"well, words can break your heart"
Title: First Aid
Author: 2ndary_author
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: Sheppard, McKay (Sheppard/McKay?)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2140-ish words
Notes: Not really a missing scene, but takes place during the events of "The Rising, Part 1" at the SGC base in Antarctica; written for the scars challenge at sga_flashfic; epigraph by Christiaan Barnard.
Disclaimer: don't own, don't profit, only the words are mine. Just something quick before the deadline…
Summary: They were a multi-national, intergalactic military/civilian enterprise on an ice field at the bottom of the world. And they had a piano.
"Suffering isn’t ennobling; recovery is."
The night before they leave Antarctica, after the White House State Dinner, the commendations from both houses of British Parliament, the complimentary speeches before the UN Security Council, and 13 different press conferences, Stargate Command throws a party. All the expedition members who can’t beg or barter another day of leave show up in the Main Hangar, dressed in whatever civilian clothing they can find, just for variety. The food is better than usual and there’s enough alcohol that, halfway through the evening, the Americans start singing.
Patriotism is all well and good, Rodney thinks, but things are getting maudlin. Besides, “The Star-Spangled Banner” should really be handled only by professionals. Having had more than a bit to drink himself, he sits down at the piano to combat the barbarians with a rousing rendition of “O Canada!” This gets cheers from the members of the Metallurgy division, three quarters of whom seem to come from Manitoba. Rodney follows it up with “Loch Lomond,” since Carson’s actually been a pretty good sport about the whole Ancient-gene-guinea-pig thing. Then he tries one of Haydn’s ländler, in honor of the skinny physicist with the crazy hair whose name Rodney always forgets. Skinny seems to appreciate the thought even though he turns out to be Czech, not Austrian. After a few requests-he’s not a karaoke machine, after all-Rodney decides the point’s been made and abandons the stage to a group of chemists, who want to try out a Rube-Goldberg-style DJ console that they’ve constructed out of duct tape and spare MALP parts.
The piano looks out of place surrounded by their space-age technology. It always has. Rodney remembers noticing it the first day he flew out from McMurdo. “You have a piano. In the middle of an ice field,” he’d announced, disbelieving.
“It’s a multi-national, intergalactic military base. Not an igloo,” Sam Carter had snapped. She’d been snippy since he stepped off the transport, which has to be a promising sign, right?
“I happen to run a very civilized ice field, thanks,” General O’Neill cut in, so mildly that Rodney, not a genius for nothing, figured the piano must have been Daniel Jackson’s idea. And it was: something to do with harmonics and non-linguistic prosodics and soft science blahblahblah. Rodney hadn’t really listened too carefully. They were a multi-national, intergalactic military/civilian enterprise on an ice field at the bottom of the world. And they had a piano. Rodney began to fall in love with Stargate Command, just a little.
Rodney was remembering that first day-and, ok, maybe feeling a little maudlin himself-when someone pressed an icy hand to the back of his neck.
“Yaaah!” he spins around to see the new pilot, whatshisname, the guy who made the chair light up like the borealis, smirking and holding out a bottle of beer.
“Hey,” the pilot says, nodding toward the piano,“you’re pretty good.”
“I’m very good,” Rodney corrects, taking the beer grudgingly. The guy’s wearing a flight suit with SHEPPARD, J. stenciled above the pocket and dark squares on the sleeve where other patches have been removed. Rodney remembers hearing that various factions were fighting over John Sheppard because of the gene: the Air Force, the Marines, Stargate Command. They’d better make up their minds soon, though, or Sheppard, J. would end up going through the ’gate as the man without a country.
“Where’ve you been?” Rodney asked. Sheppard smelled like the cold and he certainly hadn’t been with the Marines singing earlier. Rodney had heard the man laugh; he’d sure as hell remember hearing him sing.
“Section 12. Just checking on Belinda.”
Rodney feels his eyebrows scaling his forehead. “Belinda?” Sheppard didn’t seem like the kind to have a girl in every port and, besides, he’d been here less than a week.
“The chopper,” John said, like it should be obvious.
“You named your helicopter Belinda?!”
“Yup.”
Rodney stared at him. He’d just opened his mouth to respond when he was deafened by a blast of death metal-apparently the chemists’ music of choice. More cheers from Metallurgy.
“Why?” he yelled to be heard over the…well, he wasn’t going to call it music.
Sheppard yells something: it might be I can’t hear you, or it might be oh good! yoghurt. Rodney can’t read lips, so he grabs the man’s sleeve and hauls him away from the speakers, into a Quonset-style kitchen attached to the hangar.
