My Ficathon Fic
“I can’t believe I let myself be talked into this,” Rodney groused. He watched as Sarah cheerfully flopped into the couch and stared at him.
Rodney stared back, and waited for someone to say something.
“Rodney, she’s a four year old, not a bloody Wraith. She won’t bite your head off,” Carson rolled his eyes at the scientist.
“You’re not going to spend the rest of the day with her,” Rodney answered. “Why couldn’t you watch her, anyway?”
“Because,” Carson answered patiently, “I have work to do. You had the day off. You offered.”
“Your nurse,” Rodney carefully pushed Sarah away from the picture frame, “is a manipulative...”
Carson clapped his hand in front of Rodney’s mouth. "Careful."
“Oh.... Right,” Rodney muttered.
“What’s ‘manipolative?” Sarah asked watching the two of them.
“It’s… extremely…” Rodney twirled his hands in the air in a desperate attempt to convey his meaning.
“Oh,” Sarah nodded knowledgably.
Carson mimicked the hand twirling behind Rodney’s back, and Sarah giggled.
Rodney turned to glare at Carson. “What are you still doing here, anyway?”
“Lending the lass my support, of course,” Carson said calmly. “She’ll need it to spend the day with you.”
Rodney shoved him out the door, then contemplated Sarah. He couldn’t quite shake this feeling of doom.
“So, what do you want to do?”
“I want chocolate,” Sarah answered promptly.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Chocolate will make you hyper.”
“What’s hyper?”
“Extremely…” Once again, Rodney found his hands twirling about in the air, faster this time.
“Oh. Extremely,” Sarah mimicked his gesture.
Rodney sighed. It was going to be a long day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rodney watched glumly as the last of his corn was consumed by Sarah, just before she ran off to see Major Sheppard. Corn, he told himself quite firmly, was overrated. This did not help the sting that he felt when he watched the last of his beloved vegetable disappear.
Carson watched him amusedly from the other side of the table. He had decided to drop in to offer his support to Rodney, seeing that the scientist looked rather… frazzled. Rodney and small children do not mix, he noted.
“She’s like this ball of pure energy,” Rodney told him. “And she bounces off walls and ceilings. I’m not sure if he she ever slows down. Do you suppose she slows down?” he asked Carson.
“Eventually,” Carson answered, thinking absently of his first babysitting job, which had been a nightmare.
“It’s like everything she bounces into gives her a recharge,” Rodney continued, while watching Sarah steal Major Sheppard’s pie.
“You never bounced off the walls as a child?” Carson asked skeptically.
“Never.”
“I bet you did. I can imagine it now. Mrs. McKay, desperately trying to keep her son from bouncing into the electrical circuits. Mr. McKay, moaning about how they should never have coffee in the house again. And little Rodney, the Human Bouncy Ball, fuelled by pure caffeine.”
“Never happened,” Rodney shook his head adamantly.
“I suppose you skipped childhood, then,” Carson said jokingly. “And simply popped into existence as a twenty year old, researching atomic bombs.”
Rodney considered. “That’s more like it.”
Sarah bounced into Rodney’s face. “Can we go now, can we? Can we play tag, ‘cause Major Sheppard said he’ll play tag with me if you do. Said something about it being worth it to see you play tag, I wonder why he said that? So will you?”
Rodney sighed. He had given up trying to rein her in sometime in the past hour. “Fine.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next 2 hours found him playing various games that Sarah had devised, and currently he was losing miserably at checkers, though he would never admit it to anybody. He was a genius, after all. She was four. He would be scarred for the rest of his natural life if anybody found out. Which was why Sarah would probably be all over the place, telling everybody.
After Sarah jumped his last checker, he dragged himself to the couch and flopped on it, staring dully at the ceiling.
Sarah watched him.
“Will you play with me?”
“No. I’m tired.”
Sarah wrinkled her nose at him. “But I’m bored.”
“Fine. How about…” Rodney searched his memory for a game that wouldn’t mean a lot of running. Or moving in general. “Hide and Seek?”
Sarah beamed. “You’re it!” She squealed, placing his hands firmly over his eyes and running off.
Rodney counted.
He realized, a bit late, that not only had he counted, he had also napped.
He had also been searching for Sarah for the past 30 minutes.
Rodney had gone beyond scared. He had no idea what had happened to her, and he had no idea what would happen to him if her mother came back from the mainland and found out he had lost her daughter.
Finding himself at the end of his rope, he walked back to his apartment in hopes that she was there. If not, he would call in help.
He found Sarah lying on his couch while Carson read a story to her. There was remnants of chocolate on her lip, chocolate Rodney had not given her. She was curled up with a contented expression on her face.
Carson frowned at him in a warning to keep quiet, before walking away from the couch. Rodney followed.
“You should start a daycare service,” Rodney said. “The Beckett Babysitting/Daycare Center. You could do house calls.”
Carson snorted. “Not many people would want to leave their children in a hospital. You owe me one, by the way.”
Rodney frowned. “You gave her chocolate. She’ll be hyper when she wakes up.”
“Yes. Handy that she won’t be under my care then.”
“Oh, I see. Make her hyper, then dump her off on me.”
Carson gasped, the picture of offended innocence. “I’m shocked you would think such a thing of me. Shocked! She, Rodney, was dumped on me. Or did you forget your little nap?”
Rodney suddenly found the floor very interesting.
“Have a nice time,” he said, walking out the door. “I think she’ll wake up about an hour from now, all hyper and ready to play.”
“Thanks,” Rodney muttered.