Elizabeth glanced over at Walter who was staring intently at the screen in front of him. �Got it,� Walter confirmed.
�We�ve got it,� Elizabeth said turning back to face her Athosian and Czech friends. �It�s good to see you guys,� she said, feeling the tsunami of homesickness crash over her.
Arriving at the house�she was having a hard time thinking of it as hers since she could was having a hard time thinking of Earth as her home�Elizabeth debated the to-knock-or-not-to-knock question as she parked her car. It was, technically, her house, but she had never really called it home, and for the past year her home had been the halls of Atlantis, so the house, though it belonged to her, was more Simon�s than anyone else�s. The answer to the internal knocking debate was handed to her when she realized that she had got too many bags of food to carry and open the door at the same time.
After awkwardly pushing the doorbell button with her elbow Elizabeth waited, her arms full of heavy brown paper bags filled with Greek, Cantonese, and Italian food. Simon hadn�t answered when she called on her way back from the SGC so she had gone to three of their old stand-bys. Of course, they had never had all three types of food in one night, but Elizabeth was tired of military rations and a few of the not so delicious Athosian dishes that she was certain were made from sewer rat�though she had yet to encounter either sewers or rats anywhere in the vicinity of any Athosian�and so she had given in to gluttony and selected all of her past favourite dishes, as well as a few that she knew Simon favoured. Sam had recommended several places when Elizabeth has asked what restaurants were good, since she hadn�t eaten out much when she did live in Colorado Springs, spending most of her time at the SGC and eating in the Commissary and making food for herself if she happened to be home and hungry.
Besides, Elizabeth rationalized, the more they ate the less they could say things that they would regret.
Simon answered the door and his eyes visibly widened at all the bags Elizabeth was carrying. �You planning on throwing an �end of lockout� party?� he asked.
�What?� Elizabeth frowned.
�The NHL lockout. Which� you don�t know about because you haven�t been around for the past ten months,� Simon said, slowly coming to the realization that Elizabeth had no idea what he was talking about.
�Simon, do you think that, even if I was in this galaxy, I would know about a� whatever it is you�re talking about?� Elizabeth asked as she carried the bags, without any help from Simon, to the kitchen. �Or, for that matter, that I would care enough to throw a party when it ended?� Sports, after all, had never been Elizabeth�s thing. She had played volleyball when she was in high school, and she usually watched a few random events during the Olympics if she had the time�and access to a television set�but she was definitely not what anyone would call a sports fan.
Simon nodded. �Fair point,� he said as he went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of water.
Elizabeth took all the containers out of the bags and laid them out on the kitchen table before going to a cupboard to grab some plates. The cupboard she opened, though, was filled with coffee mugs, which she had kept above the coffee maker on the other side of the room. Three cupboards later�and with no help from Simon who was picking at a flaky filo pastry�Elizabeth found the plates, though they weren�t the ones she had had since she got her first place after college. Those plates had been heavy, white, with pale green vines of ivy decorating them. The plates that Simon had were large lightweight glass things with bunches of grapes bumping up all over the bottom. She decided not to even attempt to locate the cutlery drawer�it didn�t seem like anything was the way it had been before she left�and, even though she wasn�t wild about the idea, she just grabbed a plastic knife and fork that had been thrown into one of the bags and began filling her own plate, leaving Simon�s on the counter for when he stopped simply picking at the dishes in their containers, a habit of his that she had always hated.
Once her plate was full of the dishes she decided she wanted, Elizabeth took at seat at the counter, the table too full of food for anyone to sit there. Simon took the hint and filled his own plate, sticking to a few standard dishes�chicken souvlaki, the rest of his filo pastry, some spaghetti, and a large helping of plain white rice that he quickly drowned in four packages of soy sauce�and took a seat two stools down from where Elizabeth sat.
The fact that he kept some distance between them was not lost on Elizabeth, but she didn�t say anything about it. The situation was uncomfortable enough as it was.