.au fic: Circle Kicking - McKay/Sheppard (PG13) 1.1
Title: Circle Kicking
By: HF
Pairing: pre-McKay/Sheppard
Rating/Warning: PG13ish.
Disclaimer: Not mine. *sigh*
Advertisements: College boys. Yes. College boys.
Notes: The first of several "back in the saddle" ficlets. Written for semielliptical, who wanted something involving John, Rodney, and hacky sack. *flashes back to undergrad*
CIRCLE KICKING
First there’d been the excursion into one of the girls’ dorms, what Ronon had called a “tactical strike” and John had called a “panty raid” (seriously, were they in the goddamn seventies?), that had ended with Carson and his polite Scottishness bailing them out and Rodney with one of Elizabeth Weir’s thongs on his head.
Then there’d been their dorm’s misguided attempt at a talent show, when John had persuaded Rodney into playing guitar while he sang something that might once have been Johnny Cash, but in John’s mouth turned into the wails of a dying cat-monkey thing.
And Rodney is not going to think about the freezer incident in the third-floor common room.
One day, Rodney McKay is sure of this, John Sheppard will never be able to talk him into doing stupid, ridiculous, and publicly humiliating things ever again.
Today, however, is not that day.
It’s a beautiful late spring day, warm but with a nice breeze, almost every student on campus parked on the lawns or the benches outside the library, instead of inside the library, learning, which is where Rodney’s supposed to be. He isn’t, though. Instead, he’s standing on the periphery of a circle that includes his roommate and two of their friends, and in the middle, a small worn-looking bean bag.
“Okay, look, when everyone in the circle gets to kick the bag at least before it hits the ground, that’s a hack.”
Rodney stares doubtfully down at the bag balanced on the toe of John Sheppard’s entirely too-large shoe.
“See, where I come from, ‘hack’ usually involves a lot of free time and the CIA database.”
“Or allergies,” Ronon says from the sidelines. Carson, very unhelpfully, snickers.
“I can’t believe I agreed to this. I have a paper due tomorrow. Kennedy’s modern poetry paper.” Damn liberal arts requirement.
“Yeah, and I’m writing it for you.” John performs some complicated kind of shuffle that transfers the hacky sack from his left foot to his right, then from his right foot to Ronon’s left. Ronon catches it, if that’s what you could be said to do with feet, and kicks it on to Carson. “And the condition of said cheating is that you learn to play hacky sack.”
“Not so loud,” Rodney hisses. Carson flips the bag back over to Ronon, who has to reach for the intercept, dreadlocks tossing. He whistles reprovingly at Carson, who grins back, very Scots and polite about it.
“Then get in the circle.” John gestures for Ronon and Carson to step back. “It’s simple, McKay, I swear. Basic physics, or something.” He motions for Carson to kick the bag back to him, a very authoritative gesture that has Rodney briefly distracted. “We’ll start easy, okay? I’ll kick it to you, and then you kick it back.”
Rodney has to admit that, for an exercise in searing and pointless torment, it looks pretty easy, and he’s been watching John, Ronon, and Carson play for a while. And Carson… Two left feet the guy has, though to be perfectly honest, most of the reason Rodney agrees to sit outside on spring semester afternoons is to watch John.
As patiently as he can, he waits as John explains the rules of the game, which also seem pretty easy, and tries to ignore the voice in his head that’s busy predicting he’s about to make an ass out of himself. Modern poetry paper, McKay, modern poetry paper, and he’s so busy concentrating on the relief of not having to write five pages on Ezra Pound - hey, the guy was an anti-Semite and pretentious as all hell, and Cantos? Come on - that he doesn’t hear John’s “Okay, ready?”
“Hey!” The hacky sack hits him below the shin. “What the hell?”
“Get your head in the game, Rodney.” For further incentive, John mouths Ezra Pound at him, though John's mouth, soft-looking and pretty, is really what matters. “C’mon, pass it back. Kick it back,” he adds, when Rodney bends down to pick the hacky sack off the ground.
The smiley face stitched into the bag beams up at him. Rodney wants very much to crush it and to scatter its plastic bean innards across the courtyard. He doesn’t, though. It’s Ronon’s, and Ronon can strangle him with his dreadlocks and then crush him with the strength of his python-like muscles.
