Stargate AU fanfic: "Smart, Tart, and Lush"
Title: Smart, Tart, and Lush
AU: Mary 'verse
Warning: Sap, exposition, expository sap.
Summary: Teyla is curious about her friend Sam's wife.
Alternate summary: In which Sam rhapsodizes about Mary McKay for several paragraphs because let's face it, I love McKay. I REGRET NOTHING~
Teyla was familiar with the necklaces that all Lanteans wore, which they called "dogtags" and which carried metal plates marked with their names and other information they considered vital, for the purpose of identifying corpses too damaged to recognize. She understood that it was a custom which began among their military, and she even thought it made sense to carry such identifiers, considering the uniform manner in which they dressed. She knew, therefore, that Major Carter wore a dogtag necklace of his own, but she had known him for many months before she saw it.
It was on the world Athosians called Feoida, when they were repairing the bridge back to the Ring of the Ancestors which had washed out while they camped in the ruins overnight. Teyla and Sam were taking their turn at positioning fresh logs while Cam and Aiden cut more wood. They were both stripped of their heavier equipment, in case they fell into the water, and Major Carter's necklace swung free from the neck of his shirt as he was bent down, moving his end of the log into place. In addition to the metal tags, there was a ring of plain gold hanging from the chain.
As they went back for another log and more strips of stretched wet hide, Teyla asked him about it.
"It's my wedding band," he said, and at her surprised reaction, explained: "We use gold, because it doesn't tarnish, and the shape of a ring or circle to symbolize love without end. I should be wearing it on my left ring finger, here." He showed her the spot. "On the left because that's considered the heart hand. But it can catch in the moving parts of a gun and mangle the hand, even sever the finger, so it's safer this way." He tucked his dogtags back into his shirt, and patted them absently, where they hung over his heart.
"I did not know you were married," Teyla remarked, which seemed to embarrass him.
"I forgot you didn't know."
"Know what?" Colonel Mitchell asked as he and Ford approached with more logs.
"That I'm married."
Cam dropped his burden with a great clatter, stood up straight and boggled at Major Carter.
"You're married?!"
"Everyone knows that," Lieutenant Ford chimed in, snickering.
Teyla and Cam shared a glance, not for the first time finding themselves outsiders among Lanteans who had worked for their Stargate Command.
"...What's her name?" Cam finally asked, as Sam and Teyla started back down the broken bridge with fresh building materials.
"Mary," Sam called back, and that was the end of the topic for a time.
After that, Teyla made some discreet inquiries. She learned that Mary had not taken Sam's family name, as was usual in their culture, but instead kept her own -- McKay -- which was considered modern, "feminist", and sensible for someone who was "publishing". She learned that Mary McKay, or rather Doctor Mary McKay, was a scientist with the same specialties of scholarship as Sam, and was considered quite as brilliant as he.
"I wish that we could have brought them both," Doctor Zelenka confided with a sigh over tea one evening. "But Earth could not afford to give them both up. We are lucky to have one."
She learned also that many of the scientists seemed to dislike Sam's Mary, describing her as arrogant, impatient, and difficult to work with (although these were also accurate descriptors of some of the scientists who had come to the Pegasus Galaxy), while military personnel seemed reluctant to talk about her to Teyla, perhaps assuming it would travel on to Major Carter. She did get a few hints of some tragedy in the marriage, and a sense that some people felt Major Carter had been wronged by his wife in an unspecified manner.
"He used to be Lieutenant Colonel, you know."
She overheard opinions that Doctor Mary McKay was jealous, vindictive, cruel -- she could not picture Sam loving someone like that.
Doctor Weir painted a different picture entirely.
"I've known Mary for years. We went to school together, although in different disciplines. We had some political opinions in common, but she's not interested in politics, really, especially not within groups. Diplomacy was never her strong suit. She'd much rather bluntly tell the truth and then get back to science -- and yet she's kept huge secrets for many years, involving her work. I sometimes envied her, the way she -- and Major Carter -- can understand the building blocks of the universe around us.
"Teyla, if you want to know how Major Carter feels about his wife, I suggest to talk to him. But -- I know she was scared for him, when we left."
And so, Teyla plied Sam with wine on a visit to her people, and set Halling on him.
"Teyla tells me you are married," he said, folding himself onto the cushion beside Sam and pouring from the fresh skin of wine he had fetched.
"I am," Sam confirmed.
"It must be difficult, to be so far from her for so long."
