"The Last Changeling" -Tale the Fourth: New Wings
Title: "The Last Changeling"
Author: Taylor Dancinghands -taylor@tdancinghands.com
Characters: ?!Lorne, Dryad!Parrish, and in the background, Vampire!Sheppard, Werewolf!Zelenka, Changeling!Rodney... and Centaur!Carson, among others.
Pairings: Lorne/Parrish,
Category: slash, pre-slash, First time, AU
Spoilers: Early Season 2, mostly "Runner".
Warnings: explicit M/M sex depictions
Rating: NC-17
Archive: Generally yes, but please let me know where
Summary: Major Even Lorne comes to Atlantis, settles in, and learns something unexpected about his CO, and about himself.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never will, not claiming to. Just wanna play with 'em a little. Can't I, can't I, huh?
****
The Last Changeling
by Taylor Dancinghands
Tale the Fourth: "New Wings"
Major Evan Lorne was not proud of his first reaction to his new posting on Atlantis, but it was understandable. Three moths prior to his reassignment his grandmother had passed away and, upon her passing, delivered something of a bombshell that had thrown his entire family into turmoil and held serious repercussions for his career as well. Since his grandfather was seven years dead, no one would be able to grill him as to how he had not known that his wife was a full blooded Fae, a sylph, no less, but that did nothing to stop the recriminations. Evan had wanted no part of this burgeoning family feud, and had never been so glad of the limited leave time that had him back to the SGC only a couple of days after the funeral.
Lorne was definitely a by-the-book kind of guy, and so he’d reported the update in his family background as soon as he got back. Sylphs -a common variety of Air Spirit- weren’t on anyone’s dangerous Fae list, but the American military required the reporting of all otherworldly heritage in it’s soldiers, and Evan had no particular objection. He knew some guys tried to keep that stuff hidden, though he thought it foolish. The penalty for discovery was severe, and Lorne didn’t care for that sort of risk to his career. Only a few days after he’d made this report, however, Evan had started to have regrets.
He’d worked for his wings, god dammit, and he’d worked hard, but now it seemed that everyone around him had forgotten they had ever seen him busting his ass on the simulators or burning the midnight oil studying. “So that explains why you’re such an ace,” he heard, again and again, from both officers and peers, and frankly, it rankled. It came as just one more indignity then, when General Landry called him into his office to offer the ‘option’ of joining the Atlantis Expedition.
“What with your newly discovered heritage,” he’d said with the sort of thoughtless joviality that made Lorne have to remind himself that punching an officer -especially a General- would be really bad for his career. “I believe you’ll find that you... ‘fit in’ there quite well.”
Eventually, Evan had to admit that getting to fly a puddle jumper went a long way towards making up for giving up his X302, and he even got to fly those occasionally, when the Daedalus was in. It wasn’t that the posting was bad, it was just the reason he’d gotten it that bothered Lorne, and made it hard for him to feel like he really belonged there, regardless of Landry’s promise.
Lorne knew it was up to him to make his place on Atlantis, but he was working with a group of people who’d gone through hell together, and Lorne knew just what kinds of bonds an experience like that forms. He hadn’t been part of that, and would never be part of them. This wasn’t to say that Colonel Sheppard wasn’t a great CO. He was a decent, easygoing guy, and included Lorne in pretty much everything that he might want to be included in -both professionally and socially. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault that there remained a gulf between him and the rest of the expedition ‘old timers’.
Having the ATA gene did go a long way towards bridging that gulf, some days. Lorne supposed he had his Fae grandmother to thank for that, as the gene was more common among the Fae than mortals (though there were a few Fae Lorne knew of who didn’t have it -like the wolf, Zelenka- and a few mortals who did, like Sheppard and Sergant Stackhouse). Doctor Beckett had started to try and explain it to him when he’d asked, but Evan’d had to cut him off after only a few minutes.
“Sorry, Doc,” he’d apologised, “but this is all way outside my area of expertise, if you know what I mean. I’m just glad I can fly the jumpers and we can leave it at that.”
Beckett had only laughed and welcomed him to Atlantis, and he’d meant it too; Evan could tell. The folks here weren’t cliquish or standoffish; they meant to make him welcome. Evan just couldn’t seem to make himself feel comfortable, and while he wondered, on some days, just what it would take before he did, on others he was afraid he knew the answer too well. He ended up proving himself right, finally, on P3M-736, while looking for a renegade member of Sheppard’s team.
Lorne had learned the value of tolerating, and even paying mind to the SGC’s geeks in the field long ago, watching Dr Jackson put an Airforce Colonel in his place. He liked to think he’d learned that lesson well too, but Dr Rodney McKay had certainly put his ability to tolerate geekly quirks to the test. Truth be told though, Evan would have to say that on that day, he had failed.
At least, he should have had some clue that they were being followed before he got hit with the stunner, but McKay had distracted him and Ford had caught him completely flat footed. His last thoughts, as he crumpled to the ground, had been that he would deserve whatever he got when he woke up.
He’d been pretty sure, truth be told, that he was likely going to wake to the sight of a wraith coming to feed on him, or perhaps to find that he’d been wrapped in one of those cocoon things. He had definitely not expected to wake to the sight of his CO engaged in a hand to hand struggle with a wraith, and expected even less what he saw when Sheppard’s face had turned toward him during the split second it had taken him to snap the wraith’s neck.
Certainly it nipped in the bud his burgeoning questions about how a lone man could take on a wraith in unarmed combat, but it raised a whole host of others that his recovering-from-a-wraith-stunner brain was not at all prepared to cope with. It was all he could do to stare like an idiot as Sheppard let the creature’s body drop and his vampiric features -the disturbingly luminescent eyes, the prominent and deadly fangs- began to disappear. It was then that Sheppard spotted him watching, and the man’s, now all too human, face went carefully blank.
