C #3 - "Red" (SG:A)
Title: Red
Author: Spook - themonkeycabal
Rating: MH (mostly harmless)
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Sheppard/Weir Friendship
Spoilers: None, really. Vague, general S2, if anything.
word count: 2347
the challenge: A couple, and inspiration from a picture of orange smoke
***
"Apple?"
"That's not an apple."
John Sheppard looked at the greenish, reddish, yellowish fruit in his hand and shrugged. "Close enough. Want it?"
Elizabeth Weir sighed and let her head drop against the bulkhead wall with a heavy thud. "No. It's too ... red."
"Oh. Yeah." He considered the fruit for a long minute, then shrugged and took a bite.
She rolled her head to look over at him, giving him a baleful glare. He wiped the juice off his lips with the back of his hand and frowned.
"What? I'm hungry."
"Fine." Elizabeth let her head rock back, and she stared up at the uninteresting ceiling. It hadn't been interesting three hours ago, and it hadn't suddenly popped up all interesting in the three seconds she looked away.
"Fine." Sheppard went back to his apple (or whatever it was), biting fiercely into its flesh.
"Rodney!" Elizabeth called out, needing a distraction before she strangled John Sheppard. Three hours. Three hours in the jumper. She was going to kill someone.
"I'm here," McKay replied, his voice crackling and staticy over the comm.
"ETA?"
"Uh ... Zelenka and I are ... you see there's this ... um ... smoke ... I'll get back to you."
"Rodney, don't you dare--" The comm connection closed with a soft, possibly cheerful, chirp and she snarled at the back of the seat she was sitting behind.
It started out as a simple diplomatic trade discussion on a nice peaceful planet, where the natives were generous and mild-mannered. Why is it that those never ended well? Suspicious inhabitants she could deal with -- it was the seemingly happy, benign ones that usually turned out to be anything but.
Today was no different and now she was trapped in a damaged jumper with her fidgety military commander.
About an hour into their confinement, John had begun to get a little antsy. As the seconds ticked past, his twitching grew. Finally, he ended up standing to pace the compartment. Elizabeth tried her best to ignore him, leaning back in the jumper's comfortable chair, looking up, wishing the jumper had ceiling tiles to count, or that she was tired enough to nap.
About fifteen minutes into the pacing, he got bored and went off to sort through supplies in the back compartment. She'd stood up and took his place with the pacing. Pacing was useful when she had something to think about, some problem she was chewing on, the physical activity keeping her body busy while her mind worked; being stuck and unable to work on anything of importance just made pacing boring and pointless.
Eventually she ended up at the back of the pilot compartment, sitting on the floor behind a chair, back against the wall. She'd never seen the jumper from that point of view, and for a while it was at least different, if not interesting. John had returned from his sudden need to inventory and stared down at her, his face pulled into a confused smirk. She ignored him some more and counted seams in the back of the chair until he sat down next to her, nudging her over so he could have a bit of wall as well. Why he couldn't take the wall behind the other chair, was a mystery. He just smiled charmingly while she watched him suspiciously and shifted over a few inches.
Over the course of the following two hours they took turns pacing or sorting things that had been sorted a dozen times before. They talked about work, about schedules and missions and gossiped lightly. There was even an attempt at an entirely made-up and completely absurd card game with the sorry, worn half-deck he'd found in a pack. After, of course, they spent a decent ten minutes pondering what had happened to the rest of the deck.
From time to time McKay graced them with streams of running commentary that, she was sure, made sense to him, and possibly Zelenka -- and possibly John, she thought, glancing over at him as he gnawed on the fruit's core -- but didn't really matter to her. Bottom line, she was still stuck, and all his babble hadn't changed that fact yet.
So, three hours in, still stuck, and John was sucking, slurping, noisily at the apple's -- no, not an apple, damn it! -- core. She wasn't sure why, exactly, the fact that he was eating a piece of perfectly innocent fruit was making her slightly wrathful. Other than that it was too red.
"It's not my fault," he said suddenly, pulling a small bag out of his pocket and wrapping the fruit core in it. "There's no 'taboo colors' check box in the dummy's guide to intergalactic relations."
