Fic: Combined Arms: Been a Bad Day
Title: Been a Bad Day
Fandom: Stargate/Army Wives
Rating: K+
Genres: gen, humor
Recipient: hanseatic_keks
Prompt: Stargate/Army Wives, Rodney McKay and Katie Moran, those kids were going to be the death of him
Summary: That Army brat is going to be the death of Rodney McKay. Someday soon, she will.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme. Yay, second Stargate/Army Wives crossover after This Gun's For Hire! Also, look, I found a 'verse name! What do you think? Appropriate? Still got a better idea? Anything else you'd like to add? No? Here you go with the story :)
( This Gun's For Hire )
Been A Bad Day
“It's been a bad day.
Please don't take a picture.
It's been a bad day.
Please.”
REM, “Bad Day”
He curses the day that Morgan or Molan or whatever their name was family ever set foot on Atlantis.
No, actually he curses the day Evan Lorne asked that Sergeant - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, he doesn’t care - to join the expedition. Rumor has it, he did because he owed his wife some present or other and only someone like Lorne could get the thoroughly idiotic idea to present his wife with a soldier for her team to avoid having to sleep on the couch. He’s been cursing the day for twelve months now. And he’s cursing it again right now. With expletives that would make Sheppard God rest his soul blush deep red.
It’s not that he has a problem with that Sergeant, whatever his name is. He doesn’t even talk to the man since he made it a habit not to talk to members of Cadman’s team if it isn’t absolutely unavoidable because the fate of the galaxy depends on it. It’s not the Sergeant’s wife either, although she has a firm grip on law enforcement in the city and runs this radio show that’s regularly grating on his nerves. No, it’s the Sergeant’s kids. Actually, just one kid.
When that family - God forbid he’s ever gonna learn any of their names because that would mean he actually acknowledges them - came to Atlantis from their backwater posting somewhere they don’t even have snow, staring at their surroundings wide-eyed and slack-jawed like the yokels they are, they also brought two kids with them.
A girl and a boy and until now he could pretty much ignore the boy. He couldn’t escape the girl, though. He’s got no idea how old she is but she sure as hell is nosy, inconsiderate and rude enough to be a damn teenager. Always snooping around in his labs, keeping his scientists from doing their jobs with stupid questions only kids who were victims of that school system for trained monkeys the military calls their education could ask and being a general pain in the ass.
Unfortunately, she also inherited the gene, as the only one in her family. Even though he wishes he could just throw her out of his lab, he needs her for his research. So he glares at her when she peers into the lab he’s working in right now instead of just snapping at her like he’d done to her brother a couple of times until the kids’ mother had threatened to make him the target of her next stupid broadcast. He hopes it might scare the girl away, just for once.
“Hey, Doc Rod.” No such luck. Again.
He continues glaring. “It’s Dr. McKay, Kelly.”
She scrunches her nose and rolls her eyes, looking dangerously much like Cadman. “My name is Katie. Everyone can remember that. Why can’t you?”
At the moment Kendra entered his lab, the Ancient device closest to her hums. Contently? “Didn’t your parents tell you to call adults “sir” or “ma’am”? I’m pretty sure there’s some regulation on that in the military.”
That makes her… smirk. Unbelievable. A teenager is smirking at him. “They said I can call you whatever I want. And Captain Laura says so, too.”
Of course. Of course Cadman - he keeps refusing to call her by her married name because he’s still in denial about her having married Lorne and joined forces with that man - would say so. And of course Kiddie would do whatever she said. That girl would jump off a cliff if Cadman so much as hinted at that being a good idea.
Which she actually kind of did when she told the kid about that paratrooper bomb whatever stuff she did before she came to Atlantis three days ago. It’s not that he was listening in, he just was unfortunate enough to sit two tables away and they didn’t exactly keep their voices down… “Hey, what’s this doing, Doc Rod?”
Oh Jesus fucking Christ. “Put that down, Kacey!”
