The first thing Lorne noticed upon stepping out of the jumper was the smell. He crinkled his nose at the musty scent that permeated the jumper bay. "Looks like someone ignored the last batch of 'no sex in the jumper bay' memos. Again."
Parrish stepped out beside him, and made a face. "Apparently."
"Let's get out of here. It'll be better in the 'Gate room."
* * * The second thing Lorne noticed upon returning from his 'weekend' on the mainland with Parrish was the massive hickey on Colonel Sheppard's neck. That was a little more disconcerting, and he carefully refrained from commenting. What he did comment on, was the newly opaque walls of Doctor Weir's office. He asked Doctor Zelenka, who was hanging out and apparently shooting the breeze with Sergeant Campbell. "Hey, Doctor Z, I didn't know the walls did that."
"Elizabeth's office? Um, neither did we. Is good thing. Very good thing, yes."
Lorne nodded slowly, able to take a hint. "I'll trust your judgment on that one." He looked around. "Is Doctor Weir back from her negotiations?"
Zelenka shook his head. "She is due to return shortly."
"Right, well in that case I'm just going to, you know, shower." Lorne gestured vaguely to the transporter.
Zelenka nodded. "Of course. Your trip was enjoyable?"
Parrish cut in, and Lorne was happy to defer.
* * * The third thing Lorne noticed completely by accident. He made the mistake of leaning against the wall in the transporter (in his own defense, it had been a long day of trekking around in semi-tropical jungles), and pulled his hand away to find it covered in something he was pretty sure he didn't want to examine too closely. Of the white & kind-of-sticky variety.
"You have got to be kidding me."
Parrish looked up from his tablet. "What's wrong?"
Lorne looked at his hand again, then wiped it forcefully on his pants. "You probably don't want to know."
Parrish raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Apparently more than one someone missed the recent batch of PDA memos."
Parrish blinked in confusion, looked at the spot on the wall that Lorne's hand had rested, and then blushed. "Oh. Um, do you want a tissue?"
The doors slid open onto the residence wing. "Nah, I'll just wash it off. Makes me wonder what exactly went on while we were gone, though. I get the feeling we missed the party."
Parrish smiled sweetly and led the way down the hall. "Good thing we made our own, then."
* * * The next morning, breakfast was an oddly subdued affair. Lorne didn't actually notice how subdued until he was on his second cup of coffee. That was around the time he realized that the coffee tasted stranger than usual, although it might have been the sugar substitute that tasted so strongly - he'd forgotten to take any with him when he'd been on the mainland, and the native honey always tasted stronger during the first few cups. Unfortunately, he wasn't in the mood for very sweet in his coffee today, so he settled for cradling the mug in his hands and looked around at the others who were preparing for first shift.
There were less people than normal, even at such an early hour, and everyone was too cheerful for 0600. Strained smiles were scattered through the room, and the conversations he could hear seemed awfully generic. The mess was normally gossip-central, and yet everyone was discussing work. At 0600, while on their first cups of coffee. Something had definitely happened while he'd been out of the city. The trick was going to be getting someone to talk.
That proved easier said than done. Lorne tried asking Cadman. He tried asking Sergeant Callis in the mess. He tried asking Ronon. Everyone he talked to would stammer and blush and find a sudden urgent appointment in the other direction (well, except for Ronon. He'd just smirked and walked away with a fair approximation of Sheppard's swagger).
* * * That evening, Lorne literally stumbled into the answer he'd been looking for. Well, he stumbled into a potted plant while listening to Brown and Lindsay discuss the merits of various members of the anthro department, but it led to an answer just the same (he'd never realized they were quite that familiar with the digging types, but then he'd be the first to admit that he didn't know them terribly well).
The plant he ran into was known jokingly around the botany labs as Aphrodius majoris, because the pollen contained a chemical that acted directly on the sex drive. Luckily, it only bloomed once every two years, and only on the Northern plains of the mainland, so it was more a curiosity than a concern.
When he tripped over it, he accidentally knocked open the flower, and got a lungful of pollen. He spat it out, but the sweet flavor remained on his tongue and suddenly things fell into place. It was the same taste that had been in his coffee that morning.
Oh. Of course.
It made perfect, if demented, sense that sex pollen would hit the city on the one weekend he was off on the mainland trekking through the jungle with a botanist. There were times that his life seemed patently unfair. But maybe, just maybe, he could salvage something from this. After all, they had security cameras scattered throughout the city at this point. One of them had to have caught something...
~ Finis ~
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