Sam smiled sadly. "She probably thinks I'm dead."
Halling placed an encouraging hand on Sam's forearm. "You will see her again, Sam Carter. You must have faith."
Sam hesitated, then bobbed his head in agreement. "But will she?" he asked softly.
Teyla felt a pang of conscience for prying. This was a friend, and she wanted to know him as she knew the Athosians she was close with, having grown together -- as Sam himself seemed to forget she did not know him. She did not wish to hurt him to do so.
"If it is easier to not speak of her, we will understand, Sam, and ask nothing further."
"Thank you," Sam said, and drank deeply of his wine. Teyla carefully masked her disappointment, but Sam surprised her.
"I've been thinking about her a lot lately. Next week -- next week is our anniversary. If I were on Earth, by now I'd have bought her a present, booked us both time off from work, arranged a special outing. Dinner somewhere nice, a trip to the symphony -- she'd like that. She'd probably forget the date, although maybe she'd set herself reminders. She did that for my birthday, but forgot her own." Sam leaned back, chuckling.
"How long have you been married?" Halling asked, offering Sam another cushion. Sam put it behind his back.
"Thank you. Five years, next week. We dated for a few years first."
"Courted," Teyla clarified when Halling looked her a question.
"Not... Well, close enough," Sam conceded. "We lived in different places for over a year of that. I was in the mountains, she was in the desert." He was sounding increasingly dreamy.
"How did you come to know her?" asked Halling, sensing a tale worth hearing.
Sam laughed.
"We worked for the same people, technically. She was given access to some of my papers on the stargate and other technologies and theories encountered through it. She sent me a critique of a paper I'd written, and then another on something else. Telling me where and how I was wrong. I had no idea who she was -- I didn't even know she was a woman until I looked her up, she signed everything 'Dr. M.I. McKay, PhD., PhD.'"
"The 'M' is for Mary?" Teyla asked, having some grasp of this Lantean writing system.
"Actually, the 'M' is for Meredith. Meredith Ingrid McKay." Sam pronounced the name like it had weight of importance, rolling it over his tongue like an invocation. "Meredith," he sighed. "She much prefers to be called Mary."
"Like you prefer to be called Sam instead of Samuel." Teyla had noticed this tendency among the Lanteans. Elizabeth had told her that there were several different ways to shorten her own name, but where her family name was so short she was unwilling to relinquish so much as a syllable.
"Like that. At first I didn't pay much attention, I'm afraid. I had no idea who she was, and we were very busy. Under attack. But then a problem she had predicted came to pass, and I went looking. I found papers and reports she'd written, found out what she was working on in Area 51." He waved a hand. "She had never even seen the stargate, but she understood more about how wormholes work, and the work I'd done to get ours to dial without a DHD, even the properties of naquada, than most of the people I had working under me on those specific things. Oh, some of her conclusions were flawed, but only because she hadn't been given all the information we could have given her -- and you could tell she knew that; she peppered her conclusions with things like, 'as far as can be determined with the data provided'. She was frustrated, so she tracked down my contact information -- somehow -- and started metaphorically poking me with a stick."
"You were for drawn to her mind," Halling observed sagely. Teyla found herself unsurprised. Major Carter was certainly one of the most intelligent people she had ever met. So much of his thoughts were engaged constantly in grasping the wonders and workings of existence, of course he would find the same appealing in a consort, perhaps even necessary.
"I was, I guess. She's a genius. She's one of the foremost minds of our generation -- but she'd tell you so herself, and even though she worked for the military she didn't really like the military, so they decided her genius was not worth the hassle of letting her have everything she needed. Criminal. She should have been at the SGC as soon as she was read in, it might have saved lives." Sam drained his wine cup, and accepted another refill. "So I had her brought to the SGC to collaborate on something and up her security clearance." He chuckled. "She didn't exactly appreciate it, given how long she'd been kept on the fringe, and she thought I was a real jerk."
"Were you?" Teyla asked, amused. She liked Sam a great deal, but he could be arrogant, and if he'd expected gratitude...
"Increasingly," he confessed, grinning like a mischievous boy. "I thought she'd been kind of rude in her e-mails, but it was nothing like her tongue unleashed live and in person. She can insult a person more thoroughly in one breath --! She's sharp, and the sarcasm! Mary and Jack tried to out-sarcasm each other once, even Daniel had to leave the room! I'm not sure who won." Sam rolled his eyes, rolled his whole head and one hand to do it. Halling surreptitiously propped another pillow behind the one Sam already had.
