Stargate Atlantis: Sheppard/McKay -- Emotions: Regret
Title: Second Chances
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Prompt: Emotions: Regret
Word Count: 1116
Genre: AU, pre-slash
Rating: PG
Summary: After getting kicked out of Stargate Academy, Rodney figures Atlantis Prep is just as good a place as any to spend his senior year. What he didn't figure on, though, was John Sheppard.
Author's Note: Cheesy name, I know. I'm bad at names. The rules didn't say anything about blatant AU's, so I hope this is okay.
I.
Rodney McKay didn’t do regret. It wasn’t that he never did anything that could possibly make someone feel regretful; he just didn’t bother with it. The way he figured, life was short. And if you spent half of it worrying about who you offended, who got hurt, and what you really should have done, well then you died twice as fast.
The school shrink told him it had to do with his mother. Rodney told him to be more specific, because he’d been reading up on Freud and apparently everything had to do with his mother, and there were far too many interpretations to deal with. Was this some sick I-regret-not-sleeping-with-my-mother, a depressed I-wish-my-mother-had-never-had-me, just some crap they got fed in psychology school, or something else all together? It wasn’t that Rodney admitted anything had gone wrong, or that there was something that needed to be fixed, but really. You can’t just go around randomly blaming things on other people’s mothers. It isn’t polite.
He figured it was probably the lack of regret that finally got him expelled. They could work with “it was an accident, I didn’t mean to;” what they didn’t appreciate was “sure, if I had the chance, I’d do it again.” Rodney hadn’t mean to blow up the chem lab-it was the only decent lab on campus, and the only one they let the secondary students touch. And he certainly hadn’t meant for Sam Carter to be in the lab when his experiment happened to explode. She’d been reaching over to check a reading, noticing that his monitors were a little off, when it went off. Now, those beautiful hands would never hold his again. They’d never touch his face, or brush his hair out of the way, because Sam was never going to speak to him again. She said they didn’t have to break up, if he would just apologize. But apologies were too much like regret, and Rodney was very against that. And so he lost the best (and only) girlfriend of his high school career, and then he lost his high school career. Dr. McKay packed them all up and moved them to the States, refusing to let his son’s genius (at least someone recognized it) go to waste. They enrolled him in Atlantis Prep and sent him off for the first day of his senior year, his mind focused on the future ahead of him, leaving no thoughts for the past. But sitting in the cafeteria staring at the beautiful boy setting his tray down on the table across from him, Rodney was starting to think that maybe regret wasn’t so bad after all. Because no one should have to be confronted with something that gorgeous, that perfect, that perfectly unattainable-especially not on the first day of school. There was mean, and there was torture. And this was definitely the latter.
“John Sheppard,” the boy spoke. Rodney glared up at him, hoping to scare him away. It usually worked, but the boy-John, apparently-just smiled wider and sat down.
“You must be new here,” he continued, poking at the soy-ish burger and the stale French fries on his tray.
“Brilliant deduction,” Rodney responded. “How ever did you guess?”
The boy shrugged. “You haven’t been absorbed by the mathy type guys yet, so you can’t have been around that long.” Rodney arched an eyebrow.
“Maybe I’m just not the ‘mathy’ type,” he said. Now it was John Sheppard’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
“So why aren’t you over with the other neanderthaly types, then?” Rodney asked, rolling his eyes towards what was obviously the jock table, filled with tall, good-looking guys and their equally good-looking girlfriends.
“I’m not the neanderthaly type,” Sheppard answered, squinting at Rodney and cocking his head, as if he was trying to figure something out. Rodney just snorted.
“Sure. Just like I’m not going to be eating lunch with the rest of the science team by the end of the week.”
Sheppard shrugged.
“Are you new here, too?” Rodney asked. Sheppard nodded. “When did you get here?”
“Two weeks ago. My dad transferred to the base.”
“So why aren’t you going to the base school?”
“Base schools suck,” Sheppard made a face. “And I need a halfway decent high school resume if I’m going to get into the Academy.”
“What academy?” Rodney asked. “You say that like there’s only one.”
“The Air Force Academy,” Sheppard answered, as if talking to a child. “I’m going to fly.” He grinned. Rodney tried not to smile back, but it was really hard, because Sheppard looked really good smiling. Especially smiling at Rodney. But Air Force Academy, especially combined with military brat, did not bode well for Rodney’s chances. He hadn’t had a problem at Stargate Academy with being bisexual, but then, only a few people had known. Sam, of course, because they’d been friends long before they started dating. And her friends, who became his friends, knew too. Jack hadn’t minded, since he’d been nursing a crush on Daniel Jackson for the entire three years. Daniel hadn’t seemed to notice, but then he spent most of his time transferring back and forth between SGA and Ascension High. His parents were divorced and in the middle of a huge custody battle, so Daniel tended to be a little more reserved and a little less connected to the social scene. And Teal’c, the exchange student whose last name Rodney was never able to find out, didn’t care. Apparently, where he came from, everyone was bisexual. But he’d heard that America was a little less open about stuff like that, especially the military, and Pegasus was a military-heavy town. He’d figured on playing it quiet, at least until graduation, when he got to move to the city of his choice and begin his real life.
So not only was John Sheppard the hottest thing Rodney had ever seen (and god, did he really have to do that with the ketchup when he ate his fries?), but he was also army born and bred, which meant he probably hated gays, and he was planning to go into the Air Force, so even if he was gay, he couldn’t risk his future career by letting anyone find out. So any way he looked at it, Rodney was screwed.
“Do you have a map of the school on you?” Sheppard interrupted his thoughts. Rodney looked up to see him frowning at his schedule. “I don’t know what hallway my AP Calculus class in on.”
Rodney tried not to choke on his soda, which resulted in a very not-appealing squeak coming out of his nose. Yeah. So, so screwed.
