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Elizabeth sighed. �How long are you going to be training?� she asked.
�No one�s actually said,� John admitted. �But I usually pick these things up pretty quick,� he added. He wasn�t bragging. He was simply stating a fact. In the time between Rodney showing him the Puddle Jumpers and Rodney and Elizabeth arriving, less than five minutes later, John had managed to figure our how to start a Jumper, cloak it, get it to hover in place, and, after a particularly random thought, how to do a barrel roll in place, though he couldn�t think of any tactical advantage a stationary barrel roll would have.
�I know,� Elizabeth said. �So, when you get back��
�It�s a date,� John promised. Immediately he cringed, regretting the term he�d used to define their plans. �Date� had too many connotations, most of them far more intimate than could be applied to their relationship that was, at most, a close friendship.
�Good,� Elizabeth said with a smile that was clearly evident in her voice.
One military transport, an extended meeting with General Landry at the SGC, and a rushed meal in the Commissary with SG-1 (which, strangely, was pleasant, much like the few meals that she and Sam and Daniel and Teal�c had had during the few months Elizabeth had been in charge of the SGC, with none of the tension that existed when John was around) later Elizabeth officially had twenty-four hours with nothing to do before she had to get back to the SGC to deal with the million and one things that needed to be taken care of before they could go back to Atlantis.
Her professional life was, for the most part, under control.
It was her personal life that was in turmoil.
Flirty conversations with John she could deal with. They�d happened pretty much since day one. He was a natural-born flirt, seemed to do it instinctively whenever he came across anyone with double-X chromosomes, and when she was around him something seemed to happen to her, like a switched was flipped in her brain, and she could do nothing more than give as give as good as she got. They always flirted, it came as naturally as breathing to the both of them when they were in the same room, or, as of late, talking to each other over the phone.
Flirty conversations she could deal with. Hell, even the sex dreams�which often left her shaking and unable to look John in the eye for at least a day afterwards�were something she could deal with. John Sheppard was a sexy man, she was a red-blooded female, and, until shortly before she went to Antarctica and met John, she�d been having more than half-decent sex on a fairly regular basis.
But the dream she had had that morning after their conversation was no simple lust-fuelled fantasy sequence.
It was freaking domestic.
The city was quiet�the ZPM didn�t give off the same soft hum that the Naqueda generators did�and Elizabeth had retired to her quarters early, not even taking any work with her when she left her office at the previously unheard of hour of 1700 hours. Even as she walked the familiar route to her quarters Elizabeth couldn�t understand why she was leaving her office at what was, to her, a sickeningly early hour without Carson and Kate Heightmeyer dragging her away kicking and screaming with conversations of therapy and high doses of tranquilizers passing between the medical doctor and the psychologist.
Passing her hand over the control crystals outside her door Elizabeth waited a second for the doors to open before moving forward again. She�d walked before waiting too many times, usually while doing work on the run, to not pause when a door was controlled by the three crystals and the city�s mental connection to it�s in habitants that Elizabeth didn�t even pretend to understand rather than the automatic doors that simply opened when they sensed a presence heading toward them.