Elizabeth sighed and looked away from him. He was right, it wasn't his fault. It really wasn't. But three hours of inactivity, three hours trapped, and he was the closest, most convenient target for her irritation. All told, he was actually fairly good humored about their situation, if entirely too fidgety. He could be as still as death, sometimes, but, God help her when he was bored -- it was like minding a sugared-up two-year old.
"Besides, it could have been worse," he continued, pressing his fingertips together, trying to look thoughtful or philosophical or something.
"John?" She said his name evenly, trying to keep irritation out of her voice.
"Yes?"
"They tried to kill us and threw spears, very large rocks, and some sort of mammal at the jumper. I'm not sure how much worse it gets than that."
He frowned at his fingertips and tapped them against each other. "The mammal was a first. But, still, it could have been like Tirl."
Elizabeth froze and felt her face hardening, her eyes narrowing. Only years of diplomatic training and her ingrained -- neurotic, if you listened to John; though, not when she was in hearing range. Or so he thought -- need to maintain some sort of professionalism, even in the face of unknown dangers, or irritants, kept her from whacking him.
"You promised me you'd never mention that again."
His eyes widened, and he seemed to realize his mouth had moved without his brain fully engaged. He didn't look nearly contrite enough, however.
"You promised," she said again, almost hissing this time.
"Uh ... sorry?" He tried for an adorable, crooked grin. Sadly, it worked. God, that grin was the bane of her existence. She let him get away with far too much simply because of that grin. Annoying man.
"Was that the planet with the outfit?" Rodney's voice crackled over the comm again, and Elizabeth cursed bitterly. She hadn't even realized it was back on.
"You'd better have good news for me, Rodney," she snapped, using her Dr. "I am so the boss of you" Weir voice.
"Well ... the smoke's cleared."
"And?"
"So ... uh, we can see the jumper much more clearly now."
"Great. And?"
"And, I've really never seen anything like it. It's fairly amazing, actually. The whole back starboard quarter is ... well, it's not pretty. And the rest of the jumper ... you're just sort of hanging there. How did you manage that?"
"Mammal gummed up the works," Sheppard offered.
There was silence and Elizabeth almost laughed as she imagined what Rodney's face would do with that bizarre statement. And if she did laugh, softly to herself, well, it was three hours trapped in a small jumper with John Sheppard, after being chased off an alien planet for having a uniform the wrong color -- it was stress. That could do things to a person.
"Kind of like a cow crossed with a what? Tribble, maybe?" John continued helpfully. His eyes slid over to her and he looked entirely amused. It was entirely possible that this time she really did let herself laugh out loud. Quietly. Maybe, possibly, sharing some amusement at the situation.
"What? How? ... I need to talk to Zelenka."
"Rodney!" Elizabeth called desperately. The mammal was funny, staying trapped was not, and having her chief scientist wander off to chat with the engineer -- probably over coffee and those pastries Sgt. Mendelsohn made every Tuesday -- was not getting her untrapped.
The comm chirped off again and John snickered. She reached over and dug a fingernail into his ribs, taking some minor satisfaction from his distressed yelp. The satisfaction was sadly minor, though, and his hurt look broke her irritation again. Which, paradoxically made her more irritated. Really annoying man.
"You promised. And you told Rodney?"
"Look, I'm sorry. I really am, Elizabeth. It's just ... well, it was in the report. Details are important. I had to put it in." His voice was pleading and he looked truly remorseful.
"But you told Rodney?" She knew her own voice was drifting over into whining. She couldn't help it. "The ... outfit, John?"
His face went through some fairly amazing contortions, it took her a few seconds to realize he was trying not to laugh. She jabbed him again, and this time his yelp was more satisfying and she ignored the wounded look.
"So who else did you tell?" She knew she was probably pouting, and world-class diplomats didn't pout. It was undignified. Only John Sheppard could bring her to this -- down to his level.
"Nobody." He was trying for sincere, but she heard the brief hesitation. It would probably slip by most other people, but, oh, no, not Elizabeth Weir.
"Liar."
"It was in the report," he countered loudly, desperately. "I couldn't not put it in the report."
"Who?"
"It was the report," he said weakly, looking over his shoulder towards the back of the jumper, like he'd like to go back and do inventory again.
