Title: The Hot Date
Rating: Teen (for sexual suggestion)
Length: 2500 words
Episode Reference: Intruder
Summary: Elizabeth learns more than she wants to know about John's extracurricular activities.

A/N: This was written for the Intruder challenge at the Livejournal community Gate Haven, and for Annie, whose brilliant idea the challenge was. It is presented with thanks to Annie and Cha Oseye Tempest Thrain for beta-reading, and apologies for being too lazy to incorporate those of their suggestions that required a great deal of thought. It is also dedicated to Mylittleredgirl, just because.

"One more thing, people." General Landry raised his voice to be heard over the sounds of the assembled group as they prepared to break for lunch. "The Atlantis expedition members have been cleared by both Medical and Security to leave the base. Following the briefing at 1400 hours today, you are on your own until Monday at 0900." Landry looked from person to person, lingering on the civilians, with an expression that said 0900 meant 0900, if not 0845, then dismissed them for lunch.

Elizabeth was pleased for her team. After days of seemingly endless debriefings, medical exams, and section meetings, they could all use the break. She, for one, wouldn't really feel like she was on Earth again until she could drive a car to a store and purchase something – anything, anything she wanted. No bartering, no negotiating, and no shopkeepers with underground bunkers and secret nuclear arsenals. It was surprising to realize how much she had taken grocery stores for granted before Atlantis. She couldn't wait to pick up her personal effects from base storage just to have her ATM card.

With a smile on her face, Elizabeth turned to exit the room and was suddenly appalled at her own insensitivity. Carson and John looked less than happy. And why should they be? Colorado Springs was never home to them. What good was a weekend off if you had nowhere to go?

Elizabeth made up her mind at once to ask them both to join her for dinner.I'd better call Simon and tell him to set four places, she thought. He might not be crazy about spending the first night she was allowed to leave the base with company, but Elizabeth was sure he'd understand. When she called him the day they arrived, he told her there was something important they needed to discuss, but he assured her it was nothing that couldn't wait. She just hoped he had food in the house for her to cook! Without knowing when she would be cleared to leave the base, he might not be prepared for company.Maybe I'll just ask him to make reservations, she thought with a smile.

Before she could make her way across the room to issue her invitations to Carson and the Major, General Landry asked her to stay behind for a few minutes review the agenda for the afternoon meeting.

Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth entered the crowded commissary. She scanned the room. John Sheppard was on the far side of the room talking to someone she couldn't quite see through the crowd. Dr. Beckett headed right towards her with his lunch tray.

"I'm about to get a table, Dr. Weir," Carson said by way of greeting. "Would you like to join me for lunch?"

"I'm afraid I have to take lunch back to my temporary office, Carson, but I wanted to ask you if you'd like to join me for dinner in town tonight."

"I'm sorry, my dear, but I've just made arrangements to drive into Denver to see my cousin Brendan and his family." Carson shifted the weight of his tray uncomfortably. "I hope you do have other company."

"Yes," Elizabeth said with a relieved laugh. "I was afraid you didn't. I didn't know that you had any family nearby."

"We were never very close, but he's the only family I'll be seeing for a while, and his mum will carry a message to mine. It'll be quite nice to hear someone speak with a proper accent for a time. I hope you enjoy your weekend."

"I'm sure I will. You, too, Carson."

While it was great that Carson had somewhere to go, suddenly the idea of dinner alone with Simon and John struck her as very awkward. Still, she couldn't let John mope around the base all weekend. She set off to find him just as the man he was conversing with turned and walked away.

She recognized Sergeant Thompkins, one of the few men she remembered as a troublemaker from her time as the leader of the SGC. Elizabeth remembered reprimanding him for sneaking SG-9 candy and beer while the group was under medical quarantine. There was no proof, but she suspected Thompkins was a one-man black market of the SGC. She wondered what he wanted with Major Sheppard.

Elizabeth walked to the end of the line and picked up her tray. John was a few paces ahead of her, blocked from her view by two scientists in white lab coats. She decided to get her lunch and speak to him on her way out.

