"Proof", "Be Cool"
My Sheppard/McKay rec50 table.
Claim: Stargate Atlantis: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Title: Proof
Author: devildoll (devildoll)
Characters: Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/OFC (in her mind, anyway)
Prompt: 20 - Fight
Rating: Mature
Length: Medium
Brief summary: Even the author points out that the premise for the story is weak, but once you swallow it, the story just goes: John's misunderstanding leads to strong action and the action just digs everything in deeper, leading to more misunderstandings and their consequences.
It could be the recipe for a really dark and angst story, but instead, the author took a really light tone with it. And while it still retains the structure of intense emotional pain, it's, uh, not. It is, in fact, rather light.
Okay. I laughed. I found it very silly overall. But you have to accept the premise first.
"'Nother beer?" the bartender asked, reaching for the empty glass.
John shook his head as he pulled his wallet out again and thumbed through the bills in it. "Bottle of Jameson's," he said, slapping a stack of money on the bar. Then he thought about it and added a few more bills. "Gold."
The bartender didn't even blink. That was one thing John really loved about bartenders -- they knew to keep quiet and keep the liquor coming when you were trying to drown your blues in eighty proof.
When the bottle came, John filled his glass with a feeling of purpose. The first swallow made him wince, but he kept going, because he was not nearly drunk enough yet. The second one made him cough. He'd never been much of a whiskey drinker.
The gaggle of women to John's left giggled in synch again, watching him wipe his eyes. They'd been inching closer all night, and the dark-haired one in the tight yellow t-shirt had smiled at him on her way to the jukebox. Her jeans were cut so low he could see the crack of her ass.
He grinned at them, and they giggled again.
He was feeling generous in his misery, so the next time the bartender came by, John flagged him down and paid for a round, which brought the girls over en masse to lean into his personal space and coo over his ears.
After a few minutes of generic bar talk, most of the girls formed a tight conversational knot around the topic of bikini waxing--which John actually would have listened to with more than a little interest, if they'd let him--and he was essentially alone with the one in the yellow shirt.
Her hair was very shiny and her eyes were very sparkly. She was shiny and sparkly, and John was reasonably sure that wasn't just the Jameson's.
"Are you here by yourself?" she asked, though there was no way she didn't know he was. He'd been sitting alone at the bar since she'd come in with her friends. Since long before that, actually.
John nodded. "Yep. All alone." Drinking all by himself because he and Rodney were over. Boom. No warning. Done.
Link to the story: Proof
Claim: Stargate Atlantis: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Title: Be Cool
Author: HTH (HTH_the_first)
Characters: Sheppard/McKay
Prompt: 21 - Epiphany
Rating: Mature
Length: Medium
Brief summary: So, it's, uh, really really incredibly hot? And I find stoner!John to be really adorable? And, uh, Rodney being all high and everything is serious fun?...Okay, yeah, I do have a marked fondness for stories with inhibition lowering plot devices, and this really is one of the best. The characters are true to themselves, and the author makes it all work. The tone of the story is spot-on -- I can see Rodney's mind working like this -- and the lightness of the piece is perfect.
Plus I mentioned really, really, incredibly hot, right?
So as it turned out, there was a conspiracy afoot. Rodney should have figured that much out when he went by Colonel Sheppard’s room (on one of the many embarrassingly flimsy excuses he stored up to disguise the fact that he had no hobbies or interests outside of work except for crossword puzzles, which could only take you so far, and stalking Sheppard) and met Katie Brown there.
He didn’t figure it out, though. He stood mute in the doorway, watching Katie hop around on one foot, giggling and trying to keep her hair out of her face with one hand while putting on her sandal (the straps apparently were every bit as complicated as they appeared to be) with the other. She was wearing a knee-length khaki skirt that didn’t seem to quite fit correctly and a short-sleeved sweater, and the overall effect was of a terribly ill-groomed Donna Reed, except that she still had those little freckles on her upper arm and that red hair that was sleek as soap film when your fingers were on it, assuming your fingers were or ever had been stroking her hair, and he was over her, but that didn’t mean he ever, ever, ever wanted to be stuck for life with the mental image of her, shoeless and brimming with happiness in Colonel Sheppard’s room. She stumbled, and Colonel Sheppard caught her elbow and held her up. “Easy, now,” he drawled, and his voice sounded scratchy and overused and was immediately responsible for about seven thousand more mental images Rodney didn’t want in his neural pathways. “C’mon, Katie, ‘s just like college.”
