, he didn’t think he’d be hearing from her again.
He’d had a lot of bad nights since coming back. At first he told himself it was because he finally had access to good beer in unrationed quantities. Eventually, he admitted to himself that he was drinking way more than he should, but since he never drank the night before a mission, he decided it wasn’t really a problem. He’d seen Sheppard coming into the SGC bearing obvious signs of a hangover more than once, so he knew he wasn’t alone in trying to wash Atlantis from his mind with alcohol.
He paused for a moment at the door of the bar, wondering when he’d become the kind of guy who goes out by himself on a Friday just looking to get drunk and find some company. Deciding these were thoughts better suited to the daylight, he pushed the door open and made his way inside.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. He’d been right about this place being a dive. There were maybe three tables littered around the room, and an ancient pool table stood in the back next to the juke box. The bartender, a paunchy, middle-aged man in a stained white t-shirt, looked up when he walked in, polishing a glass with a rag that looked like it probably wasn’t doing anything except making the glass dirtier. Two men stood by the pool table, with a third lining up a shot. There was another man sitting at the bar. No women yet, but it was still early, so Lorne walked up to the bar.
“Double scotch, straight up and whatever ale you have on tap.”
The bartender nodded and pulled Lorne’s drinks. Lorne paid for them and downed the scotch in one long gulp, shaking his head against the burn as it slid down his throat. The ale tasted like pisswater, and Lorne found himself longing for the spicy coolness of the Athosian brew Halling had made on the mainland. He told himself that he wasn’t there to reminisce and drained the rest of the glass, slapping another ten dollars on the counter in front of the bartender and saying, “Same again.”
He was in the middle of his second round when he noticed a group of men setting up a primitive sound system across from the pool table. He watched them unpacking speakers and a microphone, wondering how on earth a dive like this had scored a live music act, and hoping that it wasn’t going to be karaoke. Though that might attract some college girls, and if he remembered anything from his days at the Academy, it was that there was no one easier than a drunk college girl.
As the men set up their equipment, several more patrons trickled in. Soon the bar was half full and a thin thirty-ish woman had joined Lorne’s friend behind the bar. The juke box, which had been playing bad honky-tonk since Lorne walked in, fell silent, and the woman behind the bar took the makeshift stage to introduce the band, which turned out to be one woman and her guitar.
Lorne kept his back to the stage until she started to sing. He snorted when he recognized the first song, Norah Jones, if he wasn’t mistaken. He turned slowly on his stool, the alcohol warming his belly making him slightly unsteady on the rickety seat. He watched her through the first number, her caramel-colored hair falling gently around her face as her rich alto flooded into the dark room, fingers caressing the strings in a rhythmic seduction. She kept her eyes on the guitar, but when the song ended, and the room broke into applause, she raised her head and Lorne thought she must be looking right at him. She smiled, and the flash of teeth was so familiar that Lorne felt his stomach lurch.
When she started her next song, he deliberately turned on his seat and snapped his fingers for the bartender.
“I need another.”
She took a break after her first set, and Lorne nearly bought her a drink, but he was not quite so drunk yet that he didn’t remember that he’d come here to forget. Instead, he turned his attention to the college girl who had just sidled her way up to the bar next to him, ordering drinks for her table of friends. He wasn’t sure how drunk he’d have to get her for her to agree to go home with a man more than a decade older than her, but when he smiled at her, she ducked her head and blushed, so he figured he had a pretty good shot.
***
He woke up to find an unfamiliar weight on his arm and a face full of blonde hair. He tried to remember what had happened the night before, but all his mind was producing was the woman who’d sung with Teyla’s voice and smiled at him with her grin. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was when you woke up with the girl (a quick check confirmed that the female form lying against his chest was still young enough to be called a girl though, hopefully, old enough to be legal) you’d picked up in a bar the night before, so he carefully extricated himself from her embrace and stumbled towards the bathroom, praying she’d be gone when he got back.
No such luck.