"She was irritating and obnoxious to me -- on purpose, you see, because she expected me to be like the jerks she'd already had to deal with and thinking I was in on the decision to keep her out at Area 51 so long, and at the same time mad at me because she knew how smart I was and 'I should have known better'." He laughed with delight. "God, we were striking all the wrong sparks off each other, but her mind! When we managed to get on the same wavelength, it was incredible, and we did incredible things." He sipped his wine. "We saved the world," he said, almost offhand. "The stargate was going to explode, it would have destroyed the planet."
Halling went still, eyes round,and Teyla knew just how he felt. What could destroy the Ring of the Ancestors? Sam seemed not to notice their reaction.
"It took a while to get her for good, there was bureaucratic bull, a snake in the works, but by the time we got her we were dating." He shook his head. "I hadn't expected her to be funny, but she is. Tart. An acquired taste, maybe."
Halling had taken a deep draught from his own cup, and mastered his previous alarm -- but Teyla would ask Sam how a stargate could be made to explode, once he was sober.
"Do you have children?"
Sam shook his head, and Teyla -- perhaps more effected by the wine than she'd thought -- asked, "Are you only attracted to her mind and personality?"
Sam's eyes went very wide.
"Oh my God, no. She's -- she's --" His fingers curled and uncurled as he searched for words, curled and uncurled. "Lush," he declared, voice fervent, then added in a humble murmur suitable for discussing sacred things, "She smells good."
Halling nodded, clearly understanding perfectly, then announced it was time to sleep.
Curled on her guest-pallet, warmed by a belly full of wine and the knowledge that someone she cared about had, at the very least, known a great love, Teyla drifted into dreams.
She wondered if she would ever meet Doctor Mary McKay.
.
A/N 2: The thing about wedding rings getting caught in the moving parts of guns actually happened to my grandfather. They had to surgically remove his ring (my grandmother still has it as a pendant, and believe me, unless you know it used to be a ring you can't tell, it is so very mangled); fortunately, they were able to reattach his finger with only a little nerve damage. I'd like to think Sam heard about an incident like this from his dad (who is about the same age as my grandfather, actually) instead of witnessing it himself. Alas, no alien formed a symbiotic bond with my grandfather to save him from his cancer. ( ._.)9
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AU: Mary 'verse
Warning: Sap, exposition, expository sap.
Summary: Teyla is curious about her friend Sam's wife.
Alternate summary: In which Sam rhapsodizes about Mary McKay for several paragraphs because let's face it, I love McKay. I REGRET NOTHING~
Teyla was familiar with the necklaces that all Lanteans wore, which they called "dogtags" and which carried metal plates marked with their names and other information they considered vital, for the purpose of identifying corpses too damaged to recognize. She understood that it was a custom which began among their military, and she even thought it made sense to carry such identifiers, considering the uniform manner in which they dressed. She knew, therefore, that Major Carter wore a dogtag necklace of his own, but she had known him for many months before she saw it.
It was on the world Athosians called Feoida, when they were repairing the bridge back to the Ring of the Ancestors which had washed out while they camped in the ruins overnight. Teyla and Sam were taking their turn at positioning fresh logs while Cam and Aiden cut more wood. They were both stripped of their heavier equipment, in case they fell into the water, and Major Carter's necklace swung free from the neck of his shirt as he was bent down, moving his end of the log into place. In addition to the metal tags, there was a ring of plain gold hanging from the chain.
As they went back for another log and more strips of stretched wet hide, Teyla asked him about it.
"It's my wedding band," he said, and at her surprised reaction, explained: "We use gold, because it doesn't tarnish, and the shape of a ring or circle to symbolize love without end. I should be wearing it on my left ring finger, here." He showed her the spot. "On the left because that's considered the heart hand. But it can catch in the moving parts of a gun and mangle the hand, even sever the finger, so it's safer this way." He tucked his dogtags back into his shirt, and patted them absently, where they hung over his heart.
"I did not know you were married," Teyla remarked, which seemed to embarrass him.
"I forgot you didn't know."
"Know what?" Colonel Mitchell asked as he and Ford approached with more logs.
"That I'm married."
Cam dropped his burden with a great clatter, stood up straight and boggled at Major Carter.
"You're married?!"
"Everyone knows that," Lieutenant Ford chimed in, snickering.
Teyla and Cam shared a glance, not for the first time finding themselves outsiders among Lanteans who had worked for their Stargate Command.