“I lived in a women’s dorm,” she said, a bit wistfully.
“Me, too!” he said, for all the world as if it were some unexpected bonding moment and not clearly one of Sheppard’s stupid jokes. “They kept me under the bed in one of those- “ He sketched something box-like in the air. “You know, those giant tupperware....” It wasn’t a good joke, even by Sheppard’s standards, but it sent Katie into fits of laughter.
She stopped on the way out and patted Rodney’s cheek. “Don’t be mad,” she said, tipping her head sideways and ruffling her hair again. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“Nah,” Sheppard answered for him. “Rodney’s okay. Right, Rodney?”
“Okay,” Rodney repeated blankly. He really hadn’t - well, he was still trying to, to process, because he wasn’t completely sure what Colonel Sheppard’s type was, but he wouldn’t have guessed it to be sweet-tempered freckled biologists who’d had to leave not one but four cats back home. More than that, though, he would have thought- Colonel Sheppard was a guy, not just a man but a guy, the kind who obeyed guy rules like calling shotgun and - and - the five-second rule for dropped food, and above all the one about dating your friends’ ex-girlfriends. Wasn’t there still a rule about that? Other, more guy-like guys hadn’t had it repealed behind Rodney’s back, had they?
“Hey, you plan to stand in the hall all night?” Sheppard asked, and then made the question mostly rhetorical by hooking his fingers in Rodney’s shirtfront and pulling him through the door. Sheppard didn’t let go of him, even when they were alone in the room. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look...not so good.”
“Katie....” he tried, glancing over his shoulder as if he could point her out to Sheppard through the closed door. Oh, goddamn it, it wasn’t fair that he was supposed to talk about his feelings, when his feelings were the same boring mishmash of envy and disappointment and hollowness and nausea and bitter misanthropy that always went along with watching other people make each other happy while you mostly managed to make other people throw you out of your own lab and tell you not to come back until you’d had a nap and/or a sudden and shocking change of personality due to head injury. The usual.
Link to the story: Be Cool
Claim: Stargate Atlantis: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Title: Proof
Author: devildoll (devildoll)
Characters: Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/OFC (in her mind, anyway)
Prompt: 20 - Fight
Rating: Mature
Length: Medium
Brief summary: Even the author points out that the premise for the story is weak, but once you swallow it, the story just goes: John's misunderstanding leads to strong action and the action just digs everything in deeper, leading to more misunderstandings and their consequences.
It could be the recipe for a really dark and angst story, but instead, the author took a really light tone with it. And while it still retains the structure of intense emotional pain, it's, uh, not. It is, in fact, rather light.
Okay. I laughed. I found it very silly overall. But you have to accept the premise first.
"'Nother beer?" the bartender asked, reaching for the empty glass.
John shook his head as he pulled his wallet out again and thumbed through the bills in it. "Bottle of Jameson's," he said, slapping a stack of money on the bar. Then he thought about it and added a few more bills. "Gold."
The bartender didn't even blink. That was one thing John really loved about bartenders -- they knew to keep quiet and keep the liquor coming when you were trying to drown your blues in eighty proof.
When the bottle came, John filled his glass with a feeling of purpose. The first swallow made him wince, but he kept going, because he was not nearly drunk enough yet. The second one made him cough. He'd never been much of a whiskey drinker.
The gaggle of women to John's left giggled in synch again, watching him wipe his eyes. They'd been inching closer all night, and the dark-haired one in the tight yellow t-shirt had smiled at him on her way to the jukebox. Her jeans were cut so low he could see the crack of her ass.
He grinned at them, and they giggled again.
He was feeling generous in his misery, so the next time the bartender came by, John flagged him down and paid for a round, which brought the girls over en masse to lean into his personal space and coo over his ears.
After a few minutes of generic bar talk, most of the girls formed a tight conversational knot around the topic of bikini waxing--which John actually would have listened to with more than a little interest, if they'd let him--and he was essentially alone with the one in the yellow shirt.
Her hair was very shiny and her eyes were very sparkly. She was shiny and sparkly, and John was reasonably sure that wasn't just the Jameson's.