He stood in the doorway of his bedroom for a moment, just watching her sleep. It had been a long time since he’d watched a woman sleep. Teyla usually woke before him, and when she didn’t, she woke as soon as he moved at all. He’d never thought to miss the simple act of watching your lover completely relaxed. He wondered what Teyla looked like completely relaxed. He couldn’t picture it. Even when she meditated, she had a tense sort of alertness about her, as though she could spring out of her relaxed pose and pin you to the floor in three simple moves.
Shaking his head against the memory, he turned back to the bathroom and stepped into the shower, carefully avoiding glancing at the mirror. He knew what he looked like this morning. He’d seen that look too many times since returning.
When he finished his shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist and returned to his room, relieved to find his bed empty. He slipped into a clean pair of boxers and stepped out into his living room, only to find the blonde sitting on his couch, wearing the blue shirt he’d discarded the night before, reading his newspaper.
She looked up when he came in and smiled. “Hey.”
“Hey...um...”
“Jessica.”
“Yeah, I knew that.” He blushed.
She smiled again and shook her head. “No you didn’t. That’s okay.”
For some reason, this annoyed him. “I did, really. You think I go to bed with a girl if I don’t know her name?”
She shrugged, but didn’t look upset. “I think you did last night.”
He tried to remember if she’d told him her name or not. He vaguely remembered being introduced to the whole table. He shifted his weight awkwardly. “So...”
“So.”
She was still smiling.
“Do you want breakfast or something? I think I’ve got some cereal. Um...but there’s no milk.”
“Toast?”
“Toast I can do.”
He went to the kitchen, grateful for an excuse to get out of the room. As he put the bread into the toaster, he heard her in the bathroom. His default politeness took over and he called out, “Feel free to use the shower if you want. I think there are some clean towels in the closet in the hall.”
A few seconds later she replied, “Thanks! Keep the toast warm for me.” Then he heard the water start.
By the time she was finished, he’d collected himself enough to be able to face her without stammering too much. They ate their toast across the table from each other in silence. Lorne looking slightly sheepish and Jessica smiling kindly at him from time to time over the apricot jam.
When they finished, Lorne carried their dishes to the sink and Jessica, who was still wearing his shirt, went back to his room. He panicked for a moment, wondering if she was going to stay all day, but she came out in a few minutes dressed and smiling and way too cheerful to have been as drunk as Lorne had thought the night before.
“I should go. I’ve got a study group this afternoon.”
“Yeah, okay.”
As he walked her to the door, every lesson on gentlemanly behavior his mom and the Air Force had instilled in him kicked in. “Um...if you wanna...”
She turned to him and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t expecting anything from you.”
He looked at her closely. She seemed genuinely okay with everything. “I’m really sorry. I don’t usually do this sort of thing.”
“I figured. You seem like a decent guy. When you get your shit figured out, you should try this again. A guy like you deserves to be happy.”
Lorne stared at her for a moment. Wasn’t this supposed to be his speech? Telling her she was a great girl and that there was a great guy out there for her, it just wasn’t him?
“Thanks?”
She laughed now, sweet and girlish and untouched by fear or war or pain or loss, and Lorne suddenly wanted very much to make sure she stayed that way.
“You’re welcome.” She held out her hand, and Lorne shook it. “Good luck, Lorne.”
“You too, Jessica.”
He watched her walk down the stairs and out of the building, blonde ponytail swinging behind her, all youthful dreams and cheerful smiles and possibilities.
And Lorne suddenly realized what made the fight against the Ori worthwhile. In Atlantis, they’d been fighting to bring peace and safety to a galaxy that had grown up watchful and apprehensive. Here they were fighting so that girls like Jessica could sleep peacefully in the safety they’d always known. The hopelessness and the secrecy were all part of that.
Lorne knew that part of him would always think of Atlantis as home, miss the city that spoke to him in half-whispers, the ocean that surrounded him on all sides, the friendship and love of those he’d met there, but for the first time since coming back, he didn’t resent the people of Earth.
