Title: The Secret Laws of Thermodynamics
Fandom: SG-1/SGA
Genre: Romance?
Pairings/Characters: Carter/Weir
Rating: R
Warnings: Femmeslash
Summary: Elizabeth surprises Sam. Established relationship (Though I personally consider it in the same universe as Dinner Dates and Dresses), written for irana's Seduction Challenge. Beta'ed by the lovely heylittleriver.



Sam is tired as she tries to get her keys into her lock. She has the phone pressed to her ear. “But I haven’t gotten to see you since this afternoon.”

“You know they only have me here to stick me in meetings so that they can drive me crazy and put someone else in charge of Atlantis,” Elizabeth jokes into the phone. Sam listens to Elizabeth breathing as she pushes her door open. The air is unusually warm, and she thinks she smells… lilacs? Honeysuckle?

There is definitely a glow coming from her hallway. “Tell me you’re here to surprise me,” Sam tells the phone. “Otherwise I’m going to have to assume there’s something very odd going on in my house.”

Elizabeth’s laughter is soft, fond. “Relax. You gave me a key last time, remember?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know you were going to invade.” Sam laughs when she says it, pulls off her jacket. “So what is this exactly?”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions when you’re being surprised, Colonel?”

Sam pauses. “Actually, yeah, they have.”

“Just come here, okay?” Before Sam can ask exactly where ‘here’ is, she hears the phone disconnect. She sighs as she bends down to take off her shoes.

It is easy enough to follow the lights down the hall to her bedroom, and when she opens the door, she thinks there has to be fifty candles lit. “Did anyone tell you this might constitute a fire hazard?” she asks as Elizabeth pulls herself off the bed to wrap her arms around Sam’s waist.

“I know where the extinguisher is,” Elizabeth promises with a smile and just a slight wrinkle of her nose.

Sam gives her a dubious smile. “I’m never going to get that smell out of my room.” She leans forward but Elizabeth takes a step back from her. Elizabeth just grins at her confused expression, and she tries to look hurt.

“Oh, please. Both John and Rodney give me that look. If I fell for that, the city would have blown up by now.” Elizabeth reaches out to take Sam’s right hand. “Come on,” she says with a nod of her head.

Sam can’t keep the grin off her face, though she’s trying to. “I give up. What is this?”

“It’s a surprise, I already told you.” Elizabeth pulls her to the doorway of her bathroom, close enough Sam can see there must be another fifty candles. Sam does a quick run down of joules of energy and cost of that many candles, but her thoughts are cut off by the cool of Elizabeth’s hands as they slip under her shirt. “Arms up,” Elizabeth commands, and Sam does as she asks, is temporarily blinded by the black material as it slips over her head. She watches as it gets tossed to the floor.

Sam thinks about kissing Elizabeth - actually she’s thought about it since she had to watch her from across the table at the board meeting, but especially since she walked through her bedroom door - except, as if she can read Sam’s mind, Elizabeth holds herself just far enough away. Sam frowns at her, but it only brings a faint grin to Elizabeth’s mouth.

Elizabeth’s eyes are farther down, watching her fingers as they unbutton Sam’s pants carefully and unzip them before she pulls them to the floor. Sam finishes kicking them off obediently, wondering why she’s not being more obstinate. She holds her head a little higher. “I can undress myself, you know.”

Elizabeth’s laugh is brief. She does lean closer to Sam to whisper against her ear, “I promise I’ll let you return the favor eventually.” Her arms sneak around Sam’s sides to unhook her bra, and Sam feels Elizabeth’s fingers sliding the straps down her arms. She shudders lightly.

The air, at least, is warm. Sam can feel the candlelight on her bare skin as Elizabeth bends down to slide her underwear down her thighs. Finally those join the pile of Sam’s other clothes. Elizabeth slides her eyes over Sam precisely once, smiles. “That’s better.”

She guides Sam into the bathroom, where Sam manages to catch herself in the mirror, but she doesn’t look too long. She thinks she looks tired. Elizabeth’s hand is comforting on her shoulder, even if Sam’s mind is running through the thousand and one ways the candles could set her bathroom on fire.

The bath catches her eye as soon as she gets close enough. “No bubbles?” Sam teases.

“I did think about it.” Sam notices the bath smells heavenly, like caramel and something else that she can’t put her finger on. There are a few rose petals.

“Someone needs to hide your romance novels,” Sam jokes. “Have you been reading Jane Austen again?”

“I must have missed the part where Mr. Darcy gave Elizabeth a bath.” She helps Sam into the tub, even though it gives Sam the slight feeling of being two. The water is still hot. It feels like heaven to her sore muscles.

“It was in Emma. You know how older men are. Mr. Knightley couldn’t help himself.” Elizabeth just raises an eyebrow at Sam. Sam grins back before she rests her head against the tub. “Tell me you always plan to get me naked with hot baths.”

With her eyes closed, Sam listens to Elizabeth laugh, and the sound makes her feel more at peace than she’s been in awhile. “Do you mind?” she hears Elizabeth ask, and she opens her eyes to see Elizabeth with a shampoo bottle in her hand.