"The other half of that deck of cards is long gone, give it up."
"General O'Neill."
She dropped her head to her knees and put her hands behind her head. "Oh, please, tell me you didn't."
"Well," he started slowly and she felt him shift restlessly next to her. "You were in meetings at the SGC, with Landry and crew, and, well, he couldn't get out to the Springs, so he invited me out for football and pizza in D.C. A sort of informal debriefing."
"And in the course of football and pizza you just told him?"
"Well, no, of course not." He sounded almost scandalized and she raised her head enough to look into his entirely too innocent hazel eyes. "We just ... got to talking about things. Life out there. Stuff we've seen. Things we've done. Uh, funny stories--" He broke off with another yelp and scooted away from her. "You've got to stop doing that."
"It wasn't funny." She was pouting again. She hated that. She would make him pay, someday, in some extremely creative way. "We almost died. There was blood. Stitches were required. You had a concussion and two broken fingers."
"Well, yeah, the near death part wasn't funny." His lips pulled up into a broad grin. "See? This wasn't nearly as bad as that. So they threw a fluffy cow at us and they hate the color red. So what? No injuries, no plague, no torture, no ... other bad things. We're just a little stuck here. And McKay and Zelenka will get us out in plenty of time for dinner," he pronounced brightly.
Elizabeth had to work very hard not to smile and give into his attempted charm. "Nice try. One of these days, John Sheppard, you're going to find out just how much dirt I have on you."
John paled and cleared his throat. "Useless planet, anyway. The fruit's no good."
"Hey, Sheppard," McKay called. "Remember the mud people of Tagan'lasat?"
John's eyes widened and he shot a quick, fearful look at Elizabeth. "Rodney, shut up."
Elizabeth hummed quietly, her irritation melting away into amusement. "Rodney, back to work."
"I'm just waiting for Zelenka to calibrate--"
Elizabeth climbed to her feet, stepped over John's outstretched legs and walked to the front of the jumper, slapping a hand down on the comm controls. Turning around, she leaned back against the console, crossed her arms and smiled at Sheppard.
"The mud people of Tagan'lasat," she repeated simply.
John swallowed heavily and played with a button on a pocket. "There was just ... it's a ... uh, a welcoming ... there's this thing where ... a ceremony." He glanced up at her, a helpless expression on his face.
Elizabeth laughed then, finally feeling relaxed. "Teyla's reports are very ... comprehensive," she informed him wickedly.
His eyes narrowed and he ran a nervous hand through his more-insanely-messy-than-normal hair. "You're both evil."
"You told General O'Neill about Tirl."
"It was just ... in the course of conversation." He gestured irritably at nothing in particular. "That's not evil, that's just ..."
"Football and pizza?"
"Exactly." He jabbed the air sharply with a hand. "I don't know what you and Teyla get up to with your little tea breaks, but I don't wanna know."
She laughed again and crossed the compartment again to sit back down next to him. "You're so easy, sometimes."
He made a small, perturbed grunt and tapped his fingers on his knees. "It's not fair."
"What isn't?"
"Sure, you can torment me with the mud people and that ceremony, but I can't tease you about the outfit. I can't even accidentally mention it. You get that ... that look, all betrayed and hurt. It's not fair."
She grinned and nudged his shoulder with hers. "How about we call it even and agree to forget both incidents?"
"That works."
"And by forget, I mean never another mention. Ever. Clear?"
"Crystal."
"Because if I hear about Tirl again..." He smirked and she raised an eyebrow. "Did you know the MALP was still sending video back from Tagan'lasat? During the ceremony, I mean."
His face flamed red, then shifted over into purple, and he gave her a desperate look. "You wouldn't?"
"No, I wouldn't. If I never hear about Tirl again."
"Evil."
"Yes."
He considered her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face. She let him stare, and regarded him evenly. His face broke into a wide grin and he held out his hand to her.
"Dr. Weir, it's a pleasure working with you."
She took his hand and shook it, grinning back. "And you, Colonel."
They sat back against the wall and stared at the seat. "So ... did you ever hear what really happened to Rodney's hair on Purth Ragek?"
"Not tree sap, huh?" She laughed.