“I ASKED WHY,” he starts, then realizes he doesn’t have to shout, since the music isn’t so loud here. “Uh, that is…Belinda?”
John shrugs. “Betsy was already taken.”
Rodney just looks at him. When it becomes apparent that he's not getting a better answer, he turns his attention to the kitchen. “Do you think there’s a coffee maker in here?”
John points to a tall contraption on one of the long stainless steel tables against the wall; huge and industrial, it looks like one of the bad guys from an old Doctor Who. Rodney drains his beer and sets to work.
Two minutes later-“I played drums in high school,” John remarks suddenly, a propos of absolutely nothing.
Rodney looks up from his tinkering, sees John sitting on one of the tables, kicking his heels, looking like he owns the joint. “Oh, I bet you did.”
“But, you know, we moved. And I got into other stuff, got my license, that kind of thing.”
“Well, good for you.” Something tells Rodney that John’s not talking about a drivers’ license.
“So…how about you? You play much anymore?”
“What?” Rodney’s focus strays from the coffee machine-which really shouldn’t be giving him this much trouble. He’s a rocket scientist, for crying out loud. “Uh, no. Not seriously. Not since I was a little kid.”
“Oh.” That was apparently Sheppard’s last bid for conversation, because he falls silent. After a minute, he hops off the table, wanders off, comes back with two more beers, stands there watching Rodney fiddle with the machine.
“I was a fine clinical player, but no sense of the art. So I gave it up,” Rodney explains, more to fill the quiet than because he thinks John will actually want the specifics.
“Wow,” John laughs, surprised. “That’s quite a decision for a little kid to make.”
“It wasn’t a decision,” Rodney says, finally figuring out the pressure-sensitive latch on the grounds basket. “My teacher told me.”
This silence is different, somehow, not so friendly anymore and Rodney glances over to find John staring at him with a puzzled look on his face.
“What?”
“Your teacher told you to quit?”
“Mmm.” Rodney jiggles the latch until is catches.
“Because you weren’t good enough?”
“More or less, yeah.”
“And you believed him.” It’s not a question, just a statement of fact, and Sheppard’s voice is totally calm, but he’s gripping the edge of the counter with white knuckles.
Now it’s Rodney’s turn to sound surprised. “Look, Major, it was a long time ago. No big deal.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say to a kid.”
“Well, who knows? It was probably true.”
“Things can be true and still be terrible,” Sheppard insists.
“Hey, I gave up music and got interested in science instead,” Rodney shrugged. “If he hadn’t told me to quit, maybe I wouldn’t be here now!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t,” Sheppard agrees, in a tone that suddenly makes Rodney painfully aware that where he is now is trying (and failing) to fix a coffee-maker in a kitchen in the Antarctic.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rodney demands, suddenly annoyed. “Some people may have had fuzzy, supportive childhoods, Major, but there’s no proof that it makes any difference in-it’s just…I mean,” he sputters, waving a hand, “Whatever. Sticks and stones can break my bones-”
“Well, words can break your heart.”
Sheppard sounds decisive and hollow all at once; he may, Rodney thinks, actually know what he’s talking about. He gapes for a minute, unable to remember what he was going to say, finally settling for, “Oh, my god, do you always have to get the last word?”
John smiles, then, the smug smile that Rodney is going to get very accustomed to in the next few months. The tension melts like it was never there. “Yes.”
They give up on the coffee machine. John brings more beer and stretches out on one of the long tables. Rodney sprawls on his own table and starts explaining the mathematic principles behind Bach's "Well-tempered Clavier." Sheppard seems to follow or, at least, he avoids any blindingly stupid comments. Every now and then, someone from the party wanders in on a burst of loud music and looks askance at John’s boots on the table. But tomorrow they’re leaving the known universe, so nobody says a thing.
In the middle of the night, Rodney suddenly understands the most energy-efficient way to power the air filtration frames on the space suits (so simple! he was an idiot not to think of it before!). He fumbles for the notebook that lives on his bedside table, still more than half asleep. It’s not until his hand connects with the empty beer bottles-and, ok, there are more than a few-that he remembers: there is no bedside table. Two bottles slide off the edge of the counter, hit the tiled floor, explode into a million glittering splinters. Rodney has a split second to remember-no bedside table, he fell asleep in the kitchens talking to...before Sheppard comes flying out of nowhere and slams him into the counter, covering him. Rodney yelps as they tumble off the counter in a tangle, closing his eyes again the spray of more breaking glass.