"...What's her name?" Cam finally asked, as Sam and Teyla started back down the broken bridge with fresh building materials.
"Mary," Sam called back, and that was the end of the topic for a time.
After that, Teyla made some discreet inquiries. She learned that Mary had not taken Sam's family name, as was usual in their culture, but instead kept her own -- McKay -- which was considered modern, "feminist", and sensible for someone who was "publishing". She learned that Mary McKay, or rather Doctor Mary McKay, was a scientist with the same specialties of scholarship as Sam, and was considered quite as brilliant as he.
"I wish that we could have brought them both," Doctor Zelenka confided with a sigh over tea one evening. "But Earth could not afford to give them both up. We are lucky to have one."
She learned also that many of the scientists seemed to dislike Sam's Mary, describing her as arrogant, impatient, and difficult to work with (although these were also accurate descriptors of some of the scientists who had come to the Pegasus Galaxy), while military personnel seemed reluctant to talk about her to Teyla, perhaps assuming it would travel on to Major Carter. She did get a few hints of some tragedy in the marriage, and a sense that some people felt Major Carter had been wronged by his wife in an unspecified manner.
"He used to be Lieutenant Colonel, you know."
She overheard opinions that Doctor Mary McKay was jealous, vindictive, cruel -- she could not picture Sam loving someone like that.
Doctor Weir painted a different picture entirely.
"I've known Mary for years. We went to school together, although in different disciplines. We had some political opinions in common, but she's not interested in politics, really, especially not within groups. Diplomacy was never her strong suit. She'd much rather bluntly tell the truth and then get back to science -- and yet she's kept huge secrets for many years, involving her work. I sometimes envied her, the way she -- and Major Carter -- can understand the building blocks of the universe around us.
"Teyla, if you want to know how Major Carter feels about his wife, I suggest to talk to him. But -- I know she was scared for him, when we left."
And so, Teyla plied Sam with wine on a visit to her people, and set Halling on him.
"Teyla tells me you are married," he said, folding himself onto the cushion beside Sam and pouring from the fresh skin of wine he had fetched.
"I am," Sam confirmed.
"It must be difficult, to be so far from her for so long."
Sam smiled sadly. "She probably thinks I'm dead."
Halling placed an encouraging hand on Sam's forearm. "You will see her again, Sam Carter. You must have faith."
Sam hesitated, then bobbed his head in agreement. "But will she?" he asked softly.
Teyla felt a pang of conscience for prying. This was a friend, and she wanted to know him as she knew the Athosians she was close with, having grown together -- as Sam himself seemed to forget she did not know him. She did not wish to hurt him to do so.
"If it is easier to not speak of her, we will understand, Sam, and ask nothing further."
"Thank you," Sam said, and drank deeply of his wine. Teyla carefully masked her disappointment, but Sam surprised her.
"I've been thinking about her a lot lately. Next week -- next week is our anniversary. If I were on Earth, by now I'd have bought her a present, booked us both time off from work, arranged a special outing. Dinner somewhere nice, a trip to the symphony -- she'd like that. She'd probably forget the date, although maybe she'd set herself reminders. She did that for my birthday, but forgot her own." Sam leaned back, chuckling.
"How long have you been married?" Halling asked, offering Sam another cushion. Sam put it behind his back.
"Thank you. Five years, next week. We dated for a few years first."
"Courted," Teyla clarified when Halling looked her a question.
"Not... Well, close enough," Sam conceded. "We lived in different places for over a year of that. I was in the mountains, she was in the desert." He was sounding increasingly dreamy.
"How did you come to know her?" asked Halling, sensing a tale worth hearing.
Sam laughed.
"We worked for the same people, technically. She was given access to some of my papers on the stargate and other technologies and theories encountered through it. She sent me a critique of a paper I'd written, and then another on something else. Telling me where and how I was wrong. I had no idea who she was -- I didn't even know she was a woman until I looked her up, she signed everything 'Dr. M.I. McKay, PhD., PhD.'"
"The 'M' is for Mary?" Teyla asked, having some grasp of this Lantean writing system.
"Actually, the 'M' is for Meredith. Meredith Ingrid McKay." Sam pronounced the name like it had weight of importance, rolling it over his tongue like an invocation. "Meredith," he sighed. "She much prefers to be called Mary."
"Like you prefer to be called Sam instead of Samuel." Teyla had noticed this tendency among the Lanteans. Elizabeth had told her that there were several different ways to shorten her own name, but where her family name was so short she was unwilling to relinquish so much as a syllable.