His work still seemed hopeless, and he still couldn’t see an end to it, but now he finally understood what he was trying to protect. And for now, that would be enough to get him by.
fin
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Pairing: Lorne/OFC, mention of Lorne/Teyla
Word Count: 3325
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me...sadly
Feedback: yes, please.
Summary: Lorne has trouble adjusting to life on Earth. Set during The Return, pt. 1
A/N: title comes from a song by Carbon Leaf.
Lorne stood in front of his open closet feeling vaguely like a thirteen-year old girl before a junior high dance. It wasn’t that he cared so much what he wore tonight; it was just that he was still unused to having so many options.
In Atlantis his closet had been full of mostly uniforms. One service dress, one BDU, Earth-standard, and several Atlantis uniforms. For civilian clothes, he had three button-down shirts, four t-shirts, three pairs of pants (black, khaki and jeans) and a sports jacket, just in case. He hadn’t once needed anything else.
He’d been back for a little over a month now, and he still couldn’t get used to the options. He wasn’t a clotheshorse by any means, but he did have a well-stocked closet. He sighed, gave up, and reached in, grabbing the first shirt his hands could find.
It was his blue button-down from Atlantis.
He sighed again, crumpled it up and decided to go for a t-shirt. Rifling through his dresser drawer, he pulled out a soil-colored shirt and smiled ruefully. He hadn’t brought this one to Atlantis, but after seeing McKay’s “I’m with genius” shirt, he’d wished he had. Seemed he couldn’t get away from reminders today.
Feeling somewhat defeated, he pulled the shirt over his head and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d have enjoyed watching McKay try to explain this one to Teyla and Ronon. He smiled again, this time there was only a hint of wistfulness in the amusement as he slid his fingers over the blue letters proclaiming “Geologists do it in the dirt.”
For his purposes tonight, it was weirdly appropriate.
***
Earlier that day, he’d come back to the SGC after another hellish mission and headed straight for the locker room to change after his post-mission physical and debriefing.
All his missions were hellish these days. When he’d left for Atlantis, his team had thought he was crazy.
“Space vampires, man.” Janson had said, as though they hadn’t been fighting cliche-spouting drama-queen aliens who posed as gods from every conceivable polytheistic Earth religion for the past seven years.
And when he’d first come back, he’d thought they were right. He’d been out there, doing things, saving two galaxies from a fate worse than death, one he’d witnessed too many times not to be jaded about everything else. Nothing the SGC was doing could possibly compare to facing down a Wraith hive ship. And he’d have given anything to be back there, even if it meant coming face to face with a Wraith queen again.
He’d been wrong though. Not wrong to want to go back. He still wanted that. Wrong to think that fighting the Wraith was the most challenging job in two galaxies. Fighting the Ori was worse. Much worse.
When they’d been in Atlantis, though there was a feeling that if the Ancients couldn’t defeat the Wraith, they certainly didn’t stand a chance, there was still this sort of hubris that led them to believe that, eventually, they’d come up with something that would turn the tide in their favor. But with the Ori, Lorne just didn’t see that happening. The Ori and their armies had greater numbers (growing every day) and far superior technology, not to mention the superhuman abilities of the priors and the Orici. It was hard to see the war as anything but hopeless.
And then there was the secrecy. Sure in Pegasus they’d had to keep Atlantis’s survival to themselves, but they could talk freely about the Wraith and the stargate. As long as you didn’t talk to the natives about Earth or Atlantis, you never had to worry about slipping up. And there was never that awkward, “So, what do you do for a living?” question. Having the secret of the entire stargate program hanging over his head was beginning to wear on him.
He walked across the room and stood in front of his locker.
His locker.
Colonel Edwards had gone so far as to make sure Lorne had the same locker he’d had when he left. Somehow that little familiarity felt even stranger than everything that had changed.
As he changed into his civilian clothes (an Air Force t-shirt and one of four pairs of jeans he now had access to), he ran over the past few days in his mind. It was the kids that got him mostly. In Pegasus, the children had been relatively safe. The Wraith didn’t want to feed on them until they reached adulthood, so the only worry they had was being orphaned, and most communities were quick to find them new homes if they were.