“Sir...” Lorne managed, thankful for the comfortable fall-back position of military decorum, to cover the most awkward of moments. Sheppard only took a single step forward, the dead wraith all but forgotten behind him, and regarded Lorne with an unreadable look.
“I won’t try to beg or bargain with you, Major,” Sheppard said at last. “You do whatever you think you need to, and I won’t interfere.”
Try as he might, Lorne could not make out what Sheppard seemed to expect of him, save for a note of resignation in his voice as he had spoken. Lorne knew that John Sheppard had to have been hiding what he was for a long time, and maybe he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a long time too. Still, Evan might have been half numb and woozy from being stunned, but he wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t an asshole.
“I, ah... I think you just saved my life, Sir,” he said at last, because he might have been a by-the-book kind of guy, but he also liked to think he knew what was important.
Sheppard said nothing at first, but he lifted his head, his expression going from carefully neutral to slightly curious. Eventually he shrugged, moving to stand at Lorne’s side. “You can make it up to me next mission,” he said casually. “You get a chance to see who nailed you?”
“Afraid not, Sir,” Lorne answered with honest chagrin, “and I have no idea where McKay went.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Sheppard replied, holding out a hand to help Lorne to his feet. This was a test too, Even could see as much, and he didn’t hesitate.
He reached up to take Sheppard’s hand, and was rewarded with a firm grip and strength that was no more than any mortal’s, pulling him to his feet. To his further chagrin, Loren found that standing on his own was still just a little beyond him, and so let Sheppard support him as they started on their way back to the jumper.
“Pretty sure it was Ford, and he probably took McKay with him,” Sheppard continued, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. “The other guy spotted him, says Ford more or less saved him from a wraith. This your first wraith stunner experience?”
“Um, yeah,” Lorne replied, struggling to keep up in more ways than one. “Been zatted, which hurts a helluvalot more, but I think the hangover on this is worse. Ah, what ‘other guy’?”
“‘Specialist Ronon Dex’,” Sheppard said. “Seems like he was in some sort of military at one point, but he’s been running from the wraith the last few years.”
As Sheppard updated Lorne of their situation, and the numb, tingling sensation from the wraith stunner slowly wore off, Evan began to wonder if the whole ‘your CO is really a vampire’ thing had been a stunner induced hallucination. Then Sheppard’s briefing came to an end and he paused, turning to look Lorne in the eye.
“So... I told myself I wasn’t going to ask,” he said after a moment. “But I don’t think I’m gonna manage...” Lorne nodded, aware of where this was going.
“It’s just...” it was decidedly odd, Evan decided, to see his usually confident and up-beat CO become suddenly hesitant. “You don’t look like a guy who’s ready to turn his CO in for being an unreported Class D Fae...”
“Probably because I’m not,” Lorne answered, honestly enough.
“No?” As uncertain as his answer seemed, Lorne could hear the relief that colored his commander’s voice.
“There is that whole ‘saving my life’ thing,” Lorne pointed out. “Plus... I guess I never much liked the idea of being a hypocrite.”
“How so?” Evan had never before noticed how well Sheppard tended to hide himself before, behind the very cordial and relaxed front he showed everyone, but he noticed now. Now that front had slipped, and Evan knew he was finally getting a glimpse of something few people ever saw -a man who worried about his command, and cared, deeply, for the people under him, and what they thought of him.
“You know why I got this assignment?” Lorne asked in turn. Sheppard shook his head.
“It’s supposed to be a volunteer posting,” he said. Lorne replied with a bitter laugh.
“Yeah, well, when General Landry ‘suggests’ that you might want to volunteer for a posting,” he said, “it isn’t exactly voluntary.”
“Fuck me!” Sheppard said with honest outrage. “Why?”
“You heard about my grandma, right?” Lorne answered. Sheppard had to actually think for a moment, and Lorne considered that his CO had taken in a lot of new personnel lately, and his profile might not have seemed that unusual.
“She’s where you got your Fae blood?” Sheppard replied, thinking out loud. “Oh, wait, you’re the guy who just found out a few months ago, right? And she was a Sylph?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Loren said with a sigh. “A bunch of my family really got their undies in a twist about it, but I thought, no big deal, right? I reported the change in my records, and figured it wouldn’t make any difference...” He trailed off with another sigh.
“I thought the SGC was supposed to have a more ‘enlightened attitude’ about Fae folk in the ranks,” Sheppard said.
“More enlightened than the Army, maybe,” Evan answered. “It was never anything big, not like the stuff that you hear about in the news. It’s just... it seems like everybody forgets you ever busted your ass, right along side them, for years. I’m not a good pilot because I worked at it, I’m good because it’s ‘natural’ for ‘my people’. Christ, Sheppard, I never met another Sylph in my life, that I know of. How can they be ‘my people’?”
“Cause ‘their people’ are morons,” Sheppard said with a smirk, and suddenly, just like that, the gulf between him and Sheppard was gone. Lorne grinned and ducked his head, feeling a warmth of belonging.
“Seriously though,” Sheppard continued. “The whole situation sucks big time, and Landry is an asshole -you wouldn’t be the first to say it- but I’m not sorry you’re here.”
“Seriously, Sir,” Lorne replied, “I’m not sorry I’m here either, so I guess I’ll forgive the man.”
The jumper came into view about then, and Sheppard got back to the business of rescuing Teyla and finding Ford and McKay, while Lorne recovered. While he didn’t manage to succeed in the latter goal, Sheppard did bring Specialist Ronan Dex in from the cold and eventually made him part of his team. This, Even came to understand, was typical for life in the Pegasus Galaxy, especially when you have your own team.