Elizabeth stopped short of crashing into the person in front of her when the two scientists came to an abrupt halt. Rodney McKay had cut in front of them and squeezed into the line. "Excuse me, you don't mind do you?" he said over his shoulder as an afterthought. It never ceased to amaze Elizabeth how much pleasure Rodney seemed to get from treating other scientists as if they were barely visible.

"Major Sheppard," she overheard Rodney say, "I was wondering if you have any plans for the weekend. I don't have anything important to do – well, I mean of course I have important things to do here on the base, but that would defeat the purpose of taking the weekend off. I mean that I have nothing important to do at home, and I could show you around the area if you'd like."

"Home?" Sheppard said quizzically, "You were stationed in Antarctica before we left, and weren't you in Russia before that?"

"Oh, I keep a little place here. You know, they've needed me urgently so many times to solve whatever mess Colonel Carter found herself in ­– does that have citrus?" Rodney was momentarily distracted by the lunch lady and some suspicious-looking chicken.

John waited for Rodney to finish explaining exactly how fatal his citrus allergy was before answering his question. "I appreciate the offer, McKay, but I'm set. I have a great weekend ahead of me."

Elizabeth heard her own surprise reflected in Rodney's voice. "Really?" he said, "You say that like you've got a hot date."

The scientists in front of her came to a stop, and John moved farther away as he spoke. Elizabeth could just make out his reply. "Oh, yeah! Thompkins is setting me up with Maddie."

Elizabeth told herself she was relieved. John wouldn't be alone, and she could have a nice romantic weekend with Simon. As she finished gathering her lunch and set off for her office, she couldn't help but wonder what this Maddie looked like.

As the afternoon meeting broke up, Elizabeth noted the reversal. Now Carson and John were smiling, and she was the one who looked less than happy. She had tried and tried, but could not track Simon down to let him know she was coming home for the evening.

Elizabeth slowly organized the papers in her portfolio and gathered her things. Other people quickly cleared out of the room, ready to go home for the weekend. She heard Rodney and John say goodbye to Dr. Beckett, and soon only a few people milled about the room.

"So, what time do the games begin?" Rodney asked John in a loud, conspiratorial whisper.

"At 17:00 in my quarters," John said, not bothering to adopt the pretense.

In his quarters, Elizabeth wondered? This Maddie person must be a fellow officer then, or they'd be meeting off base.Do I know her? In her mind's eye, she began running through the female officers she had supervised at the SGC. No one came to mind. John and Rodney began moving towards the door, and Elizabeth followed at a discreet distance.

"I was kind of thinking…" Rodney trailed off, as though he was too nervous to say what he had in mind.

"What?" John asked. "You want to get in on this?"

"Yes!" Rodney admitted quickly. Elizabeth almost dropped her folders; she turned away and began to straighten them.

"Are you talking about watching, or joining in?" John's tone was cautious, as though there was only one right answer, but he wasn't giving away which it was.

"Joining in." Rodney rarely sounded that enthusiastic about anything that didn't have the power to wipe out two-thirds of a solar system.

"Yeah, alright then," John agreed. "Having people watching makes me too self-conscious. I like it better when we all just go at it."

They could have knocked Elizabeth over just by whistling in her direction. She didn't consider herself a prude, but to discuss such things in the sober light of day – or the sickly light of the briefing room, as the case may be – shocked her. She found herself having to readjust her ideas about John and Rodney; this was not the kind of…interest she would have expected from either of them.

A new scenario of what dinner with John and Simon might have been like flashed across her mind, and while she worked to scrub it from her brain, a hand tapped her shoulder. Elizabeth glanced quickly behind her, just long enough to ascertain that it was John, then turned away again, busying herself with her folders in an effort to compose herself. "Yes, Major Sheppard?" She was proud of how casual she managed to sound.

"You seem like you're in another world. Is everything okay?"

Elizabeth pursed her lips and looked off into the distance. It was very like him to pick up on small changes in her behavior and to be concerned and protective if he believed there was something wrong. Normally, she really enjoyed that about John, but at that moment? Not so much. She couldn't explain her odd behavior – like the fact that she was still standing with her back to him, for one – without admitting she'd been eavesdropping. She found herself growing irritated at him for making her lie. In fact, she found herself plunging headlong into an unexpected snit.