But the Ori were well aware that threatening someone directly isn’t half as effective as threatening their loved ones. So whatever plague or disaster the priors unleashed on a planet usually struck the children first. People were quick to accept Origin if they thought it would save their kids, and Lorne couldn’t say he blamed them.
The planet they’d visited today had been another loss. Another addition to the Ori’s growing foothold in the Milky Way. But the only thing Lorne could bring himself to regret was that the people hadn’t caved until after the little girl who’d been following his team around had fallen victim to a “sign from the gods.”
She was too damn young to die. The frustration of it all made him slam his locker shut, and the noise of it surprised him, but he was more surprised to find that he was not alone.
A marine sergeant stood in the middle of the room, watching him. Lorne nodded, “Sergeant.”
The marine nodded back, “Sir.”
Lorne read the name on his BDUs. Bates. Something clicked in his memory. Sergeant Bates had been with the initial group of expedition members. He’d been attacked just prior to the siege. Lorne thought he remembered something about a medically-induced coma, but he hadn’t heard anything more, except that Bates had been shipped back to Earth with the Daedelus to recover.
There were a lot of stories about Bates on Atlantis. Most of them were not flattering. He’d been a hard-ass. A stereotypical marine. And he’d been suspicious of Teyla, which hadn’t earned him many friends. But when the men from his team talked about their former leader, they had the same bright-eyed, hero-worshiping look that a lot of the science staff had when they talked about Sheppard. He didn’t leave men behind, and that was the highest compliment you could give someone in Atlantis.
It occurred to Lorne, as he stood staring intently at the sergeant, that here was a man who knew what he was going through. He’d been sent away from Atlantis against his will too. He’d been stuck here, fighting an unbeatable enemy in a world that was doing its best to make a place for people who didn’t fit anymore. If Bates had survived, maybe Lorne could too.
Lorne noticed that Bates was standing at attention and he said, “As you were, Sergeant.”
Bates’ shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly. Lorne couldn’t help but smirk. It was no wonder he’d made enemies on a base that adored Sheppard and his lazy, laid-back authority. Lorne wondered how Bates had lasted in the stargate program at all. Maybe that was the key.
There was an unspoken rule at the SGC that you didn’t talk about uncomfortable issues off-duty, so Lorne silently retrieved his duffle from the floor and made his way to the door. He was almost out, his hand hovering above the door handle, when he realized that there were some times when the normal rules simply didn’t apply, and this was definitely one of them.
He turned slowly towards Bates, who was still standing, nearly at attention, watching Lorne with a studiously blank face.
“How do you do it?”
Lorne didn’t have to elaborate. Bates knew exactly what he meant.
“You just do, Sir.”
Lorne sighed. It seemed that was all he would get today. But as he pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway, he heard a low whisper behind him, “And some days, you don’t.”
***
Lorne had chosen the bar for two reasons. One, it was within walking distance of his apartment, and he still hadn’t gotten around to buying a car. And two, it was a dive.
It wasn’t that hard to find a decent bar in Colorado Springs, but for Lorne’s purposes tonight, a dive would be more appropriate.
He had two reasons for going out tonight, and they corresponded with his reasons for choosing this particular bar. He wanted to get drunk (hence the walking, not driving, distance), and he wanted to get laid (hence the dive).
It wasn’t his usual MO. Whatever rumors had circulated Atlantis about his all-American look being the perfect cover for some deviant sexual behavior, Lorne was actually a decent guy. He wasn’t the type to go out looking for a one night stand. And he hadn’t been with anyone since he’d gotten back to Earth.
He’d tried dating, sort of. Janson’s wife had set him up with a friend of hers, but she’d caught him on a bad night, and, well, he didn’t think he’d be hearing from her again.
He’d had a lot of bad nights since coming back. At first he told himself it was because he finally had access to good beer in unrationed quantities. Eventually, he admitted to himself that he was drinking way more than he should, but since he never drank the night before a mission, he decided it wasn’t really a problem. He’d seen Sheppard coming into the SGC bearing obvious signs of a hangover more than once, so he knew he wasn’t alone in trying to wash Atlantis from his mind with alcohol.