Sheppard had told Lorne to pick his team after returning from the planet where they’d found Dex, and he’d worked with a variety of military and civilian personnel by then, so he had an idea of who he’d like to have. Landry hadn’t been wrong when he’d suggested that there were a lot of Fae and part Fae folk serving on Atlantis, so Evan knew that at least some of his team members would be Fae. He told himself it didn’t matter, but part of him felt relieved anyway, knowing that members of his team wouldn’t likely think less of him because of his heritage.
In the end, it was Marine Sergeant Aaron Stackhouse who was the only full mortal on Lorne’s team. Lt Laura Cadman was half Ifreet -some kind of fire elemental, as if one couldn’t guess- and Dr Schuyler (“Pronounced ‘Sky-ler’, but call me Sky, please.”) Parrish, was a nearly full blood dryad. That was no secret either, as the gangly, mossy-green haired botanist had never tried to hide what he was.
Sometimes Evan wondered if he hadn’t picked Parrish because he’d seemed so much more pleasant when compared to McKay, though he certainly had his quirks. Later, he would come to consider that using McKay as a yardstick was damned useless, and that Parrish seemed determined to make him prematurely grey. Later still he would discover that Sky had been having him on the whole time. The botanist congratulated him when he figured it out.
“You Airforce fellows have a much higher tolerance for civilian idiosyncrasies than the Marines,” he pointed out. “That’s a survival factor in my book.”
“’Idiosyncracies’?” Lorne said. “Is that what you call it? Well, you know what I call it? Hazing, pure and simple, and you are never going to convince me otherwise.”
“Call it what you like, dear,” Parrish said, patting Lorne on the cheek, “but the fact remains that you comported yourself with honor. Welcome to the family.”
Evan could only stare after him as he left, speechless, because he felt it suddenly, that he was part of a family, and because the touch of Sky Parrish’s hand on his cheek had made him feel... something very unexpected.
Being part of a family meant becoming aware of the open and semi open secrets that are present in any extended family, but this was nothing surprising to Evan, who’d grown up in a big family. What was a surprise was discovering that among certain of the full-blood and nearly full-blood Fae, Sheppard’s true nature was one of these semi open secrets.
“He’s here looking out for all of us,” Parrish explained one afternoon as they were leaving the infirmary, “so someone has to look out for him.”
They’d just come back from a successful, if eventful mission, helping a trading partner evacuate one of their villages which was currently endangered by a rapidly rising river. One of the village children had fallen in and Stackhouse -born an Ohio river rat- had gone in after her. He’d managed to rescue her, at the cost of a half a lungful of water and two cracked ribs, and Lorne knew better than to say anything about the riverside tree which had inexplicably leaned a branch low over the water just as Stackhouse and his rescuee had gone past.
He was pretty sure no one else had noticed, and they’d scored big points with the village elders -always a good thing. Dr. Weir had come to the infirmary, where they had gathered to see that Stackhouse was okay, to offer congratulations, and afterwards Evan and Parrish had stuck their heads in to pay a visit to Colonel Sheppard, recovering from a knife wound in an adjacent room. His team had apparently surprised a nest of Genii spies in the village they’d gone to visit.
McKay and Teyla had been there, of course, just as Cadman had elected to stay and keep Stackhouse company -though Lorne was personally convinced that she was also there to flirt with Carson.
“He doesn’t know we know, of course,” Parrish commented as they left Sheppard, “and he probably assumes that anyone who found out would immediately despise him...”
Lorne thought of the bleak, resigned look on his CO’s face when he saw that Lorne had noticed him in his vampiric aspect, and knew that Parrish was absolutely right. “I doubt you’re wrong about that,” Lorne said grimly, nodding.
“But you should know, even if he doesn’t,” Parrish said, “that there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t give everything we have, every gift and talent, to help him, if he ever needed it.”
“Yeah,” said Lorne soberly. “Same here, ungifted though I may be.”
Parrish nodded in satisfaction, then paused and looked up at Lorne, his gaze piercing. “You truly believe you have no gifts?”
Lorne grimaced, the sudden turn of conversation making him uncomfortable. Fae folk didn’t generally speak of their ‘gifts’ -the odd talents and small magics that even part Fae folk often had, and Lorne still didn’t much like talking about his newly discovered heritage. “Nothing’s ever come up, so far as I know,” he said. “And I’m only one eighth Fae. Probably not enough to come with any fringe benefits.”
Parrish’s gaze remained on him for a long moment, and Lorne tried to ignore the complex feelings it incited in him. “Hmm,” was all Parrish said in the end, his look suggesting he’d just been given some complex botanical mystery to puzzle out. Lorne was not used to being on the receiving end of such looks, and it undid him a little.
It was probably the reason that Parrish had such an easy time convincing Evan to go watch a movie with him after dinner. They’d planned to watch “Master and Commander” as a team that evening, but Stackhouse and Cadman could watch it in the infirmary later, so it was just Evan and Parrish who ensconced themselves in the botanists’ break room to watch the movie on their big screen.
Every department had their own break room, but botany’s was one of the nicest, and not only because the room was always filled with really nice looking flowers and plants. The sofa there was really comfy too, and so the two teammates sat together, a bowl of popcorn mixed with Milk Duds propped between them.
When the credits finally rolled Evan found himself loath to shift, particularly as Parrish had come to lean his long, lanky self against Evan as the movie went on. It was comfortable, and Parrish’s presence was... nice. Some part of Evan knew perfectly well where he would like that to lead, but he also knew better than to hold out any hopes. Parrish was his teammate, and the last thing Lorne wanted to do was to make the man uncomfortable by hitting on him.
