(if you're all alone)

so he made his unhurried way back, whistling to himself, low and tuneless. As he turned the corner past the botany lab, he heard laughter and the murmur of conversation, so he decided to drop in and catch up on his idle chit-chat.

"Colonel," Lorne said placidly, hardly raising his head. He was dabbing at a canvas the size of a plate glass window, which was saying something in Atlantis, and Cadman was curled up in a papasan chair (who the hell had requisitioned a goddamn papasan chair?) wearing nothing but a smile.*

Some of the we-promise-they-won't-kill-you flora had been arranged behind Cadman, so she looked like a jungle princess reclining in her leafy bower. Despite her fine boned little frame, John knew she had no trouble projecting her inner lioness; it was clearly evident in the expression on her face in the painting Lorne was working on.

"This is what you do in your spare time?" John managed.

Lorne nodded incrementally and dabbed at his canvas again.

Cadman smirked and stretched her arms above her head. John tried not to pay too much attention.

"I posed with Teyla last week," she offered pertly, clearly eager to offer far, far too much information. "And Ronon before that."

At this point, Lorne's busy attention to the painting became actively staged, and John sighed and shook his head.

"Just remind me to wear a blindfold to the inevitable gallery showing, okay?"

This time, he squared his shoulders, dropped his head and made for the infirmary, stolidly ignoring any inviting sounds of lively interaction he passed along the way, steeling himself for a night of his own irritating company.

But when he got there, aside from the nightshift medical staff, the infirmary was empty.

Feeling sullen and somehow left out, John tried to console himself with countless games of sudoku, and then laptop pinball, and when the other John still failed to show, he closed the laptop, turned his bedside lamp off, punched his pillow and pretended he could sleep.

About an hour of semi-darkness spent listening to the soft pad of the med staff and the distant beep of medical scanners, the other John finally crept in. From the corner of his eye, John could see he was suspiciously rumpled, and his face was blank enough that he was plainly feeling guilty. Not I've-just-come-from-an-evening-of-sabotage guilty, but I'm-sneaking-back-from-a-night-of-good-times guilty.

Bastard, John thought uncharitably, and finally slept.

Bright and early the next morning, John wolfed down his breakfast and then nabbed John's tray out of his sleepy grasp and challenged him to a duel. The other John had looked wiped-out and blurry, but his face sharpened into a foxy grin and he accepted the challenge with zenlike calm. And then he stole his waffles back.

END


* Lorne's downtime hobbies suggested by what is possibly the funniest chat conversation ever held.