"Not exactly."
##
Author: Spook - themonkeycabal
Rating: MH (mostly harmless)
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Sheppard/Weir Friendship
Spoilers: None, really. Vague, general S2, if anything.
word count: 2347
the challenge: A couple, and inspiration from a picture of orange smoke
***
"Apple?"
"That's not an apple."
John Sheppard looked at the greenish, reddish, yellowish fruit in his hand and shrugged. "Close enough. Want it?"
Elizabeth Weir sighed and let her head drop against the bulkhead wall with a heavy thud. "No. It's too ... red."
"Oh. Yeah." He considered the fruit for a long minute, then shrugged and took a bite.
She rolled her head to look over at him, giving him a baleful glare. He wiped the juice off his lips with the back of his hand and frowned.
"What? I'm hungry."
"Fine." Elizabeth let her head rock back, and she stared up at the uninteresting ceiling. It hadn't been interesting three hours ago, and it hadn't suddenly popped up all interesting in the three seconds she looked away.
"Fine." Sheppard went back to his apple (or whatever it was), biting fiercely into its flesh.
"Rodney!" Elizabeth called out, needing a distraction before she strangled John Sheppard. Three hours. Three hours in the jumper. She was going to kill someone.
"I'm here," McKay replied, his voice crackling and staticy over the comm.
"ETA?"
"Uh ... Zelenka and I are ... you see there's this ... um ... smoke ... I'll get back to you."
"Rodney, don't you dare--" The comm connection closed with a soft, possibly cheerful, chirp and she snarled at the back of the seat she was sitting behind.
It started out as a simple diplomatic trade discussion on a nice peaceful planet, where the natives were generous and mild-mannered. Why is it that those never ended well? Suspicious inhabitants she could deal with -- it was the seemingly happy, benign ones that usually turned out to be anything but.
Today was no different and now she was trapped in a damaged jumper with her fidgety military commander.
About an hour into their confinement, John had begun to get a little antsy. As the seconds ticked past, his twitching grew. Finally, he ended up standing to pace the compartment. Elizabeth tried her best to ignore him, leaning back in the jumper's comfortable chair, looking up, wishing the jumper had ceiling tiles to count, or that she was tired enough to nap.
About fifteen minutes into the pacing, he got bored and went off to sort through supplies in the back compartment. She'd stood up and took his place with the pacing. Pacing was useful when she had something to think about, some problem she was chewing on, the physical activity keeping her body busy while her mind worked; being stuck and unable to work on anything of importance just made pacing boring and pointless.
Eventually she ended up at the back of the pilot compartment, sitting on the floor behind a chair, back against the wall. She'd never seen the jumper from that point of view, and for a while it was at least different, if not interesting. John had returned from his sudden need to inventory and stared down at her, his face pulled into a confused smirk. She ignored him some more and counted seams in the back of the chair until he sat down next to her, nudging her over so he could have a bit of wall as well. Why he couldn't take the wall behind the other chair, was a mystery. He just smiled charmingly while she watched him suspiciously and shifted over a few inches.
Over the course of the following two hours they took turns pacing or sorting things that had been sorted a dozen times before. They talked about work, about schedules and missions and gossiped lightly. There was even an attempt at an entirely made-up and completely absurd card game with the sorry, worn half-deck he'd found in a pack. After, of course, they spent a decent ten minutes pondering what had happened to the rest of the deck.
From time to time McKay graced them with streams of running commentary that, she was sure, made sense to him, and possibly Zelenka -- and possibly John, she thought, glancing over at him as he gnawed on the fruit's core -- but didn't really matter to her. Bottom line, she was still stuck, and all his babble hadn't changed that fact yet.
So, three hours in, still stuck, and John was sucking, slurping, noisily at the apple's -- no, not an apple, damn it! -- core. She wasn't sure why, exactly, the fact that he was eating a piece of perfectly innocent fruit was making her slightly wrathful. Other than that it was too red.
"It's not my fault," he said suddenly, pulling a small bag out of his pocket and wrapping the fruit core in it. "There's no 'taboo colors' check box in the dummy's guide to intergalactic relations."