Defiantly, the kid glares at him and… the thing that’s still in her hand lights up for a short moment, makes a strange plopping sound and… little bubbles start forming on and emerging from its top. What the hell? There’s a moment of mutual bafflement and that baffles him enough to make him miss that suddenly, the bubbles are making for him.
When the first one bursts against his uniform sleeve, it’s too late and suddenly the smell of lemons fills the room. Something in him just flips and full grown panic has him in its iron grip. Lemon, he thinks, the damn kid activated something by accident and it has to be something containing lemon and holy crap, he just can’t breathe.
He’s aware of the fact that he’s hyperventilating and in the corner of his mind not occupied with trying to stay alive he hears himself say that those children were going to be the death of him, a couple of days ago and isn’t that funny how his half-uttered prediction is becoming true and…
“Is that your doing, Miss Moran, or was that some “invisible alien entity” again?”
He blinks, fully forgetting to hyperventilate and instead staring at the figure having… materialized in the doorway. He blinks again, taking in the barely veiled smirk. She must have sensed that it was him on the brink of death here and then flown or levitated or beamed here with those creepy Marine super powers, just to gloat. There’s no other way Cadman could suddenly have appeared like that. He knew she was having some weird woman infantry witch thing going on and that’s the proof he’d been looking for for so…
“It was… erm… neither,” Keira says and adds, almost as an afterthought, “ma’am,” and for some reason that pisses him off. Cadman gets a “ma’am” and he doesn’t even get a “Doctor”? What kind of education did her parents give her?
Still looking infuriatingly amused, Cadman raises her eyebrow. “It wasn’t?” Kitty shakes her head. “What was it then?”
Could they please stop talking as if he weren’t… “Bubbles,” is all the kids says.
“Bubbles?” is what Cadman asks as if she’s deaf or something.
He’s about to tell her that yes, goddamn bubbles but Katrina beats him to it. “Yep. I just asked him what this does and then it… woke up and told me it wants to have some fun and before I could tell it not to, it produces bubbles that go straight over to Doc Rod.”
Some fun? An Ancient device told her it wants to have some fun? “They were lethal bubbles! This is not a laughing matter, Kaleigh! And you, Cadman…”
She rolls his eyes and he’s pretty sure he saw a copy of that in the kid’s face. “If you insist on calling me by my last name, do try to make it the correct one, Rodney. I got married almost two years ago.” Yeah, and he’ll never forgive her for that.
He glares at her. “Fine, Captain Lorne. This is not funny. I was being assaulted by poisonous…”
“It says the bubbles aren’t poisonous. It just wanted to see your reaction.” Couldn’t that kid just shut the fuck up? And now she’s looking at that thing in an almost… affectionate way. “I think it’s a little prankster.”
He’s pretty sure he just heard Cadman mutter “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock” but what she says out loud is, “As long as it only chooses Rodney as its target…” and then she shares a stupid grin with Kara and the hero worship with which the kid looks at Cadman nearly makes him sick. Just what he needed. A mini Cadman in the making. “Anyway, your mom’s been looking for you all over the place, young lady. I promised her I’d bring you home if I happened to stumble over you.”
It’s kind of scary how much it satisfies him that for a moment, the worship is replaced by almost teenager like annoyance but the moment was too nice to be true which is probably why it ends too soon. The new look in place is almost pleading. “Do you have to drag me back?”
Cadman shrugs. “A promise is a promise, Army brat. ‘Sides, your mother is just too plain scary to be ignored.” Oh, ahaha, sure, Laura Cadman is afraid of an ex-cop turned head of law enforcement with a radio show. More like being best chums is what it’s like, he thinks because he’s seen Cadman and that Morel woman hang out together practically every minute both women aren’t fawning about their respective husbands.
The kid scrunches her nose at Cadman’s assessment of her mother. “She says the same of you every time dad asks her to ask you to go easy on him if he screws up.”