Still, Parrish didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave either as the video returned to the menu screen and the two men remained settled comfortably on the sofa. Evan was not quite surprised when Parrish finally spoke, though what he said was not at all expected.
“You know, you are definitely more than one eighth Fae, Major,” he said, conversationally.
Loren blinked in surprise. “I um, I don’t know how that could be,” he replied. “It really is only my grandmother who had any Fae blood in my family.”
“You mean she’s the only one who ‘fessed up,” Parrish said with a smirk that Evan should have found insulting, but found perversely endearing instead.
“And you know this how?” Lorne countered, reaching for the remote to turn the video off.
“Fae blood sings to Fae blood, Major,” Parrish said, matter-of-factly, “at least for those of us of full or nearly full blood. At a guess, I’d say you were at least a quarter Fae, but Beckett could confirm it for you, if you asked him to do the tests.”
Lorne nodded thoughtfully. Twenty years back the US Supreme Court had forbidden the military from making genetic background tests mandatory for its members -which was the only reason Sheppard had managed to get as far as he had- and Evan had never thought it necessary for himself. He’d reconsidered after learning about his grandmother, but if he did get tested the military would have the right to see the results. As long as he didn’t, he couldn’t be busted for keeping secret something he didn’t know.
“You know Carson would keep it off the books if you asked him,” Parrish said, as though reading Evan’s thoughts. “But there’s no way you don’t have any gifts. I can practically feel them.”
Once again, Evan found the conversation stirring a sense of anxiety in him, and he wasn’t sure why. “I swear,” he said, “there’s never been a hint of anything, and I’d be the first to know, wouldn’t I?”
Even as he asked the question, however, Evan felt the unpleasant answer waiting for him to face it. It was one thing to be told that some member of your family was Fae, but quite another to admit that this meant that you were Fae as well, and always had been. Owning any gift or talent would irrevocably make Evan Lorne ‘One Of Them’, and Evan wasn’t at all sure he was ready to face that.
The touch of Parrish’s hand on his shoulders, the long fingers warm through his shirt, calmed Evan’s rising anxiety somewhat, and he forced himself to meet Parrish’s eyes. “It won’t change who you are, Evan,” he said, his voice gentler than Evan had ever heard it, and it drew a fragment of fearful honesty from him.
“I know it won’t,” he said. “It just means that I never really knew who I was, doesn’t it?”
“No, of course not,” Parrish replied earnestly, his hand remaining firm on Evan’s shoulder. “Part of you always knew. The part of you that sought the sky; that part always knew.”
In a flash, Evan found his trust evaporating and all the old resentments were back. He pulled away, tense and angry. “So you think so too,” he snapped, “that the only reason I’m a good pilot is because of my goddamn grandmother.”
“What? No!” Parrish leaned forward to grab at Lorne’s hand, not letting him escape. “Of course not. Fae folk have no affinity whatsoever for machinery and technology. Honestly, your heritage probably gave you a handicap rather than an advantage in that respect.”
Evan subsided, confused. “But...” he said, “what did I get from my grandmother, then?”
“Is there a love for the skies in your heart?” Parrish asked, laying his other hand there. “That’s from your grandmother. The skill in your hands and mind, the years of work it took to get them -that’s all you, Evan.”
Evan sat speechless for a long moment, feeling a number of things suddenly slot into place. Parrish’s words had thrown a brilliant light on the very matters that had troubled Evan’s heart from the moment he had learned of his heritage, and perhaps even earlier. Moreover, feeling the dryad’s hand over his easing heart, Evan felt something wake there which had lain sleeping for all his life.
He felt something like a wind move through him at its waking, and Evan found himself lifting his own hand to cover Parrish’s over his heart. Now something warm and laughing was growing there and suddenly the wind wasn’t just inside him, it was moving through the closed and windowless room, lifting papers, stirring the leaves of the plants all around them and ruffling Sky Parrish’s mossy green hair. Evan watched the wide, wide smile grow on Sky’s face, and then those smiling lips were kissing his and the wind was back inside them both, fanning the spark of a sudden and unexpected passion.
“There, you see?” Sky said, the joy dancing in his emerald eyes when they had drawn back to breathe.
“You’re insufferable, you know,” Evan said, grinning back.
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sky said, standing and pulling Evan to his feet. He was right, of course, and so Evan followed him back to his quarters without another word.
As far as Evan Lorne was concerned, the little gift he’d discovered in the botanist’s break room that night was enough for him, but Sky seemed to suspect that there was more to come. He never said so aloud, of course, but Lorne could definitely tell. Still, it came as a considerable surprise some nights later, as Evan sat, straddling Sky’s long, pale body, with the dryad’s cock filling him, thrusting into him so wonderfully, feeling like he was flying with ecstasy, to feel the wings -real wings, tawny gold and massive- spring from his shoulders.
Sky was, of course, nearly unbearably smug for weeks afterward, but Evan had kind of gotten used to it by then, and maybe even found it a little endearing. Evan Lorne knew he belonged then too, but not because anyone else changed how they were with him. He had thought from the beginning that he was the one who’d needed to make a place fro himself, and now he saw that a place had always been there for him.
Atlantis had a place for someone with wings, and even before they’d appeared on his back, Evan Lorne now knew that they’d been there all along. The city had known, and those with eyes to see had seen, the wings that had always dwelt in Evan Lorne’s heart.
****
So my camp job was delayed a week, giving me time to write this, but now I am undecided about where to go next with this series. From here I had originally intended to jump right in to my larger plot arc, which kinda goes off of the series, but I could write one or two more au episode based stories, and develop some of the other characters some more. I probably won't have time to write much next week, but would sure love to hear from my readers if you had any preference.
