GK Fic: What's in a Chair (Gen, PG) 1/1
Title: What's in a Chair
Author: Kalliste
Pairing: None
Rating: PG for swears
Word Count: 1,221
Summary: In which Ray gets a new seat, and horrifies (almost) everyone.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction, based on the fictionalized characters in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill. No reflection on the real people bearing these names is implied. No profit is being made and no harm is intended. Similarly, I neither own nor profit from the characters of Stargate: Atlantis.
Notes/Warnings: Crossover with Stargate: Atlantis. Sequel to "Welcome to Atlantis".
Can also be found here at AO3.
Unbetaed, therefore all mistakes are my own. Enjoy!
Zelenka plunked down Unidentified Ancient Artifact #82 in front of Corporal Person, and watched in bemusement as the wiry, dark-haired Marine actually slid off his chair to the floor, where he assumed an attitude of prostrate despair.
“Jesus H. Christ in a Mexican titty bar, Radek,” Person moaned, “we’ve been at this for a thousand years now. When does the madness end?”
“It has been three hours, Corporal,” Zelenka countered, dryly. Person waved a hand in the air, as if to convey that he could not be bothered with such petty semantics.
“Ray, Radek,” he corrected, still lying prone on the floor. “Anyone whose job includes my daily personalized torture regimen of making things go bing should at least call me by fucking name, okay?”
Zelenka considered pointing out that none of the artifacts Ray had been presented with in the past four days had ever once “gone bing”, but decided it was likely to be one of those statements that sent Corporal - that sent Ray into inexplicable fits of giggling, and settled for a sigh instead.
“Ray, then,” he said, trying for the same mental Zen space he used when working with McKay, “If you would please get back in your - ”
“I mean,” Ray said, apparently to the light fixture overhead, “why couldn’t I get a cool mutant superpower, like controlling the weather, or the ability to spontaneously attract hot chicks like a magnet, zap!” and he smacked his hands together, to demonstrate, presumably, beautiful women crashing into him at high velocity. “But nooo, my mutation is to make little whirligigs turn blue. I’m like an intergalactic pregnancy test, I swear.”
Radek blinked in utter confusion - a pregnancy test? - and leaned over the table to stare at Ray on the floor. “So you do not think having the ability to operate the most advanced technology in two galaxies is cool,” he stated, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. It was a tough fit; Radek would have killed to have the ATA gene therapy work on him, and meanwhile Ray had it naturally, and thought it sucked.
Radek guessed some of this must show on his face, because when Ray tilted his head up and looked at him, he hastily clarified, “No, man, look, it’s super cool, except I don’t get to actually operate anything, do I? I thought I was going to be all exploring alien planets and flying through space and shit, but the minute you guys found out I had this stupid gene thing I got stuck in here with a bunch of eggheads - no offense - and told to poke things and - and - ”
“Make them go bing?” Radek offered, and Ray nodded.
“Yeah. And that’s it.” Ray thunked his head back down, hard enough that Radek winced involuntarily, and sighed.
Radek scratched his head. “Ray, has anyone actually explained to you what it means that you have the ATA gene?”
Ray gave him the stinkeye. “Uh, yeah, it means I can activate Ancient technology. And you know what, nobody actually needed to explain that to me, because I figured it out all by myself. Seeing as that’s all I’ve been doing for - ”
“Ray,” Radek interrupted, “these ‘whirligigs’ we have been giving you for these few days are just as much to test you as they are to identify them.”
Ray raised his head again and squinted at him. “They are?”
Radek raised his eyebrows and nodded. “And based on those tests, you have the strongest expression of the gene of anyone in Atlantis except Colonel Sheppard himself.”
Ray blinked. “I do?”
“Yes,” Radek said, patiently. “Even more so than Dr. Beckett. Who is thrilled by this news, by the way.”
“Oh.” Ray blinked a few more times. “Why is Dr. Beckett thrilled that I have more, uh, expressiveness than him?”
“Because it means that if Colonel Sheppard is unavailable or incapacitated - ” either of which was all too common a phenomenon, “ - you, and not Dr. Beckett, will be the next choice to operate the control chair if Atlantis is attacked.” Which is another thing all too likely to happen - again - at some point, Radek thought ruefully.
“Oh,” Ray said again. Then: “What’s a control chair?”
“So what you’re saying,” Brad said, slowly, “Is that we’re all fucked.”
They were tromping through high grass of a color that was just a shade too red to be from Earth, or maybe Ray was just looking too hard for differences. The field stretched approximately half a klick in every direction to the treeline from the stargate sitting serenely in its center. Other than the too-reddish grass, Ray thought M5X-868 looked remarkably like the Pacific Northwest region of North America.
(Ray used to go on road trips. Well, his band called them “tours”, but who the fuck were they kidding, really.)
Apparently Ray had spoken too soon, or maybe Zelenka had said something to Sheppard, because after two more days of “chair training”, the colonel had gathered them up for an expedition to this as-yet unvisited planet, to see what if anything it had to offer. Ray was kind of wildly distracted by the fact that he was walking on the surface of an actual alien planet, but that didn’t mean he was going to let Brad’s comment pass unmolested.
“I am shocked and appalled you have so little faith in your Ray-Ray, Brad,” Ray told him. “Who was it who got you through OIF safe and sound as a kitten in a basket, huh? Oh yeah, that would be me.” He poked himself in the chest with the hand not holding his P90, bruising it a bit against the tac vest. He missed his M16, but the gray-blue and black BDUs they’d been given here were about a million percent improvement over the fucking woodland camo MOPPs they’d had to wear in Iraq, and that was a fact.
Brad didn’t cease for a moment from scanning the treeline for movement, but managed to somehow give Ray an incredulous look without actually looking at him, which was a pretty neat trick. “Ray, please tell me you are not seriously comparing driving a broken-down piece of shit Humvee through a desert to flying a million-year-old city-starship through space.”
Ray grinned; Brad really shouldn’t set himself up like that. “Potato, po-tah-to,” he replied airily.
Brad… twitched. Ray grinned even more: gotcha. “’Cause seriously,” Ray added, just to twist the knife a little, “driving is driving, isn’t it?”
“Ray,” Brad said calmly, still watching the trees, “I understand that your long and illustrious ancestry of backwoods, bucktoothed, whiskey tango, cow-fucking, sister-marrying fuckups has tragically softened your brain synapses into near mush, but perhaps you might try a bit harder not to broadcast that fact.”
Ray beamed at him. “Aw, Bradley, I love it when you sweet-talk me, you adorable Christ-killing ball of fluff, you. Now say it in Yiddish, come on.”
Brad shook his head - fondly, Ray was sure. “Watch your sector, Ray,” Brad told him, by which Ray knew playtime was over. He snorted a laugh to himself and hefted his weapon, scanning the trees.
(“They do know we can hear them, right?” Rodney hissed to Sheppard in a horrified whisper, gesturing at the two Marines tramping through the field ahead of them.
Sheppard just grinned.)
END