Hello, he wants to say, still here, still having nearly died? Can someone please… “Far as I know, your dad doesn’t screw up,” Cadman replies frowning and he’s pretty sure she just lied. No one goes through service on an off world team for over a year in Atlantis without ever screwing up. The kid - he’s kind of tired thinking up new names for her so he doesn’t have to remember her real one - however, just gives her a withering glance that reminds him of the kid’s mother. It has an interesting effect on Cadman, too. “Well, that explains it, then. It’s good to know I rule through fear instead of inspiration. Anyway…”
“Could you just please leave already?” Because he’s getting tired of this and most of all of having Cadman in his doorway and just not leaving and he kind of ignores that suddenly, Cadman’s presence is getting to him much more than the kid’s. It’s probably because it’s the longest time he ever spent in the same room with her, almost alone, since she got married.
She throws him a strange look. “Of course, Rodney. Come on, Army brat, Dr. McKay needs some alone time to sulk. He’s not happy if he can’t sulk, so let’s do him that favor.”
Yeah, he wants to say as they both turn to go, get out and take that kid with you. Go back to the man who replaced Colonel Sheppard and… who replaced Colonel Sheppard and gives you Army Sergeants as anniversary presents and still makes you smile when… others would have made you kick their asses. Instead, he says, “And take that… thing with you, kid.”
The kid… turns around and takes a long look at him before she slowly shakes her head and puts the device back on its table. At his evil glare, she just shrugs and explains, “I don’t think you need time to sulk. I think you need to have a little fun and it thinks the same. It says it’s ready for you whenever you are.”
It’s the last thing she says before she turns around and joins Cadman who gave him a smirk and looked at the kid as if to say “Army brat’s right. Go and have some fun for a change”. As they walk down the corridor, animatedly chatting about some probably explosions related topic or other, he eyes the device again. It seems to sit there and mock him, taunting him… and he catches himself thinking that maybe it is time he starts having some fun again.
First thing, he thinks, will be taking this thing to Dr. Marina Stuyvesant’s engineer shack and dissemble it until it’s sorry it ever spewed a bubble at him. Stuyvesant likes that kind of thing and he kind of likes Stuyvesant and maybe… maybe that kid is scarier than her mother and Cadman combined. He’ll have to remember that next time she barges into his office.
Fandom: Stargate/Army Wives
Rating: K+
Genres: gen, humor
Recipient: hanseatic_keks
Prompt: Stargate/Army Wives, Rodney McKay and Katie Moran, those kids were going to be the death of him
Summary: That Army brat is going to be the death of Rodney McKay. Someday soon, she will.
A/N: Holiday Fic Request Meme. Yay, second Stargate/Army Wives crossover after This Gun's For Hire! Also, look, I found a 'verse name! What do you think? Appropriate? Still got a better idea? Anything else you'd like to add? No? Here you go with the story :)
( This Gun's For Hire )
Been A Bad Day
“It's been a bad day.
Please don't take a picture.
It's been a bad day.
Please.”
REM, “Bad Day”
He curses the day that Morgan or Molan or whatever their name was family ever set foot on Atlantis.
No, actually he curses the day Evan Lorne asked that Sergeant - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, he doesn’t care - to join the expedition. Rumor has it, he did because he owed his wife some present or other and only someone like Lorne could get the thoroughly idiotic idea to present his wife with a soldier for her team to avoid having to sleep on the couch. He’s been cursing the day for twelve months now. And he’s cursing it again right now. With expletives that would make Sheppard God rest his soul blush deep red.
It’s not that he has a problem with that Sergeant, whatever his name is. He doesn’t even talk to the man since he made it a habit not to talk to members of Cadman’s team if it isn’t absolutely unavoidable because the fate of the galaxy depends on it. It’s not the Sergeant’s wife either, although she has a firm grip on law enforcement in the city and runs this radio show that’s regularly grating on his nerves. No, it’s the Sergeant’s kids. Actually, just one kid.
When that family - God forbid he’s ever gonna learn any of their names because that would mean he actually acknowledges them - came to Atlantis from their backwater posting somewhere they don’t even have snow, staring at their surroundings wide-eyed and slack-jawed like the yokels they are, they also brought two kids with them.