-TD
And here is the outcome: Tale the Fifth
Author: Taylor Dancinghands -taylor@tdancinghands.com
Characters: ?!Lorne, Dryad!Parrish, and in the background, Vampire!Sheppard, Werewolf!Zelenka, Changeling!Rodney... and Centaur!Carson, among others.
Pairings: Lorne/Parrish,
Category: slash, pre-slash, First time, AU
Spoilers: Early Season 2, mostly "Runner".
Warnings: explicit M/M sex depictions
Rating: NC-17
Archive: Generally yes, but please let me know where
Summary: Major Even Lorne comes to Atlantis, settles in, and learns something unexpected about his CO, and about himself.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never will, not claiming to. Just wanna play with 'em a little. Can't I, can't I, huh?
****
The Last Changeling
by Taylor Dancinghands
Tale the Fourth: "New Wings"
Major Evan Lorne was not proud of his first reaction to his new posting on Atlantis, but it was understandable. Three moths prior to his reassignment his grandmother had passed away and, upon her passing, delivered something of a bombshell that had thrown his entire family into turmoil and held serious repercussions for his career as well. Since his grandfather was seven years dead, no one would be able to grill him as to how he had not known that his wife was a full blooded Fae, a sylph, no less, but that did nothing to stop the recriminations. Evan had wanted no part of this burgeoning family feud, and had never been so glad of the limited leave time that had him back to the SGC only a couple of days after the funeral.
Lorne was definitely a by-the-book kind of guy, and so he’d reported the update in his family background as soon as he got back. Sylphs -a common variety of Air Spirit- weren’t on anyone’s dangerous Fae list, but the American military required the reporting of all otherworldly heritage in it’s soldiers, and Evan had no particular objection. He knew some guys tried to keep that stuff hidden, though he thought it foolish. The penalty for discovery was severe, and Lorne didn’t care for that sort of risk to his career. Only a few days after he’d made this report, however, Evan had started to have regrets.
He’d worked for his wings, god dammit, and he’d worked hard, but now it seemed that everyone around him had forgotten they had ever seen him busting his ass on the simulators or burning the midnight oil studying. “So that explains why you’re such an ace,” he heard, again and again, from both officers and peers, and frankly, it rankled. It came as just one more indignity then, when General Landry called him into his office to offer the ‘option’ of joining the Atlantis Expedition.
“What with your newly discovered heritage,” he’d said with the sort of thoughtless joviality that made Lorne have to remind himself that punching an officer -especially a General- would be really bad for his career. “I believe you’ll find that you... ‘fit in’ there quite well.”
Eventually, Evan had to admit that getting to fly a puddle jumper went a long way towards making up for giving up his X302, and he even got to fly those occasionally, when the Daedalus was in. It wasn’t that the posting was bad, it was just the reason he’d gotten it that bothered Lorne, and made it hard for him to feel like he really belonged there, regardless of Landry’s promise.
Lorne knew it was up to him to make his place on Atlantis, but he was working with a group of people who’d gone through hell together, and Lorne knew just what kinds of bonds an experience like that forms. He hadn’t been part of that, and would never be part of them. This wasn’t to say that Colonel Sheppard wasn’t a great CO. He was a decent, easygoing guy, and included Lorne in pretty much everything that he might want to be included in -both professionally and socially. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault that there remained a gulf between him and the rest of the expedition ‘old timers’.
Having the ATA gene did go a long way towards bridging that gulf, some days. Lorne supposed he had his Fae grandmother to thank for that, as the gene was more common among the Fae than mortals (though there were a few Fae Lorne knew of who didn’t have it -like the wolf, Zelenka- and a few mortals who did, like Sheppard and Sergant Stackhouse). Doctor Beckett had started to try and explain it to him when he’d asked, but Evan’d had to cut him off after only a few minutes.
“Sorry, Doc,” he’d apologised, “but this is all way outside my area of expertise, if you know what I mean. I’m just glad I can fly the jumpers and we can leave it at that.”
Beckett had only laughed and welcomed him to Atlantis, and he’d meant it too; Evan could tell. The folks here weren’t cliquish or standoffish; they meant to make him welcome. Evan just couldn’t seem to make himself feel comfortable, and while he wondered, on some days, just what it would take before he did, on others he was afraid he knew the answer too well. He ended up proving himself right, finally, on P3M-736, while looking for a renegade member of Sheppard’s team.
Lorne had learned the value of tolerating, and even paying mind to the SGC’s geeks in the field long ago, watching Dr Jackson put an Airforce Colonel in his place. He liked to think he’d learned that lesson well too, but Dr Rodney McKay had certainly put his ability to tolerate geekly quirks to the test. Truth be told though, Evan would have to say that on that day, he had failed.
At least, he should have had some clue that they were being followed before he got hit with the stunner, but McKay had distracted him and Ford had caught him completely flat footed. His last thoughts, as he crumpled to the ground, had been that he would deserve whatever he got when he woke up.
He’d been pretty sure, truth be told, that he was likely going to wake to the sight of a wraith coming to feed on him, or perhaps to find that he’d been wrapped in one of those cocoon things. He had definitely not expected to wake to the sight of his CO engaged in a hand to hand struggle with a wraith, and expected even less what he saw when Sheppard’s face had turned toward him during the split second it had taken him to snap the wraith’s neck.
Certainly it nipped in the bud his burgeoning questions about how a lone man could take on a wraith in unarmed combat, but it raised a whole host of others that his recovering-from-a-wraith-stunner brain was not at all prepared to cope with. It was all he could do to stare like an idiot as Sheppard let the creature’s body drop and his vampiric features -the disturbingly luminescent eyes, the prominent and deadly fangs- began to disappear. It was then that Sheppard spotted him watching, and the man’s, now all too human, face went carefully blank.