It seems absurd, but Sam says, “Sure.” She dips her hair under the water long enough to get it wet, feels it cling to her head.

“Lean back,” Elizabeth tells her, and Sam does it, closing her eyes again. Elizabeth’s fingers feel nice against her scalp as they massage the shampoo into her hair. It’s a pleasant sensation that curls down her spine, spreads out from there, and Sam feels herself sinking into the water. She almost misses it when Elizabeth withdraws her fingers, and she opens her eyes to see Elizabeth searching for something. Elizabeth notices her. “Where’s your soap?”

Sam gives her a you can’t be serious look, but she lifts it off its place in the corner, offers it to Elizabeth in her palm. She can still feel the shampoo in her hair, but she forgets as she watches Elizabeth dip the soap into the water, rub it between her hand twice.

The bar of soap is slick when it slides across her shoulder. Elizabeth’s hand follows it with splash of water, before she makes a trail down Sam’s side, under her chest. Sam can feel the trace of Elizabeth’s hands against her skin and closes her eyes once more. A hand runs over her breast, across her collar, down her stomach. She sucks in her breath; listens to the water shift with her in the tub.

The hands stop to wash her feet, the bar of soap tickling at the bottom of them. Sam giggles a little, splashes one foot in protest. Elizabeth snorts, grabs her ankle. The soap slides down the back of her calve, up the front. On its next slide down she can feel it trace an arc on her thigh which Elizabeth follows with her hand.

Sam shifts herself again as Elizabeth’s hands, slick with soapy water, slide between her thighs. She makes an impatient sigh when they retreat back, shifts again when the soap makes another arc along her leg. Sam lifts her head when she feels that suddenly become absent. Elizabeth is standing up, and Sam can see the dark spots where her shirt had gotten damp, the soapy look of her forearms. “Stand up.”

“Maybe I don’t want to.” Sam lifts her leg, leaving a foot sized wet spot on Elizabeth’s pants.

Elizabeth crosses her arms and waits like Sam is just a petulant child, and Sam eventually sighs and hefts herself out of the water. “I thought this was my surprise.”

“It is.” Elizabeth reaches to unplug the drain before she steps over the rim of the tub. She pulls Sam to her, wet places blossoming on her shirt where Sam’s skin gets pressed against it. Her hands find there way to Sam’s waist, linger there for a moment. “Undress me.”

Sam obliges her, fingers tugging at Elizabeth’s pants, hands pushing at her shirt. It is a little less trained than Elizabeth’s undressing, but Sam figures she’s waited. She’s waited, and she has shampoo in her hair. Restraint isn’t quite in her vocabulary at the moment.

Sam enjoys the skin to skin contact when they are finally standing naked in her tub together, and for a moment she allows herself to revel in it. It’s been too long since she’s felt another person. It’s almost enough to make her cross galaxies and put up with Rodney McKay for. Almost.

Elizabeth reaches around to shut the shower curtain and turn on the shower, which is frighteningly cold at first but warms up quickly. Sam has to blink shampoo out of her eyes, but Elizabeth’s fingers are running through her short hair again. After a moment she feels Elizabeth’s mouth on hers, and the kiss is full of water, but Sam ignores that and uses her hands to pull Elizabeth’s head forward.

They kiss under the streaming water like that, grasping at each other, months of being away finding its way into fingers that press into hips before pulling them forward. Eventually the water starts cooling back off, and Elizabeth reaches back to shut it off.

She steps out first, and Sam is greeted with one of her fluffy bath towels when she steps onto her bath mat. Elizabeth dries her off carefully, gently, rubbing the towel over Sam’s hair before carefully drying her arms, her back, her legs. It feels weird, to Sam, like she’s ten again. A feeling of being looked after.

Elizabeth gleams, wet in the candlelight, and Sam takes the towel and does the same for her. They laugh at each other before Elizabeth wraps her arms around Sam’s waist, pulls her back to the bedroom. “I was going to bring music, but Rodney and John argued endlessly about the merits of jazz.”

“Do I want to know how involved they were in this?”

Elizabeth laughs. “I was trying to borrow music actually. I don’t think I mentioned specific details.”

“So McKay wasn’t aware you were probably going to use his CD to seduce me?”

“God, I hope not.” Elizabeth and Sam laugh together, and the sound fills the dimly lit room. Elizabeth has her hands on the sides of Sam’s face, and she closes her eyes before she kisses Sam.

Before she realizes it, Sam finds herself on her back on her covers, tongue running over Elizabeth’s, Elizabeth’s knee between her thighs. When they try to catch their breath, Sam manages to get out, “You do realize I’m easier than this? I’d probably go for chocolate.”

There are still fifty candles around them- secretly Sam is still kind of sort of thinking about joules of energy expended by that- and Elizabeth traces some invisible line on Sam’s collar with her tongue. “Only if we both get to enjoy it.”

The way she says it makes Sam shiver.