He paused for a moment at the door of the bar, wondering when he’d become the kind of guy who goes out by himself on a Friday just looking to get drunk and find some company. Deciding these were thoughts better suited to the daylight, he pushed the door open and made his way inside.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. He’d been right about this place being a dive. There were maybe three tables littered around the room, and an ancient pool table stood in the back next to the juke box. The bartender, a paunchy, middle-aged man in a stained white t-shirt, looked up when he walked in, polishing a glass with a rag that looked like it probably wasn’t doing anything except making the glass dirtier. Two men stood by the pool table, with a third lining up a shot. There was another man sitting at the bar. No women yet, but it was still early, so Lorne walked up to the bar.
“Double scotch, straight up and whatever ale you have on tap.”
The bartender nodded and pulled Lorne’s drinks. Lorne paid for them and downed the scotch in one long gulp, shaking his head against the burn as it slid down his throat. The ale tasted like pisswater, and Lorne found himself longing for the spicy coolness of the Athosian brew Halling had made on the mainland. He told himself that he wasn’t there to reminisce and drained the rest of the glass, slapping another ten dollars on the counter in front of the bartender and saying, “Same again.”
He was in the middle of his second round when he noticed a group of men setting up a primitive sound system across from the pool table. He watched them unpacking speakers and a microphone, wondering how on earth a dive like this had scored a live music act, and hoping that it wasn’t going to be karaoke. Though that might attract some college girls, and if he remembered anything from his days at the Academy, it was that there was no one easier than a drunk college girl.
As the men set up their equipment, several more patrons trickled in. Soon the bar was half full and a thin thirty-ish woman had joined Lorne’s friend behind the bar. The juke box, which had been playing bad honky-tonk since Lorne walked in, fell silent, and the woman behind the bar took the makeshift stage to introduce the band, which turned out to be one woman and her guitar.
Lorne kept his back to the stage until she started to sing. He snorted when he recognized the first song, Norah Jones, if he wasn’t mistaken. He turned slowly on his stool, the alcohol warming his belly making him slightly unsteady on the rickety seat. He watched her through the first number, her caramel-colored hair falling gently around her face as her rich alto flooded into the dark room, fingers caressing the strings in a rhythmic seduction. She kept her eyes on the guitar, but when the song ended, and the room broke into applause, she raised her head and Lorne thought she must be looking right at him. She smiled, and the flash of teeth was so familiar that Lorne felt his stomach lurch.
When she started her next song, he deliberately turned on his seat and snapped his fingers for the bartender.
“I need another.”
She took a break after her first set, and Lorne nearly bought her a drink, but he was not quite so drunk yet that he didn’t remember that he’d come here to forget. Instead, he turned his attention to the college girl who had just sidled her way up to the bar next to him, ordering drinks for her table of friends. He wasn’t sure how drunk he’d have to get her for her to agree to go home with a man more than a decade older than her, but when he smiled at her, she ducked her head and blushed, so he figured he had a pretty good shot.
***
He woke up to find an unfamiliar weight on his arm and a face full of blonde hair. He tried to remember what had happened the night before, but all his mind was producing was the woman who’d sung with Teyla’s voice and smiled at him with her grin. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was when you woke up with the girl (a quick check confirmed that the female form lying against his chest was still young enough to be called a girl though, hopefully, old enough to be legal) you’d picked up in a bar the night before, so he carefully extricated himself from her embrace and stumbled towards the bathroom, praying she’d be gone when he got back.
No such luck.
He stood in the doorway of his bedroom for a moment, just watching her sleep. It had been a long time since he’d watched a woman sleep. Teyla usually woke before him, and when she didn’t, she woke as soon as he moved at all. He’d never thought to miss the simple act of watching your lover completely relaxed. He wondered what Teyla looked like completely relaxed. He couldn’t picture it. Even when she meditated, she had a tense sort of alertness about her, as though she could spring out of her relaxed pose and pin you to the floor in three simple moves.