"Like that. At first I didn't pay much attention, I'm afraid. I had no idea who she was, and we were very busy. Under attack. But then a problem she had predicted came to pass, and I went looking. I found papers and reports she'd written, found out what she was working on in Area 51." He waved a hand. "She had never even seen the stargate, but she understood more about how wormholes work, and the work I'd done to get ours to dial without a DHD, even the properties of naquada, than most of the people I had working under me on those specific things. Oh, some of her conclusions were flawed, but only because she hadn't been given all the information we could have given her -- and you could tell she knew that; she peppered her conclusions with things like, 'as far as can be determined with the data provided'. She was frustrated, so she tracked down my contact information -- somehow -- and started metaphorically poking me with a stick."
"You were for drawn to her mind," Halling observed sagely. Teyla found herself unsurprised. Major Carter was certainly one of the most intelligent people she had ever met. So much of his thoughts were engaged constantly in grasping the wonders and workings of existence, of course he would find the same appealing in a consort, perhaps even necessary.
"I was, I guess. She's a genius. She's one of the foremost minds of our generation -- but she'd tell you so herself, and even though she worked for the military she didn't really like the military, so they decided her genius was not worth the hassle of letting her have everything she needed. Criminal. She should have been at the SGC as soon as she was read in, it might have saved lives." Sam drained his wine cup, and accepted another refill. "So I had her brought to the SGC to collaborate on something and up her security clearance." He chuckled. "She didn't exactly appreciate it, given how long she'd been kept on the fringe, and she thought I was a real jerk."
"Were you?" Teyla asked, amused. She liked Sam a great deal, but he could be arrogant, and if he'd expected gratitude...
"Increasingly," he confessed, grinning like a mischievous boy. "I thought she'd been kind of rude in her e-mails, but it was nothing like her tongue unleashed live and in person. She can insult a person more thoroughly in one breath --! She's sharp, and the sarcasm! Mary and Jack tried to out-sarcasm each other once, even Daniel had to leave the room! I'm not sure who won." Sam rolled his eyes, rolled his whole head and one hand to do it. Halling surreptitiously propped another pillow behind the one Sam already had.
"She was irritating and obnoxious to me -- on purpose, you see, because she expected me to be like the jerks she'd already had to deal with and thinking I was in on the decision to keep her out at Area 51 so long, and at the same time mad at me because she knew how smart I was and 'I should have known better'." He laughed with delight. "God, we were striking all the wrong sparks off each other, but her mind! When we managed to get on the same wavelength, it was incredible, and we did incredible things." He sipped his wine. "We saved the world," he said, almost offhand. "The stargate was going to explode, it would have destroyed the planet."
Halling went still, eyes round,and Teyla knew just how he felt. What could destroy the Ring of the Ancestors? Sam seemed not to notice their reaction.
"It took a while to get her for good, there was bureaucratic bull, a snake in the works, but by the time we got her we were dating." He shook his head. "I hadn't expected her to be funny, but she is. Tart. An acquired taste, maybe."
Halling had taken a deep draught from his own cup, and mastered his previous alarm -- but Teyla would ask Sam how a stargate could be made to explode, once he was sober.
"Do you have children?"
Sam shook his head, and Teyla -- perhaps more effected by the wine than she'd thought -- asked, "Are you only attracted to her mind and personality?"
Sam's eyes went very wide.
"Oh my God, no. She's -- she's --" His fingers curled and uncurled as he searched for words, curled and uncurled. "Lush," he declared, voice fervent, then added in a humble murmur suitable for discussing sacred things, "She smells good."
Halling nodded, clearly understanding perfectly, then announced it was time to sleep.
Curled on her guest-pallet, warmed by a belly full of wine and the knowledge that someone she cared about had, at the very least, known a great love, Teyla drifted into dreams.
She wondered if she would ever meet Doctor Mary McKay.
.
A/N 2: The thing about wedding rings getting caught in the moving parts of guns actually happened to my grandfather. They had to surgically remove his ring (my grandmother still has it as a pendant, and believe me, unless you know it used to be a ring you can't tell, it is so very mangled); fortunately, they were able to reattach his finger with only a little nerve damage. I'd like to think Sam heard about an incident like this from his dad (who is about the same age as my grandfather, actually) instead of witnessing it himself. Alas, no alien formed a symbiotic bond with my grandfather to save him from his cancer. ( ._.)9
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