"Are you here by yourself?" she asked, though there was no way she didn't know he was. He'd been sitting alone at the bar since she'd come in with her friends. Since long before that, actually.
John nodded. "Yep. All alone." Drinking all by himself because he and Rodney were over. Boom. No warning. Done.
Link to the story: Proof
Claim: Stargate Atlantis: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Title: Be Cool
Author: HTH (HTH_the_first)
Characters: Sheppard/McKay
Prompt: 21 - Epiphany
Rating: Mature
Length: Medium
Brief summary: So, it's, uh, really really incredibly hot? And I find stoner!John to be really adorable? And, uh, Rodney being all high and everything is serious fun?...Okay, yeah, I do have a marked fondness for stories with inhibition lowering plot devices, and this really is one of the best. The characters are true to themselves, and the author makes it all work. The tone of the story is spot-on -- I can see Rodney's mind working like this -- and the lightness of the piece is perfect.
Plus I mentioned really, really, incredibly hot, right?
So as it turned out, there was a conspiracy afoot. Rodney should have figured that much out when he went by Colonel Sheppard’s room (on one of the many embarrassingly flimsy excuses he stored up to disguise the fact that he had no hobbies or interests outside of work except for crossword puzzles, which could only take you so far, and stalking Sheppard) and met Katie Brown there.
He didn’t figure it out, though. He stood mute in the doorway, watching Katie hop around on one foot, giggling and trying to keep her hair out of her face with one hand while putting on her sandal (the straps apparently were every bit as complicated as they appeared to be) with the other. She was wearing a knee-length khaki skirt that didn’t seem to quite fit correctly and a short-sleeved sweater, and the overall effect was of a terribly ill-groomed Donna Reed, except that she still had those little freckles on her upper arm and that red hair that was sleek as soap film when your fingers were on it, assuming your fingers were or ever had been stroking her hair, and he was over her, but that didn’t mean he ever, ever, ever wanted to be stuck for life with the mental image of her, shoeless and brimming with happiness in Colonel Sheppard’s room. She stumbled, and Colonel Sheppard caught her elbow and held her up. “Easy, now,” he drawled, and his voice sounded scratchy and overused and was immediately responsible for about seven thousand more mental images Rodney didn’t want in his neural pathways. “C’mon, Katie, ‘s just like college.”
“I lived in a women’s dorm,” she said, a bit wistfully.
“Me, too!” he said, for all the world as if it were some unexpected bonding moment and not clearly one of Sheppard’s stupid jokes. “They kept me under the bed in one of those- “ He sketched something box-like in the air. “You know, those giant tupperware....” It wasn’t a good joke, even by Sheppard’s standards, but it sent Katie into fits of laughter.
She stopped on the way out and patted Rodney’s cheek. “Don’t be mad,” she said, tipping her head sideways and ruffling her hair again. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“Nah,” Sheppard answered for him. “Rodney’s okay. Right, Rodney?”
“Okay,” Rodney repeated blankly. He really hadn’t - well, he was still trying to, to process, because he wasn’t completely sure what Colonel Sheppard’s type was, but he wouldn’t have guessed it to be sweet-tempered freckled biologists who’d had to leave not one but four cats back home. More than that, though, he would have thought- Colonel Sheppard was a guy, not just a man but a guy, the kind who obeyed guy rules like calling shotgun and - and - the five-second rule for dropped food, and above all the one about dating your friends’ ex-girlfriends. Wasn’t there still a rule about that? Other, more guy-like guys hadn’t had it repealed behind Rodney’s back, had they?
“Hey, you plan to stand in the hall all night?” Sheppard asked, and then made the question mostly rhetorical by hooking his fingers in Rodney’s shirtfront and pulling him through the door. Sheppard didn’t let go of him, even when they were alone in the room. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look...not so good.”
“Katie....” he tried, glancing over his shoulder as if he could point her out to Sheppard through the closed door. Oh, goddamn it, it wasn’t fair that he was supposed to talk about his feelings, when his feelings were the same boring mishmash of envy and disappointment and hollowness and nausea and bitter misanthropy that always went along with watching other people make each other happy while you mostly managed to make other people throw you out of your own lab and tell you not to come back until you’d had a nap and/or a sudden and shocking change of personality due to head injury. The usual.
Link to the story: Be Cool