Elizabeth sighed and looked away from him. He was right, it wasn't his fault. It really wasn't. But three hours of inactivity, three hours trapped, and he was the closest, most convenient target for her irritation. All told, he was actually fairly good humored about their situation, if entirely too fidgety. He could be as still as death, sometimes, but, God help her when he was bored -- it was like minding a sugared-up two-year old.
"Besides, it could have been worse," he continued, pressing his fingertips together, trying to look thoughtful or philosophical or something.
"John?" She said his name evenly, trying to keep irritation out of her voice.
"Yes?"
"They tried to kill us and threw spears, very large rocks, and some sort of mammal at the jumper. I'm not sure how much worse it gets than that."
He frowned at his fingertips and tapped them against each other. "The mammal was a first. But, still, it could have been like Tirl."
Elizabeth froze and felt her face hardening, her eyes narrowing. Only years of diplomatic training and her ingrained -- neurotic, if you listened to John; though, not when she was in hearing range. Or so he thought -- need to maintain some sort of professionalism, even in the face of unknown dangers, or irritants, kept her from whacking him.
"You promised me you'd never mention that again."
His eyes widened, and he seemed to realize his mouth had moved without his brain fully engaged. He didn't look nearly contrite enough, however.
"You promised," she said again, almost hissing this time.
"Uh ... sorry?" He tried for an adorable, crooked grin. Sadly, it worked. God, that grin was the bane of her existence. She let him get away with far too much simply because of that grin. Annoying man.
"Was that the planet with the outfit?" Rodney's voice crackled over the comm again, and Elizabeth cursed bitterly. She hadn't even realized it was back on.
"You'd better have good news for me, Rodney," she snapped, using her Dr. "I am so the boss of you" Weir voice.
"Well ... the smoke's cleared."
"And?"
"So ... uh, we can see the jumper much more clearly now."
"Great. And?"
"And, I've really never seen anything like it. It's fairly amazing, actually. The whole back starboard quarter is ... well, it's not pretty. And the rest of the jumper ... you're just sort of hanging there. How did you manage that?"
"Mammal gummed up the works," Sheppard offered.
There was silence and Elizabeth almost laughed as she imagined what Rodney's face would do with that bizarre statement. And if she did laugh, softly to herself, well, it was three hours trapped in a small jumper with John Sheppard, after being chased off an alien planet for having a uniform the wrong color -- it was stress. That could do things to a person.
"Kind of like a cow crossed with a what? Tribble, maybe?" John continued helpfully. His eyes slid over to her and he looked entirely amused. It was entirely possible that this time she really did let herself laugh out loud. Quietly. Maybe, possibly, sharing some amusement at the situation.
"What? How? ... I need to talk to Zelenka."
"Rodney!" Elizabeth called desperately. The mammal was funny, staying trapped was not, and having her chief scientist wander off to chat with the engineer -- probably over coffee and those pastries Sgt. Mendelsohn made every Tuesday -- was not getting her untrapped.
The comm chirped off again and John snickered. She reached over and dug a fingernail into his ribs, taking some minor satisfaction from his distressed yelp. The satisfaction was sadly minor, though, and his hurt look broke her irritation again. Which, paradoxically made her more irritated. Really annoying man.
"You promised. And you told Rodney?"
"Look, I'm sorry. I really am, Elizabeth. It's just ... well, it was in the report. Details are important. I had to put it in." His voice was pleading and he looked truly remorseful.
"But you told Rodney?" She knew her own voice was drifting over into whining. She couldn't help it. "The ... outfit, John?"
His face went through some fairly amazing contortions, it took her a few seconds to realize he was trying not to laugh. She jabbed him again, and this time his yelp was more satisfying and she ignored the wounded look.
"So who else did you tell?" She knew she was probably pouting, and world-class diplomats didn't pout. It was undignified. Only John Sheppard could bring her to this -- down to his level.
"Nobody." He was trying for sincere, but she heard the brief hesitation. It would probably slip by most other people, but, oh, no, not Elizabeth Weir.
"Liar."
"It was in the report," he countered loudly, desperately. "I couldn't not put it in the report."
"Who?"
"It was the report," he said weakly, looking over his shoulder towards the back of the jumper, like he'd like to go back and do inventory again.