A girl and a boy and until now he could pretty much ignore the boy. He couldn’t escape the girl, though. He’s got no idea how old she is but she sure as hell is nosy, inconsiderate and rude enough to be a damn teenager. Always snooping around in his labs, keeping his scientists from doing their jobs with stupid questions only kids who were victims of that school system for trained monkeys the military calls their education could ask and being a general pain in the ass.
Unfortunately, she also inherited the gene, as the only one in her family. Even though he wishes he could just throw her out of his lab, he needs her for his research. So he glares at her when she peers into the lab he’s working in right now instead of just snapping at her like he’d done to her brother a couple of times until the kids’ mother had threatened to make him the target of her next stupid broadcast. He hopes it might scare the girl away, just for once.
“Hey, Doc Rod.” No such luck. Again.
He continues glaring. “It’s Dr. McKay, Kelly.”
She scrunches her nose and rolls her eyes, looking dangerously much like Cadman. “My name is Katie. Everyone can remember that. Why can’t you?”
At the moment Kendra entered his lab, the Ancient device closest to her hums. Contently? “Didn’t your parents tell you to call adults “sir” or “ma’am”? I’m pretty sure there’s some regulation on that in the military.”
That makes her… smirk. Unbelievable. A teenager is smirking at him. “They said I can call you whatever I want. And Captain Laura says so, too.”
Of course. Of course Cadman - he keeps refusing to call her by her married name because he’s still in denial about her having married Lorne and joined forces with that man - would say so. And of course Kiddie would do whatever she said. That girl would jump off a cliff if Cadman so much as hinted at that being a good idea.
Which she actually kind of did when she told the kid about that paratrooper bomb whatever stuff she did before she came to Atlantis three days ago. It’s not that he was listening in, he just was unfortunate enough to sit two tables away and they didn’t exactly keep their voices down… “Hey, what’s this doing, Doc Rod?”
Oh Jesus fucking Christ. “Put that down, Kacey!”
Defiantly, the kid glares at him and… the thing that’s still in her hand lights up for a short moment, makes a strange plopping sound and… little bubbles start forming on and emerging from its top. What the hell? There’s a moment of mutual bafflement and that baffles him enough to make him miss that suddenly, the bubbles are making for him.
When the first one bursts against his uniform sleeve, it’s too late and suddenly the smell of lemons fills the room. Something in him just flips and full grown panic has him in its iron grip. Lemon, he thinks, the damn kid activated something by accident and it has to be something containing lemon and holy crap, he just can’t breathe.
He’s aware of the fact that he’s hyperventilating and in the corner of his mind not occupied with trying to stay alive he hears himself say that those children were going to be the death of him, a couple of days ago and isn’t that funny how his half-uttered prediction is becoming true and…
“Is that your doing, Miss Moran, or was that some “invisible alien entity” again?”
He blinks, fully forgetting to hyperventilate and instead staring at the figure having… materialized in the doorway. He blinks again, taking in the barely veiled smirk. She must have sensed that it was him on the brink of death here and then flown or levitated or beamed here with those creepy Marine super powers, just to gloat. There’s no other way Cadman could suddenly have appeared like that. He knew she was having some weird woman infantry witch thing going on and that’s the proof he’d been looking for for so…
“It was… erm… neither,” Keira says and adds, almost as an afterthought, “ma’am,” and for some reason that pisses him off. Cadman gets a “ma’am” and he doesn’t even get a “Doctor”? What kind of education did her parents give her?
Still looking infuriatingly amused, Cadman raises her eyebrow. “It wasn’t?” Kitty shakes her head. “What was it then?”
Could they please stop talking as if he weren’t… “Bubbles,” is all the kids says.
“Bubbles?” is what Cadman asks as if she’s deaf or something.
He’s about to tell her that yes, goddamn bubbles but Katrina beats him to it. “Yep. I just asked him what this does and then it… woke up and told me it wants to have some fun and before I could tell it not to, it produces bubbles that go straight over to Doc Rod.”