Whirling towards him, she smiled her most practiced smile – the one she used with cranky foreign diplomats when she had had just about enough – and replied, "So, I hear you've got a hot date tonight."

John looked thrown off by the sudden change of subject, but just for a moment. "Word spreads quickly, huh? Yeah, I'm really psyched."

"Good for you," Elizabeth said too-pleasantly. Before she could say anything else, she found herself distracted by his hands.

He clenched and unclenched his fist several times, then began wiggling and stretching his fingers. "I'm probably pretty rusty, though." He steepled his fingers and pressed. "I'm thinking I should go spend some time warming up."

That was too much, even for Elizabeth's skills at tact and diplomacy. She couldn't help the little offended huff that escaped as she pushed past him. "By all means," she called back as she marched out of the room. "Enjoy yourself."

Her evening couldn't have been worse. Elizabeth never managed to get through to Simon. She got home just in time to find him rushing out the door for an emergency. She snapped at him for not returning her calls, and he only smiled and kissed her on the cheek on his way out. Then, of course, she felt like an absolute heel and wanted nothing more than to make it up to him; the reasons she was snappish had little to do with him at all. But a few hours later, he called and said he was likely to be gone all night, and that she shouldn't wait up.

She tried to go to sleep, but the sound of the crickets in the yard – a sound she used to love – irritated her. There were no crickets on Atlantis, no insects at all so far from the planet's mainland. Which was a good thing, she thought, because John hated bugs.

Realizing that she wasn't going to sleep, Elizabeth dressed and returned to the base. She decided she might as well use the time productively, rather than sitting around trying not to think about either Simon or John. She worked in her office for several hours, then just after midnight, decided to sleep in her assigned quarters on base for the night. As she walked down the corridor to her room, she was surprised to meet Major Sheppard leaving his.

John seemed just as surprised to see her. He stopped in his tracks, his hand still on the knob of the door he'd just closed behind him, "What are you doing here? I thought you went home."

"Crickets," she said tiredly, as though that should make sense to him. Oddly, it did. He nodded sympathetically. Some part of her wanted to ask about his date, but she really didn't want to know, so she settled for asking, "Where are you headed at this hour?"

"Oh, we're still going strong. I was just going down to the commissary in search of a midnight snack for the team."

Elizabeth was confused. "The team?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the loud noises then coming from his quarters – a combination of groans and howls. From the sound of it, there had to be at least four people in there. Elizabeth's eyes widened. Her mind struggled to form the thought, Were they… were they having… an orgy? On the base?

The astonishment must have shown on her face, because she realized John was looking at her with concern. "Are you okay?"

"I just… I didn't know that you…" Elizabeth stammered for a moment, and then gave up. She took a deep breath, stood up straight with her arms at her sides, and said, "Yes, I'm fine. Goodnight, Major." She strode off down the corridor.

When she was a few feet away, John called out, "You know, a lot of adults do play video games nowadays. It's not just for kids."

Elizabeth stopped in her tracks, and turned to look at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. "Video games?" she repeated.

"Yeah, John Madden Football. Thompkins let me borrow his PS2."

"Madden," she parroted, not just in the sense that she repeated it, and also in the sense that she squawked.

"Yeesss," John said suspiciously. "What did you think we were doing?"

Elizabeth smiled, both in relief and chagrin. "Nothing," she lied, but he narrowed his eyes at her dubiously and she felt the need to embellish. "I was just, umm, surprised by how many people were involved. Knowing you, I assumed you'd want it to be just you and Madden."

John closed the distance between them in a few steps. He leaned down until his lips were next to her ear and spoke in a confidential whisper. "That is the way I like it." He stood back and gave her a quick grin, and Elizabeth had the distinct feeling she was being laughed at. As he turned and walked away – in search of snacks for 'the team' – Elizabeth realized she didn't mind at all. In fact, she was laughing too.