“Sir...” Lorne managed, thankful for the comfortable fall-back position of military decorum, to cover the most awkward of moments. Sheppard only took a single step forward, the dead wraith all but forgotten behind him, and regarded Lorne with an unreadable look.
“I won’t try to beg or bargain with you, Major,” Sheppard said at last. “You do whatever you think you need to, and I won’t interfere.”
Try as he might, Lorne could not make out what Sheppard seemed to expect of him, save for a note of resignation in his voice as he had spoken. Lorne knew that John Sheppard had to have been hiding what he was for a long time, and maybe he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a long time too. Still, Evan might have been half numb and woozy from being stunned, but he wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t an asshole.
“I, ah... I think you just saved my life, Sir,” he said at last, because he might have been a by-the-book kind of guy, but he also liked to think he knew what was important.
Sheppard said nothing at first, but he lifted his head, his expression going from carefully neutral to slightly curious. Eventually he shrugged, moving to stand at Lorne’s side. “You can make it up to me next mission,” he said casually. “You get a chance to see who nailed you?”
“Afraid not, Sir,” Lorne answered with honest chagrin, “and I have no idea where McKay went.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Sheppard replied, holding out a hand to help Lorne to his feet. This was a test too, Even could see as much, and he didn’t hesitate.
He reached up to take Sheppard’s hand, and was rewarded with a firm grip and strength that was no more than any mortal’s, pulling him to his feet. To his further chagrin, Loren found that standing on his own was still just a little beyond him, and so let Sheppard support him as they started on their way back to the jumper.
“Pretty sure it was Ford, and he probably took McKay with him,” Sheppard continued, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. “The other guy spotted him, says Ford more or less saved him from a wraith. This your first wraith stunner experience?”
“Um, yeah,” Lorne replied, struggling to keep up in more ways than one. “Been zatted, which hurts a helluvalot more, but I think the hangover on this is worse. Ah, what ‘other guy’?”
“‘Specialist Ronon Dex’,” Sheppard said. “Seems like he was in some sort of military at one point, but he’s been running from the wraith the last few years.”
As Sheppard updated Lorne of their situation, and the numb, tingling sensation from the wraith stunner slowly wore off, Evan began to wonder if the whole ‘your CO is really a vampire’ thing had been a stunner induced hallucination. Then Sheppard’s briefing came to an end and he paused, turning to look Lorne in the eye.
“So... I told myself I wasn’t going to ask,” he said after a moment. “But I don’t think I’m gonna manage...” Lorne nodded, aware of where this was going.
“It’s just...” it was decidedly odd, Evan decided, to see his usually confident and up-beat CO become suddenly hesitant. “You don’t look like a guy who’s ready to turn his CO in for being an unreported Class D Fae...”
“Probably because I’m not,” Lorne answered, honestly enough.
“No?” As uncertain as his answer seemed, Lorne could hear the relief that colored his commander’s voice.
“There is that whole ‘saving my life’ thing,” Lorne pointed out. “Plus... I guess I never much liked the idea of being a hypocrite.”
“How so?” Evan had never before noticed how well Sheppard tended to hide himself before, behind the very cordial and relaxed front he showed everyone, but he noticed now. Now that front had slipped, and Evan knew he was finally getting a glimpse of something few people ever saw -a man who worried about his command, and cared, deeply, for the people under him, and what they thought of him.
“You know why I got this assignment?” Lorne asked in turn. Sheppard shook his head.
“It’s supposed to be a volunteer posting,” he said. Lorne replied with a bitter laugh.
“Yeah, well, when General Landry ‘suggests’ that you might want to volunteer for a posting,” he said, “it isn’t exactly voluntary.”
“Fuck me!” Sheppard said with honest outrage. “Why?”
“You heard about my grandma, right?” Lorne answered. Sheppard had to actually think for a moment, and Lorne considered that his CO had taken in a lot of new personnel lately, and his profile might not have seemed that unusual.
“She’s where you got your Fae blood?” Sheppard replied, thinking out loud. “Oh, wait, you’re the guy who just found out a few months ago, right? And she was a Sylph?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Loren said with a sigh. “A bunch of my family really got their undies in a twist about it, but I thought, no big deal, right? I reported the change in my records, and figured it wouldn’t make any difference...” He trailed off with another sigh.
“I thought the SGC was supposed to have a more ‘enlightened attitude’ about Fae folk in the ranks,” Sheppard said.
“More enlightened than the Army, maybe,” Evan answered. “It was never anything big, not like the stuff that you hear about in the news. It’s just... it seems like everybody forgets you ever busted your ass, right along side them, for years. I’m not a good pilot because I worked at it, I’m good because it’s ‘natural’ for ‘my people’. Christ, Sheppard, I never met another Sylph in my life, that I know of. How can they be ‘my people’?”
“Cause ‘their people’ are morons,” Sheppard said with a smirk, and suddenly, just like that, the gulf between him and Sheppard was gone. Lorne grinned and ducked his head, feeling a warmth of belonging.
“Seriously though,” Sheppard continued. “The whole situation sucks big time, and Landry is an asshole -you wouldn’t be the first to say it- but I’m not sorry you’re here.”
“Seriously, Sir,” Lorne replied, “I’m not sorry I’m here either, so I guess I’ll forgive the man.”
The jumper came into view about then, and Sheppard got back to the business of rescuing Teyla and finding Ford and McKay, while Lorne recovered. While he didn’t manage to succeed in the latter goal, Sheppard did bring Specialist Ronan Dex in from the cold and eventually made him part of his team. This, Even came to understand, was typical for life in the Pegasus Galaxy, especially when you have your own team.