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Prompt: Emotions: Regret
Word Count: 1116
Genre: AU, pre-slash
Rating: PG
Summary: After getting kicked out of Stargate Academy, Rodney figures Atlantis Prep is just as good a place as any to spend his senior year. What he didn't figure on, though, was John Sheppard.
Author's Note: Cheesy name, I know. I'm bad at names. The rules didn't say anything about blatant AU's, so I hope this is okay.
I.
Rodney McKay didn’t do regret. It wasn’t that he never did anything that could possibly make someone feel regretful; he just didn’t bother with it. The way he figured, life was short. And if you spent half of it worrying about who you offended, who got hurt, and what you really should have done, well then you died twice as fast.
The school shrink told him it had to do with his mother. Rodney told him to be more specific, because he’d been reading up on Freud and apparently everything had to do with his mother, and there were far too many interpretations to deal with. Was this some sick I-regret-not-sleeping-with-my-mother, a depressed I-wish-my-mother-had-never-had-me, just some crap they got fed in psychology school, or something else all together? It wasn’t that Rodney admitted anything had gone wrong, or that there was something that needed to be fixed, but really. You can’t just go around randomly blaming things on other people’s mothers. It isn’t polite.
He figured it was probably the lack of regret that finally got him expelled. They could work with “it was an accident, I didn’t mean to;” what they didn’t appreciate was “sure, if I had the chance, I’d do it again.” Rodney hadn’t mean to blow up the chem lab-it was the only decent lab on campus, and the only one they let the secondary students touch. And he certainly hadn’t meant for Sam Carter to be in the lab when his experiment happened to explode. She’d been reaching over to check a reading, noticing that his monitors were a little off, when it went off. Now, those beautiful hands would never hold his again. They’d never touch his face, or brush his hair out of the way, because Sam was never going to speak to him again. She said they didn’t have to break up, if he would just apologize. But apologies were too much like regret, and Rodney was very against that. And so he lost the best (and only) girlfriend of his high school career, and then he lost his high school career. Dr. McKay packed them all up and moved them to the States, refusing to let his son’s genius (at least someone recognized it) go to waste. They enrolled him in Atlantis Prep and sent him off for the first day of his senior year, his mind focused on the future ahead of him, leaving no thoughts for the past. But sitting in the cafeteria staring at the beautiful boy setting his tray down on the table across from him, Rodney was starting to think that maybe regret wasn’t so bad after all. Because no one should have to be confronted with something that gorgeous, that perfect, that perfectly unattainable-especially not on the first day of school. There was mean, and there was torture. And this was definitely the latter.
“John Sheppard,” the boy spoke. Rodney glared up at him, hoping to scare him away. It usually worked, but the boy-John, apparently-just smiled wider and sat down.
“You must be new here,” he continued, poking at the soy-ish burger and the stale French fries on his tray.
“Brilliant deduction,” Rodney responded. “How ever did you guess?”
The boy shrugged. “You haven’t been absorbed by the mathy type guys yet, so you can’t have been around that long.” Rodney arched an eyebrow.
“Maybe I’m just not the ‘mathy’ type,” he said. Now it was John Sheppard’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
“So why aren’t you over with the other neanderthaly types, then?” Rodney asked, rolling his eyes towards what was obviously the jock table, filled with tall, good-looking guys and their equally good-looking girlfriends.
“I’m not the neanderthaly type,” Sheppard answered, squinting at Rodney and cocking his head, as if he was trying to figure something out. Rodney just snorted.
“Sure. Just like I’m not going to be eating lunch with the rest of the science team by the end of the week.”
Sheppard shrugged.
“Are you new here, too?” Rodney asked. Sheppard nodded. “When did you get here?”
“Two weeks ago. My dad transferred to the base.”
“So why aren’t you going to the base school?”
“Base schools suck,” Sheppard made a face. “And I need a halfway decent high school resume if I’m going to get into the Academy.”
“What academy?” Rodney asked. “You say that like there’s only one.”
“The Air Force Academy,” Sheppard answered, as if talking to a child. “I’m going to fly.” He grinned. Rodney tried not to smile back, but it was really hard, because Sheppard looked really good smiling. Especially smiling at Rodney. But Air Force Academy, especially combined with military brat, did not bode well for Rodney’s chances. He hadn’t had a problem at Stargate Academy with being bisexual, but then, only a few people had known. Sam, of course, because they’d been friends long before they started dating. And her friends, who became his friends, knew too. Jack hadn’t minded, since he’d been nursing a crush on Daniel Jackson for the entire three years. Daniel hadn’t seemed to notice, but then he spent most of his time transferring back and forth between SGA and Ascension High. His parents were divorced and in the middle of a huge custody battle, so Daniel tended to be a little more reserved and a little less connected to the social scene. And Teal’c, the exchange student whose last name Rodney was never able to find out, didn’t care. Apparently, where he came from, everyone was bisexual. But he’d heard that America was a little less open about stuff like that, especially the military, and Pegasus was a military-heavy town. He’d figured on playing it quiet, at least until graduation, when he got to move to the city of his choice and begin his real life.
So not only was John Sheppard the hottest thing Rodney had ever seen (and god, did he really have to do that with the ketchup when he ate his fries?), but he was also army born and bred, which meant he probably hated gays, and he was planning to go into the Air Force, so even if he was gay, he couldn’t risk his future career by letting anyone find out. So any way he looked at it, Rodney was screwed.
“Do you have a map of the school on you?” Sheppard interrupted his thoughts. Rodney looked up to see him frowning at his schedule. “I don’t know what hallway my AP Calculus class in on.”
Rodney tried not to choke on his soda, which resulted in a very not-appealing squeak coming out of his nose. Yeah. So, so screwed.