Some fun? An Ancient device told her it wants to have some fun? “They were lethal bubbles! This is not a laughing matter, Kaleigh! And you, Cadman…”
She rolls his eyes and he’s pretty sure he saw a copy of that in the kid’s face. “If you insist on calling me by my last name, do try to make it the correct one, Rodney. I got married almost two years ago.” Yeah, and he’ll never forgive her for that.
He glares at her. “Fine, Captain Lorne. This is not funny. I was being assaulted by poisonous…”
“It says the bubbles aren’t poisonous. It just wanted to see your reaction.” Couldn’t that kid just shut the fuck up? And now she’s looking at that thing in an almost… affectionate way. “I think it’s a little prankster.”
He’s pretty sure he just heard Cadman mutter “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock” but what she says out loud is, “As long as it only chooses Rodney as its target…” and then she shares a stupid grin with Kara and the hero worship with which the kid looks at Cadman nearly makes him sick. Just what he needed. A mini Cadman in the making. “Anyway, your mom’s been looking for you all over the place, young lady. I promised her I’d bring you home if I happened to stumble over you.”
It’s kind of scary how much it satisfies him that for a moment, the worship is replaced by almost teenager like annoyance but the moment was too nice to be true which is probably why it ends too soon. The new look in place is almost pleading. “Do you have to drag me back?”
Cadman shrugs. “A promise is a promise, Army brat. ‘Sides, your mother is just too plain scary to be ignored.” Oh, ahaha, sure, Laura Cadman is afraid of an ex-cop turned head of law enforcement with a radio show. More like being best chums is what it’s like, he thinks because he’s seen Cadman and that Morel woman hang out together practically every minute both women aren’t fawning about their respective husbands.
The kid scrunches her nose at Cadman’s assessment of her mother. “She says the same of you every time dad asks her to ask you to go easy on him if he screws up.”
Hello, he wants to say, still here, still having nearly died? Can someone please… “Far as I know, your dad doesn’t screw up,” Cadman replies frowning and he’s pretty sure she just lied. No one goes through service on an off world team for over a year in Atlantis without ever screwing up. The kid - he’s kind of tired thinking up new names for her so he doesn’t have to remember her real one - however, just gives her a withering glance that reminds him of the kid’s mother. It has an interesting effect on Cadman, too. “Well, that explains it, then. It’s good to know I rule through fear instead of inspiration. Anyway…”
“Could you just please leave already?” Because he’s getting tired of this and most of all of having Cadman in his doorway and just not leaving and he kind of ignores that suddenly, Cadman’s presence is getting to him much more than the kid’s. It’s probably because it’s the longest time he ever spent in the same room with her, almost alone, since she got married.
She throws him a strange look. “Of course, Rodney. Come on, Army brat, Dr. McKay needs some alone time to sulk. He’s not happy if he can’t sulk, so let’s do him that favor.”
Yeah, he wants to say as they both turn to go, get out and take that kid with you. Go back to the man who replaced Colonel Sheppard and… who replaced Colonel Sheppard and gives you Army Sergeants as anniversary presents and still makes you smile when… others would have made you kick their asses. Instead, he says, “And take that… thing with you, kid.”
The kid… turns around and takes a long look at him before she slowly shakes her head and puts the device back on its table. At his evil glare, she just shrugs and explains, “I don’t think you need time to sulk. I think you need to have a little fun and it thinks the same. It says it’s ready for you whenever you are.”
It’s the last thing she says before she turns around and joins Cadman who gave him a smirk and looked at the kid as if to say “Army brat’s right. Go and have some fun for a change”. As they walk down the corridor, animatedly chatting about some probably explosions related topic or other, he eyes the device again. It seems to sit there and mock him, taunting him… and he catches himself thinking that maybe it is time he starts having some fun again.
First thing, he thinks, will be taking this thing to Dr. Marina Stuyvesant’s engineer shack and dissemble it until it’s sorry it ever spewed a bubble at him. Stuyvesant likes that kind of thing and he kind of likes Stuyvesant and maybe… maybe that kid is scarier than her mother and Cadman combined. He’ll have to remember that next time she barges into his office.