Sheppard had told Lorne to pick his team after returning from the planet where they’d found Dex, and he’d worked with a variety of military and civilian personnel by then, so he had an idea of who he’d like to have. Landry hadn’t been wrong when he’d suggested that there were a lot of Fae and part Fae folk serving on Atlantis, so Evan knew that at least some of his team members would be Fae. He told himself it didn’t matter, but part of him felt relieved anyway, knowing that members of his team wouldn’t likely think less of him because of his heritage.
In the end, it was Marine Sergeant Aaron Stackhouse who was the only full mortal on Lorne’s team. Lt Laura Cadman was half Ifreet -some kind of fire elemental, as if one couldn’t guess- and Dr Schuyler (“Pronounced ‘Sky-ler’, but call me Sky, please.”) Parrish, was a nearly full blood dryad. That was no secret either, as the gangly, mossy-green haired botanist had never tried to hide what he was.
Sometimes Evan wondered if he hadn’t picked Parrish because he’d seemed so much more pleasant when compared to McKay, though he certainly had his quirks. Later, he would come to consider that using McKay as a yardstick was damned useless, and that Parrish seemed determined to make him prematurely grey. Later still he would discover that Sky had been having him on the whole time. The botanist congratulated him when he figured it out.
“You Airforce fellows have a much higher tolerance for civilian idiosyncrasies than the Marines,” he pointed out. “That’s a survival factor in my book.”
“’Idiosyncracies’?” Lorne said. “Is that what you call it? Well, you know what I call it? Hazing, pure and simple, and you are never going to convince me otherwise.”
“Call it what you like, dear,” Parrish said, patting Lorne on the cheek, “but the fact remains that you comported yourself with honor. Welcome to the family.”
Evan could only stare after him as he left, speechless, because he felt it suddenly, that he was part of a family, and because the touch of Sky Parrish’s hand on his cheek had made him feel... something very unexpected.
Being part of a family meant becoming aware of the open and semi open secrets that are present in any extended family, but this was nothing surprising to Evan, who’d grown up in a big family. What was a surprise was discovering that among certain of the full-blood and nearly full-blood Fae, Sheppard’s true nature was one of these semi open secrets.
“He’s here looking out for all of us,” Parrish explained one afternoon as they were leaving the infirmary, “so someone has to look out for him.”
They’d just come back from a successful, if eventful mission, helping a trading partner evacuate one of their villages which was currently endangered by a rapidly rising river. One of the village children had fallen in and Stackhouse -born an Ohio river rat- had gone in after her. He’d managed to rescue her, at the cost of a half a lungful of water and two cracked ribs, and Lorne knew better than to say anything about the riverside tree which had inexplicably leaned a branch low over the water just as Stackhouse and his rescuee had gone past.
He was pretty sure no one else had noticed, and they’d scored big points with the village elders -always a good thing. Dr. Weir had come to the infirmary, where they had gathered to see that Stackhouse was okay, to offer congratulations, and afterwards Evan and Parrish had stuck their heads in to pay a visit to Colonel Sheppard, recovering from a knife wound in an adjacent room. His team had apparently surprised a nest of Genii spies in the village they’d gone to visit.
McKay and Teyla had been there, of course, just as Cadman had elected to stay and keep Stackhouse company -though Lorne was personally convinced that she was also there to flirt with Carson.
“He doesn’t know we know, of course,” Parrish commented as they left Sheppard, “and he probably assumes that anyone who found out would immediately despise him...”
Lorne thought of the bleak, resigned look on his CO’s face when he saw that Lorne had noticed him in his vampiric aspect, and knew that Parrish was absolutely right. “I doubt you’re wrong about that,” Lorne said grimly, nodding.
“But you should know, even if he doesn’t,” Parrish said, “that there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t give everything we have, every gift and talent, to help him, if he ever needed it.”
“Yeah,” said Lorne soberly. “Same here, ungifted though I may be.”
Parrish nodded in satisfaction, then paused and looked up at Lorne, his gaze piercing. “You truly believe you have no gifts?”
Lorne grimaced, the sudden turn of conversation making him uncomfortable. Fae folk didn’t generally speak of their ‘gifts’ -the odd talents and small magics that even part Fae folk often had, and Lorne still didn’t much like talking about his newly discovered heritage. “Nothing’s ever come up, so far as I know,” he said. “And I’m only one eighth Fae. Probably not enough to come with any fringe benefits.”
Parrish’s gaze remained on him for a long moment, and Lorne tried to ignore the complex feelings it incited in him. “Hmm,” was all Parrish said in the end, his look suggesting he’d just been given some complex botanical mystery to puzzle out. Lorne was not used to being on the receiving end of such looks, and it undid him a little.
It was probably the reason that Parrish had such an easy time convincing Evan to go watch a movie with him after dinner. They’d planned to watch “Master and Commander” as a team that evening, but Stackhouse and Cadman could watch it in the infirmary later, so it was just Evan and Parrish who ensconced themselves in the botanists’ break room to watch the movie on their big screen.
Every department had their own break room, but botany’s was one of the nicest, and not only because the room was always filled with really nice looking flowers and plants. The sofa there was really comfy too, and so the two teammates sat together, a bowl of popcorn mixed with Milk Duds propped between them.
When the credits finally rolled Evan found himself loath to shift, particularly as Parrish had come to lean his long, lanky self against Evan as the movie went on. It was comfortable, and Parrish’s presence was... nice. Some part of Evan knew perfectly well where he would like that to lead, but he also knew better than to hold out any hopes. Parrish was his teammate, and the last thing Lorne wanted to do was to make the man uncomfortable by hitting on him.