"The other half of that deck of cards is long gone, give it up."
"General O'Neill."
She dropped her head to her knees and put her hands behind her head. "Oh, please, tell me you didn't."
"Well," he started slowly and she felt him shift restlessly next to her. "You were in meetings at the SGC, with Landry and crew, and, well, he couldn't get out to the Springs, so he invited me out for football and pizza in D.C. A sort of informal debriefing."
"And in the course of football and pizza you just told him?"
"Well, no, of course not." He sounded almost scandalized and she raised her head enough to look into his entirely too innocent hazel eyes. "We just ... got to talking about things. Life out there. Stuff we've seen. Things we've done. Uh, funny stories--" He broke off with another yelp and scooted away from her. "You've got to stop doing that."
"It wasn't funny." She was pouting again. She hated that. She would make him pay, someday, in some extremely creative way. "We almost died. There was blood. Stitches were required. You had a concussion and two broken fingers."
"Well, yeah, the near death part wasn't funny." His lips pulled up into a broad grin. "See? This wasn't nearly as bad as that. So they threw a fluffy cow at us and they hate the color red. So what? No injuries, no plague, no torture, no ... other bad things. We're just a little stuck here. And McKay and Zelenka will get us out in plenty of time for dinner," he pronounced brightly.
Elizabeth had to work very hard not to smile and give into his attempted charm. "Nice try. One of these days, John Sheppard, you're going to find out just how much dirt I have on you."
John paled and cleared his throat. "Useless planet, anyway. The fruit's no good."
"Hey, Sheppard," McKay called. "Remember the mud people of Tagan'lasat?"
John's eyes widened and he shot a quick, fearful look at Elizabeth. "Rodney, shut up."
Elizabeth hummed quietly, her irritation melting away into amusement. "Rodney, back to work."
"I'm just waiting for Zelenka to calibrate--"
Elizabeth climbed to her feet, stepped over John's outstretched legs and walked to the front of the jumper, slapping a hand down on the comm controls. Turning around, she leaned back against the console, crossed her arms and smiled at Sheppard.
"The mud people of Tagan'lasat," she repeated simply.
John swallowed heavily and played with a button on a pocket. "There was just ... it's a ... uh, a welcoming ... there's this thing where ... a ceremony." He glanced up at her, a helpless expression on his face.
Elizabeth laughed then, finally feeling relaxed. "Teyla's reports are very ... comprehensive," she informed him wickedly.
His eyes narrowed and he ran a nervous hand through his more-insanely-messy-than-normal hair. "You're both evil."
"You told General O'Neill about Tirl."
"It was just ... in the course of conversation." He gestured irritably at nothing in particular. "That's not evil, that's just ..."
"Football and pizza?"
"Exactly." He jabbed the air sharply with a hand. "I don't know what you and Teyla get up to with your little tea breaks, but I don't wanna know."
She laughed again and crossed the compartment again to sit back down next to him. "You're so easy, sometimes."
He made a small, perturbed grunt and tapped his fingers on his knees. "It's not fair."
"What isn't?"
"Sure, you can torment me with the mud people and that ceremony, but I can't tease you about the outfit. I can't even accidentally mention it. You get that ... that look, all betrayed and hurt. It's not fair."
She grinned and nudged his shoulder with hers. "How about we call it even and agree to forget both incidents?"
"That works."
"And by forget, I mean never another mention. Ever. Clear?"
"Crystal."
"Because if I hear about Tirl again..." He smirked and she raised an eyebrow. "Did you know the MALP was still sending video back from Tagan'lasat? During the ceremony, I mean."
His face flamed red, then shifted over into purple, and he gave her a desperate look. "You wouldn't?"
"No, I wouldn't. If I never hear about Tirl again."
"Evil."
"Yes."
He considered her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face. She let him stare, and regarded him evenly. His face broke into a wide grin and he held out his hand to her.
"Dr. Weir, it's a pleasure working with you."
She took his hand and shook it, grinning back. "And you, Colonel."
They sat back against the wall and stared at the seat. "So ... did you ever hear what really happened to Rodney's hair on Purth Ragek?"
"Not tree sap, huh?" She laughed.
"Not exactly."
##