Rodney maneuvers the bag onto his right foot, trying to remember how John and the others had done it. He’s been too distracted by John to pay much attention, on this occasion and pretty much every other since they became roommates this year, because John can make even something as idiotic-looking as hacky sack into something graceful in an offhand way Rodney knows he’d never manage in a million years, all long limbs and elbows and crazy hair and jeans that never stay up and he really is pretty, damn it, and -
“Any day now, McKay,” Ronon says.
“Right. Kicking.” Rodney flips the bag up into the air, and even as he watches the bag’s trajectory thinks this is going to suck, the hacky sack is going to hit John right in the face oh my God, and smack, the bag strikes John’s forehead with a soft thwap of plastic beans and fabric.
“Nice shot,” Ronon says approvingly.
“Oh my God,” Rodney says. “Fuck. Oh my God.”
John shakes his head and toes the bag up onto his sneaker. “Here. Why don’t I kick it to you this time?”
“That’s probably an equally bad idea.”
“McKay.”
“Sheppard.”
Mercifully, John breaks it off, though they could probably do this all day, and have done this occasionally - back and forth and back and forth - but Carson and Ronon are waiting. Carson and Ronon are here, and they’ve accused John and Rodney of flirting in the past. Rodney still isn’t entirely sure what they’re doing, though “arguing” probably covers it and Sheppard honest to God gives him migraines with his black t-shirts and obsessing over planes and skateboarding and his hair gives Rodney vertigo, but he’s John under and over it all, and Rodney really likes -
“I said, count of three.” John’s voice rudely interrupts the incipient digression into early mornings when John comes in from his run, sweaty and elated and obnoxiously cheerful, and completely, delightfully immodest about stripping all the way off before grabbing his towel and going - Wait. Three. “One, two…” John’s eyeing him suspiciously and Rodney nods to show that, yes, he’s been paying attention and not fantasizing.
John toes the bag up and over, and Rodney’s barely ready for it. The bag lands, thwap, on his right foot, and promptly slips to the side and splats on the sidewalk.
“Okay, good,” John says, sounding far too pleased. “You caught it, now you have to keep it on your foot. That’s the point.”
“Oh, there’s a point?” Rodney persuades the bag up onto his foot again, like a red and brown, smiley-faced piece of bird crap right on top of his shoe.
“Just kick it back.” The McKay, stretched tight with irritation and John’s drawly voice, is unspoken.
“You asked for it.” Rodney thinks about aiming for John’s forehead on purpose, or maybe the thatch of electrified hair to see how impervious that hair gel really is, but then realizes that if he actually tries to hit John’s forehead, he’ll end up hitting Ronon, or the bag will go flying into the reflecting pool just beyond them.
With exceeding care and precision, he kicks the bag back to John, and wonder of all possible wonders, thwap it goes, cradled on the top of John’s foot.
“Cool.” And John’s smile is the rare, unguarded one, that he sometimes lets slip when they’re hanging out on the quad together and Rodney says something snarky that John likes. “Okay, now I’m going to kick it to Ronon, and we’re gonna try to make it once around.”
Ronon and Carson are a lot fancier, showing off Rodney knows, and Ronon somehow turns a 360 on one foot before kicking the bag over to John, who catches it, all understated, and Rodney’s heart kerthumps unexpectedly so he almost chokes on it.
John’s saying something about kicking it back to Rodney to finish the circle, and it’s important and he knows he should pay attention, but John’s eyes are bright and a bead of sweat has caught in his eyebrow from the warmth of the sun, and Rodney’s a scientist so he notices these things. He can’t help it.
Despite his distraction, Rodney manages to catch the hacky sack, and they’ve managed to complete a ‘hack,’ as John calls it. Ronon dislocates Rodney’s shoulder in approval and Carson says hey not bad, Rodney, but John’s grin is the best out of all of this, better even than the amazement of him, Rodney McKay, himself, having performed a feat of physical skill and dexterity.
“Can I get back to actual work now?” he asks, too unsettled by how ridiculous and pleased he feels, pleased because, hey, hacky sack genius, and ridiculous because John’s looking at him, like the way Rodney thinks he looks at his experiments, really close and analytic, but oddly happy.
“Sure you don’t want to stay and play?” Ronon asks. “It’s better with four anyway.”