Oh, Christ, my back! is the first thing to cross Rodney’s mind, because Sheppard is heavier than he looks. The second is post-traumatic stress, much?, because he’s been a military contractor for long enough to know it when it lands on him out of a sound sleep. But when he opens his eyes, John’s face hovers above him, pale and shocky, pupils blown wide, so all he says is, “Hey.”
John rolls off Rodney, swallowing adrenaline, and sheepishly runs a hand through his sleep-spiky hair. “Hey.”
“Are you-” Rodney starts, but John cuts him off, matter-of-fact: “You’re bleeding.”
Rodney glances down to see the glass shards embedded in his palm. For the first time, he becomes aware of the sting, the blood dripping down his wrist.
“Oh. I, I-uhm, oh.” Blood is-blood is not good. And Rodney is not good with blood, especially when it is his own blood smearing the stainless steel, slick and wet. He’s dizzy and tired, still a little drunk, and blood is so very, really not good. He thinks he should explain this to Sheppard, but the man’s already gone, his boots crunching through the broken glass, returning with the kitchen’s first-aid kit.
Later, on Atlantis, Rodney will learn that John never enters a room without unconsciously clocking the location of the exits, the safety features, and any potential weapons. That night, on earth, John knows right where to find tweezers and butterfly band-aids. He pops the kit open-hands rock steady, now-and launches into a story about his high school garage band that almost distracts Rodney from the actual procedure.
“We’ll get you stitched up later. Now, are you gonna let it heal flat, or do I need to hold your hand all night?” Sheppard teases as he’s repacking the kit.
“I’ll remember,” Rodney sniffs. “Biology may be voodoo, but I’m not a complete idiot!”
* * *
The bandaging actually stays on, at least until they reach Atlantis. Then...well, John’s not around to scold and Rodney can’t type with just his left hand. And there's so much to write down! He peels the bandages off and avoids looking at the raw pink line slicing his palm until it starts to bleed again. Remove bandages, bleed, re-bandage, remove bandages, repeat-by the time Carson’s nagging finally gets to him, it’s too late, the scarring is set. It’s a minor scar, though, the first of many; the Pegasus Galaxy is a dangerous place. There’s a tightness, a slight stretch, but Rodney notices it only when he spreads the full handspan: sometimes when he’s gesturing to convey the true magnitude of his subordinates’ stupidity, occasionally while he tries to illustrate the extent of the catastrophe facing them, whenever he plays the piano.
Author: 2ndary_author
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: Sheppard, McKay (Sheppard/McKay?)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2140-ish words
Notes: Not really a missing scene, but takes place during the events of "The Rising, Part 1" at the SGC base in Antarctica; written for the scars challenge at sga_flashfic; epigraph by Christiaan Barnard.
Disclaimer: don't own, don't profit, only the words are mine. Just something quick before the deadline…
Summary: They were a multi-national, intergalactic military/civilian enterprise on an ice field at the bottom of the world. And they had a piano.
"Suffering isn’t ennobling; recovery is."
The night before they leave Antarctica, after the White House State Dinner, the commendations from both houses of British Parliament, the complimentary speeches before the UN Security Council, and 13 different press conferences, Stargate Command throws a party. All the expedition members who can’t beg or barter another day of leave show up in the Main Hangar, dressed in whatever civilian clothing they can find, just for variety. The food is better than usual and there’s enough alcohol that, halfway through the evening, the Americans start singing.
Patriotism is all well and good, Rodney thinks, but things are getting maudlin. Besides, “The Star-Spangled Banner” should really be handled only by professionals. Having had more than a bit to drink himself, he sits down at the piano to combat the barbarians with a rousing rendition of “O Canada!” This gets cheers from the members of the Metallurgy division, three quarters of whom seem to come from Manitoba. Rodney follows it up with “Loch Lomond,” since Carson’s actually been a pretty good sport about the whole Ancient-gene-guinea-pig thing. Then he tries one of Haydn’s ländler, in honor of the skinny physicist with the crazy hair whose name Rodney always forgets. Skinny seems to appreciate the thought even though he turns out to be Czech, not Austrian. After a few requests-he’s not a karaoke machine, after all-Rodney decides the point’s been made and abandons the stage to a group of chemists, who want to try out a Rube-Goldberg-style DJ console that they’ve constructed out of duct tape and spare MALP parts.
The piano looks out of place surrounded by their space-age technology. It always has. Rodney remembers noticing it the first day he flew out from McMurdo. “You have a piano. In the middle of an ice field,” he’d announced, disbelieving.
“It’s a multi-national, intergalactic military base. Not an igloo,” Sam Carter had snapped. She’d been snippy since he stepped off the transport, which has to be a promising sign, right?