Shaking his head against the memory, he turned back to the bathroom and stepped into the shower, carefully avoiding glancing at the mirror. He knew what he looked like this morning. He’d seen that look too many times since returning.
When he finished his shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist and returned to his room, relieved to find his bed empty. He slipped into a clean pair of boxers and stepped out into his living room, only to find the blonde sitting on his couch, wearing the blue shirt he’d discarded the night before, reading his newspaper.
She looked up when he came in and smiled. “Hey.”
“Hey...um...”
“Jessica.”
“Yeah, I knew that.” He blushed.
She smiled again and shook her head. “No you didn’t. That’s okay.”
For some reason, this annoyed him. “I did, really. You think I go to bed with a girl if I don’t know her name?”
She shrugged, but didn’t look upset. “I think you did last night.”
He tried to remember if she’d told him her name or not. He vaguely remembered being introduced to the whole table. He shifted his weight awkwardly. “So...”
“So.”
She was still smiling.
“Do you want breakfast or something? I think I’ve got some cereal. Um...but there’s no milk.”
“Toast?”
“Toast I can do.”
He went to the kitchen, grateful for an excuse to get out of the room. As he put the bread into the toaster, he heard her in the bathroom. His default politeness took over and he called out, “Feel free to use the shower if you want. I think there are some clean towels in the closet in the hall.”
A few seconds later she replied, “Thanks! Keep the toast warm for me.” Then he heard the water start.
By the time she was finished, he’d collected himself enough to be able to face her without stammering too much. They ate their toast across the table from each other in silence. Lorne looking slightly sheepish and Jessica smiling kindly at him from time to time over the apricot jam.
When they finished, Lorne carried their dishes to the sink and Jessica, who was still wearing his shirt, went back to his room. He panicked for a moment, wondering if she was going to stay all day, but she came out in a few minutes dressed and smiling and way too cheerful to have been as drunk as Lorne had thought the night before.
“I should go. I’ve got a study group this afternoon.”
“Yeah, okay.”
As he walked her to the door, every lesson on gentlemanly behavior his mom and the Air Force had instilled in him kicked in. “Um...if you wanna...”
She turned to him and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t expecting anything from you.”
He looked at her closely. She seemed genuinely okay with everything. “I’m really sorry. I don’t usually do this sort of thing.”
“I figured. You seem like a decent guy. When you get your shit figured out, you should try this again. A guy like you deserves to be happy.”
Lorne stared at her for a moment. Wasn’t this supposed to be his speech? Telling her she was a great girl and that there was a great guy out there for her, it just wasn’t him?
“Thanks?”
She laughed now, sweet and girlish and untouched by fear or war or pain or loss, and Lorne suddenly wanted very much to make sure she stayed that way.
“You’re welcome.” She held out her hand, and Lorne shook it. “Good luck, Lorne.”
“You too, Jessica.”
He watched her walk down the stairs and out of the building, blonde ponytail swinging behind her, all youthful dreams and cheerful smiles and possibilities.
And Lorne suddenly realized what made the fight against the Ori worthwhile. In Atlantis, they’d been fighting to bring peace and safety to a galaxy that had grown up watchful and apprehensive. Here they were fighting so that girls like Jessica could sleep peacefully in the safety they’d always known. The hopelessness and the secrecy were all part of that.
Lorne knew that part of him would always think of Atlantis as home, miss the city that spoke to him in half-whispers, the ocean that surrounded him on all sides, the friendship and love of those he’d met there, but for the first time since coming back, he didn’t resent the people of Earth.
His work still seemed hopeless, and he still couldn’t see an end to it, but now he finally understood what he was trying to protect. And for now, that would be enough to get him by.
fin
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Actually, I think a lot of my stories turn out to be character pieces, even if I didn't mean them to be :).
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Thanks a lot for this wonderful Lorne fic! I love it despite the sadness and the feeling of loss that overshadows everything for Lorne on Earth. Yet the ending is so full of hope and life that I know he will be ok. :)