[email protected]
Elizabeth smiled widely. �You are in cahoots with Jack!� she exclaimed.
�Just a little,� John said sheepishly. �But you deserve a day off, Elizabeth. You deserve a lot more than that, but it took a lot of work to swing a few hours. And, for the record, this conspiracy goes beyond just myself and the General. Samantha, Doctor Jackson, and Carson were in on it, too. They ended up doing most of the hard work�apparently I�m not globally renowned like they are. Samantha managed to score a deal with President Hayes and Carson, apparently, has quite the relationship with the bigwigs in the British Isles. General O�Neill claims that the Russian ambassador was fine with taking the whole day; something about cherry blossoms and national monuments. And Jackson� well, he basically swayed everyone else. Seriously, watching the guy work� if he�s half as good at dealing with people on an intergalactic scale as he is on a global one� life is going to be a lot easier when we get home.�
�I can�t believe you guys did this for me. This is so incredibly sweet,� Elizabeth said.
John cleared his throat, feeling more than somewhat awkward about what he was about to say. �Well� I can�t speak for everyone� but, speaking for me� you definitely deserve it. And more. And, I realize I haven�t exactly taken great strides in making your life easier� so� thank you for putting up with me� and sorry for� all the crap I make you put up with.�
The Lantian delegation had been on Earth for nine days when Carson left for home to see his mother and the rest of his family and friends. John had suggested to Rodney that he look up his sister who he�d sent the tape to when everyone was saying goodbye to their loved ones, but Rodney had let out an unintelligible growl before hunching over a laptop, his spine curved at an angle that made John�s back ache in sympathy. It wasn�t until later that John found out that Rodney�s message had been among the data that was garbled by the compression codec and therefore had never reached his sister.
Sam was off-world on one of the wrap-up missions she�d said she had to go on, making sure that relations with other worlds would continue despite the fact that the main team would no longer be going through the �Gate, and Elizabeth was still in DC. John hadn�t heard from Elizabeth since their talk the day she�d had the morning off, though General O�Neill was sending updates to General Landry, which were shared at briefings that John attended.
Which, really, seemed to be all that John was doing. Attending briefings, hearing about the things his friends were doing, and spending a lot of time wandering the incredibly dull military-grey halls of the SGC. He�d wandered into a science lab by accident and, intrigued by the equations on the white board, had stayed to study them, finding a flaw and fixing it out of habit, and when the scientist whose lab John was in found him tinkering with the math on the board he was less than pleased. Until, of course, he discovered that John had solved the problem he had been having and that the reason his prototype wasn�t working was that his calculations were so incredibly off that he was lucky he hadn�t blown up the entire complex. After that John had learned to avoid the floors with the science labs on them, unless he was with Sam, because word had gotten around and suddenly every scientist on base wanted the math whiz Major Sheppard to do something for them, too. Not because they couldn�t do the math themselves, either, but because they all had some perverse desire to see John�s math skills in action. And, while John liked numbers, he didn�t like being a freak show exhibit. Besides, there was a reason he never went beyond masters in the courses of applied mathematics and practical mathematical theorem that he had taken between years at the Academy.
He had wanted to hold off on going into town until his friends could join him�he had promised Elizabeth that he would show her his old haunts, had planned to go out for some classic American cuisine and excellent imported beer with Rodney and Carson, and he and Sam had lists of movies that they wanted to watch and pick to pieces together�but, with everyone he was willing, if not eager, to spend time with busy doing other things, whether they be work related to personal, John was so incredibly bored that he was almost tempted to volunteer to take a few days leading a security detail on one of the scientific outposts that the SGC had set up, if only to get out of the Mountain for a few minutes.
Which was saying a lot since John had gone to some pretty creative lengths to avoid scientist babysitting detail over the past year.