“I happen to run a very civilized ice field, thanks,” General O’Neill cut in, so mildly that Rodney, not a genius for nothing, figured the piano must have been Daniel Jackson’s idea. And it was: something to do with harmonics and non-linguistic prosodics and soft science blahblahblah. Rodney hadn’t really listened too carefully. They were a multi-national, intergalactic military/civilian enterprise on an ice field at the bottom of the world. And they had a piano. Rodney began to fall in love with Stargate Command, just a little.
Rodney was remembering that first day-and, ok, maybe feeling a little maudlin himself-when someone pressed an icy hand to the back of his neck.
“Yaaah!” he spins around to see the new pilot, whatshisname, the guy who made the chair light up like the borealis, smirking and holding out a bottle of beer.
“Hey,” the pilot says, nodding toward the piano,“you’re pretty good.”
“I’m very good,” Rodney corrects, taking the beer grudgingly. The guy’s wearing a flight suit with SHEPPARD, J. stenciled above the pocket and dark squares on the sleeve where other patches have been removed. Rodney remembers hearing that various factions were fighting over John Sheppard because of the gene: the Air Force, the Marines, Stargate Command. They’d better make up their minds soon, though, or Sheppard, J. would end up going through the ’gate as the man without a country.
“Where’ve you been?” Rodney asked. Sheppard smelled like the cold and he certainly hadn’t been with the Marines singing earlier. Rodney had heard the man laugh; he’d sure as hell remember hearing him sing.
“Section 12. Just checking on Belinda.”
Rodney feels his eyebrows scaling his forehead. “Belinda?” Sheppard didn’t seem like the kind to have a girl in every port and, besides, he’d been here less than a week.
“The chopper,” John said, like it should be obvious.
“You named your helicopter Belinda?!”
“Yup.”
Rodney stared at him. He’d just opened his mouth to respond when he was deafened by a blast of death metal-apparently the chemists’ music of choice. More cheers from Metallurgy.
“Why?” he yelled to be heard over the…well, he wasn’t going to call it music.
Sheppard yells something: it might be I can’t hear you, or it might be oh good! yoghurt. Rodney can’t read lips, so he grabs the man’s sleeve and hauls him away from the speakers, into a Quonset-style kitchen attached to the hangar.
“I ASKED WHY,” he starts, then realizes he doesn’t have to shout, since the music isn’t so loud here. “Uh, that is…Belinda?”
John shrugs. “Betsy was already taken.”
Rodney just looks at him. When it becomes apparent that he's not getting a better answer, he turns his attention to the kitchen. “Do you think there’s a coffee maker in here?”
John points to a tall contraption on one of the long stainless steel tables against the wall; huge and industrial, it looks like one of the bad guys from an old Doctor Who. Rodney drains his beer and sets to work.
Two minutes later-“I played drums in high school,” John remarks suddenly, a propos of absolutely nothing.
Rodney looks up from his tinkering, sees John sitting on one of the tables, kicking his heels, looking like he owns the joint. “Oh, I bet you did.”
“But, you know, we moved. And I got into other stuff, got my license, that kind of thing.”
“Well, good for you.” Something tells Rodney that John’s not talking about a drivers’ license.
“So…how about you? You play much anymore?”
“What?” Rodney’s focus strays from the coffee machine-which really shouldn’t be giving him this much trouble. He’s a rocket scientist, for crying out loud. “Uh, no. Not seriously. Not since I was a little kid.”
“Oh.” That was apparently Sheppard’s last bid for conversation, because he falls silent. After a minute, he hops off the table, wanders off, comes back with two more beers, stands there watching Rodney fiddle with the machine.
“I was a fine clinical player, but no sense of the art. So I gave it up,” Rodney explains, more to fill the quiet than because he thinks John will actually want the specifics.
“Wow,” John laughs, surprised. “That’s quite a decision for a little kid to make.”
“It wasn’t a decision,” Rodney says, finally figuring out the pressure-sensitive latch on the grounds basket. “My teacher told me.”
This silence is different, somehow, not so friendly anymore and Rodney glances over to find John staring at him with a puzzled look on his face.
“What?”
“Your teacher told you to quit?”
“Mmm.” Rodney jiggles the latch until is catches.
“Because you weren’t good enough?”
“More or less, yeah.”
“And you believed him.” It’s not a question, just a statement of fact, and Sheppard’s voice is totally calm, but he’s gripping the edge of the counter with white knuckles.
Now it’s Rodney’s turn to sound surprised. “Look, Major, it was a long time ago. No big deal.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say to a kid.”