Still, Parrish didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave either as the video returned to the menu screen and the two men remained settled comfortably on the sofa. Evan was not quite surprised when Parrish finally spoke, though what he said was not at all expected.
“You know, you are definitely more than one eighth Fae, Major,” he said, conversationally.
Loren blinked in surprise. “I um, I don’t know how that could be,” he replied. “It really is only my grandmother who had any Fae blood in my family.”
“You mean she’s the only one who ‘fessed up,” Parrish said with a smirk that Evan should have found insulting, but found perversely endearing instead.
“And you know this how?” Lorne countered, reaching for the remote to turn the video off.
“Fae blood sings to Fae blood, Major,” Parrish said, matter-of-factly, “at least for those of us of full or nearly full blood. At a guess, I’d say you were at least a quarter Fae, but Beckett could confirm it for you, if you asked him to do the tests.”
Lorne nodded thoughtfully. Twenty years back the US Supreme Court had forbidden the military from making genetic background tests mandatory for its members -which was the only reason Sheppard had managed to get as far as he had- and Evan had never thought it necessary for himself. He’d reconsidered after learning about his grandmother, but if he did get tested the military would have the right to see the results. As long as he didn’t, he couldn’t be busted for keeping secret something he didn’t know.
“You know Carson would keep it off the books if you asked him,” Parrish said, as though reading Evan’s thoughts. “But there’s no way you don’t have any gifts. I can practically feel them.”
Once again, Evan found the conversation stirring a sense of anxiety in him, and he wasn’t sure why. “I swear,” he said, “there’s never been a hint of anything, and I’d be the first to know, wouldn’t I?”
Even as he asked the question, however, Evan felt the unpleasant answer waiting for him to face it. It was one thing to be told that some member of your family was Fae, but quite another to admit that this meant that you were Fae as well, and always had been. Owning any gift or talent would irrevocably make Evan Lorne ‘One Of Them’, and Evan wasn’t at all sure he was ready to face that.
The touch of Parrish’s hand on his shoulders, the long fingers warm through his shirt, calmed Evan’s rising anxiety somewhat, and he forced himself to meet Parrish’s eyes. “It won’t change who you are, Evan,” he said, his voice gentler than Evan had ever heard it, and it drew a fragment of fearful honesty from him.
“I know it won’t,” he said. “It just means that I never really knew who I was, doesn’t it?”
“No, of course not,” Parrish replied earnestly, his hand remaining firm on Evan’s shoulder. “Part of you always knew. The part of you that sought the sky; that part always knew.”
In a flash, Evan found his trust evaporating and all the old resentments were back. He pulled away, tense and angry. “So you think so too,” he snapped, “that the only reason I’m a good pilot is because of my goddamn grandmother.”
“What? No!” Parrish leaned forward to grab at Lorne’s hand, not letting him escape. “Of course not. Fae folk have no affinity whatsoever for machinery and technology. Honestly, your heritage probably gave you a handicap rather than an advantage in that respect.”
Evan subsided, confused. “But...” he said, “what did I get from my grandmother, then?”
“Is there a love for the skies in your heart?” Parrish asked, laying his other hand there. “That’s from your grandmother. The skill in your hands and mind, the years of work it took to get them -that’s all you, Evan.”
Evan sat speechless for a long moment, feeling a number of things suddenly slot into place. Parrish’s words had thrown a brilliant light on the very matters that had troubled Evan’s heart from the moment he had learned of his heritage, and perhaps even earlier. Moreover, feeling the dryad’s hand over his easing heart, Evan felt something wake there which had lain sleeping for all his life.
He felt something like a wind move through him at its waking, and Evan found himself lifting his own hand to cover Parrish’s over his heart. Now something warm and laughing was growing there and suddenly the wind wasn’t just inside him, it was moving through the closed and windowless room, lifting papers, stirring the leaves of the plants all around them and ruffling Sky Parrish’s mossy green hair. Evan watched the wide, wide smile grow on Sky’s face, and then those smiling lips were kissing his and the wind was back inside them both, fanning the spark of a sudden and unexpected passion.
“There, you see?” Sky said, the joy dancing in his emerald eyes when they had drawn back to breathe.
“You’re insufferable, you know,” Evan said, grinning back.
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sky said, standing and pulling Evan to his feet. He was right, of course, and so Evan followed him back to his quarters without another word.
As far as Evan Lorne was concerned, the little gift he’d discovered in the botanist’s break room that night was enough for him, but Sky seemed to suspect that there was more to come. He never said so aloud, of course, but Lorne could definitely tell. Still, it came as a considerable surprise some nights later, as Evan sat, straddling Sky’s long, pale body, with the dryad’s cock filling him, thrusting into him so wonderfully, feeling like he was flying with ecstasy, to feel the wings -real wings, tawny gold and massive- spring from his shoulders.
Sky was, of course, nearly unbearably smug for weeks afterward, but Evan had kind of gotten used to it by then, and maybe even found it a little endearing. Evan Lorne knew he belonged then too, but not because anyone else changed how they were with him. He had thought from the beginning that he was the one who’d needed to make a place fro himself, and now he saw that a place had always been there for him.
Atlantis had a place for someone with wings, and even before they’d appeared on his back, Evan Lorne now knew that they’d been there all along. The city had known, and those with eyes to see had seen, the wings that had always dwelt in Evan Lorne’s heart.
****
So my camp job was delayed a week, giving me time to write this, but now I am undecided about where to go next with this series. From here I had originally intended to jump right in to my larger plot arc, which kinda goes off of the series, but I could write one or two more au episode based stories, and develop some of the other characters some more. I probably won't have time to write much next week, but would sure love to hear from my readers if you had any preference.
-TD
And here is the outcome: Tale the Fifth