“Well, who knows? It was probably true.”
“Things can be true and still be terrible,” Sheppard insists.
“Hey, I gave up music and got interested in science instead,” Rodney shrugged. “If he hadn’t told me to quit, maybe I wouldn’t be here now!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t,” Sheppard agrees, in a tone that suddenly makes Rodney painfully aware that where he is now is trying (and failing) to fix a coffee-maker in a kitchen in the Antarctic.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rodney demands, suddenly annoyed. “Some people may have had fuzzy, supportive childhoods, Major, but there’s no proof that it makes any difference in-it’s just…I mean,” he sputters, waving a hand, “Whatever. Sticks and stones can break my bones-”
“Well, words can break your heart.”
Sheppard sounds decisive and hollow all at once; he may, Rodney thinks, actually know what he’s talking about. He gapes for a minute, unable to remember what he was going to say, finally settling for, “Oh, my god, do you always have to get the last word?”
John smiles, then, the smug smile that Rodney is going to get very accustomed to in the next few months. The tension melts like it was never there. “Yes.”
They give up on the coffee machine. John brings more beer and stretches out on one of the long tables. Rodney sprawls on his own table and starts explaining the mathematic principles behind Bach's "Well-tempered Clavier." Sheppard seems to follow or, at least, he avoids any blindingly stupid comments. Every now and then, someone from the party wanders in on a burst of loud music and looks askance at John’s boots on the table. But tomorrow they’re leaving the known universe, so nobody says a thing.
In the middle of the night, Rodney suddenly understands the most energy-efficient way to power the air filtration frames on the space suits (so simple! he was an idiot not to think of it before!). He fumbles for the notebook that lives on his bedside table, still more than half asleep. It’s not until his hand connects with the empty beer bottles-and, ok, there are more than a few-that he remembers: there is no bedside table. Two bottles slide off the edge of the counter, hit the tiled floor, explode into a million glittering splinters. Rodney has a split second to remember-no bedside table, he fell asleep in the kitchens talking to...before Sheppard comes flying out of nowhere and slams him into the counter, covering him. Rodney yelps as they tumble off the counter in a tangle, closing his eyes again the spray of more breaking glass.
Oh, Christ, my back! is the first thing to cross Rodney’s mind, because Sheppard is heavier than he looks. The second is post-traumatic stress, much?, because he’s been a military contractor for long enough to know it when it lands on him out of a sound sleep. But when he opens his eyes, John’s face hovers above him, pale and shocky, pupils blown wide, so all he says is, “Hey.”
John rolls off Rodney, swallowing adrenaline, and sheepishly runs a hand through his sleep-spiky hair. “Hey.”
“Are you-” Rodney starts, but John cuts him off, matter-of-fact: “You’re bleeding.”
Rodney glances down to see the glass shards embedded in his palm. For the first time, he becomes aware of the sting, the blood dripping down his wrist.
“Oh. I, I-uhm, oh.” Blood is-blood is not good. And Rodney is not good with blood, especially when it is his own blood smearing the stainless steel, slick and wet. He’s dizzy and tired, still a little drunk, and blood is so very, really not good. He thinks he should explain this to Sheppard, but the man’s already gone, his boots crunching through the broken glass, returning with the kitchen’s first-aid kit.
Later, on Atlantis, Rodney will learn that John never enters a room without unconsciously clocking the location of the exits, the safety features, and any potential weapons. That night, on earth, John knows right where to find tweezers and butterfly band-aids. He pops the kit open-hands rock steady, now-and launches into a story about his high school garage band that almost distracts Rodney from the actual procedure.
“We’ll get you stitched up later. Now, are you gonna let it heal flat, or do I need to hold your hand all night?” Sheppard teases as he’s repacking the kit.
“I’ll remember,” Rodney sniffs. “Biology may be voodoo, but I’m not a complete idiot!”
* * *
The bandaging actually stays on, at least until they reach Atlantis. Then...well, John’s not around to scold and Rodney can’t type with just his left hand. And there's so much to write down! He peels the bandages off and avoids looking at the raw pink line slicing his palm until it starts to bleed again. Remove bandages, bleed, re-bandage, remove bandages, repeat-by the time Carson’s nagging finally gets to him, it’s too late, the scarring is set. It’s a minor scar, though, the first of many; the Pegasus Galaxy is a dangerous place. There’s a tightness, a slight stretch, but Rodney notices it only when he spreads the full handspan: sometimes when he’s gesturing to convey the true magnitude of his subordinates’ stupidity, occasionally while he tries to illustrate the extent of the catastrophe facing them, whenever he plays the piano.