“Maybe next time.” Unofficially released, he retreats to the safety of his backpack and laptop case, checks to make sure no one’s molested either of them.
A shadow falls over him and he looks up into the brightness of the sun.
John. Rodney’s heart kerthumps again, and really, he’s eighteen, far too young to have his first stroke.
“You going to the library?” John’s hands are stuffed in his pockets, shoulders lazy and slouched, though from what little he’s said about himself Rodney knows he was brought up in a military family.
“Um, back to our room… I forgot something.” He didn’t, but the library is really the last place he wants to be right now, when he’s too busy obsessing about how John’s t-shirt has the bad habit of riding up and his jeans have the bad habit of riding down, and how Rodney would really like to touch that small strip of skin between hem and boxers. He’s never quite gotten up the courage to masturbate back in the philosophy and theology section, where in theory no one ever goes, but he’s heard stories. Some of them involve John, and jealousy curls mean and low and tight in the pit of his stomach, thinking about that.
“Cool.” And John just falls into step next to him, like Rodney’s given him permission. “I have to go to Newland’s office hours.” And while Newland’s office isn’t exactly on the way to their dorm, it’s on the way enough that Rodney can’t complain.
John tells him about how they play around this time every Tuesday, and he should come along and actually play next time instead of just watch, which to be kind of honest has gotten a bit, you know, weird, and hey Rodney, you’re turning red.
Yes, that would be the humiliation.
He doesn’t say this, so John keeps going on this and heading off on brief tangents related to Rodney’s geekery and general weirdness, like someone who has a shrine to Johnny Cash has any right to accuse someone else of weirdness, and something else about “You looked pretty good, you know,” which nearly sends Rodney into the stroke he’d been worried about having.
“Here’s McFarlane,” John says, right after delivering that pronouncement, you looked pretty good, you know. “I’ll see you later?”
The heat of the day and John’s eyes, shadowed under that ridiculous hair, make the question into something very nearly indecent, something that has Rodney stuttering like an idiot. And John’s looking at him again, very intent and serious and perilously close to figuring everything out on his own.
“See you later,” Rodney croaks after a moment, and hopes very much the light-headedness and terror are really a hypoglycemic reaction speaking. Or heat stroke. Either one.
“Yeah,” John agrees, and turns, and as he turns the fingers of his right hand - his right, Rodney thinks dully, amazedly - trail across Rodney’s wrist, a moment when they dip down to trace the line of his palm, but a moment only and then they’re gone, and John’s stepping away, mad grin plastered across his face now, eyes alight under the shadows that try to hide them.
Rodney watches him go until the doors to McFarlane swing shut behind him, then wanders blindly back to their room, thinking about that idiot anti-Semite Pound, bright sun and John’s brighter smile, quantum physics, John’s smile again, his thoughts like kicking a small bag in circles over and over.
-end-
Next up: Possibly quiet!McShep or some John Winchester :D
By: HF
Pairing: pre-McKay/Sheppard
Rating/Warning: PG13ish.
Disclaimer: Not mine. *sigh*
Advertisements: College boys. Yes. College boys.
Notes: The first of several "back in the saddle" ficlets. Written for semielliptical, who wanted something involving John, Rodney, and hacky sack. *flashes back to undergrad*
CIRCLE KICKING
First there’d been the excursion into one of the girls’ dorms, what Ronon had called a “tactical strike” and John had called a “panty raid” (seriously, were they in the goddamn seventies?), that had ended with Carson and his polite Scottishness bailing them out and Rodney with one of Elizabeth Weir’s thongs on his head.
Then there’d been their dorm’s misguided attempt at a talent show, when John had persuaded Rodney into playing guitar while he sang something that might once have been Johnny Cash, but in John’s mouth turned into the wails of a dying cat-monkey thing.
And Rodney is not going to think about the freezer incident in the third-floor common room.
One day, Rodney McKay is sure of this, John Sheppard will never be able to talk him into doing stupid, ridiculous, and publicly humiliating things ever again.
Today, however, is not that day.
It’s a beautiful late spring day, warm but with a nice breeze, almost every student on campus parked on the lawns or the benches outside the library, instead of inside the library, learning, which is where Rodney’s supposed to be. He isn’t, though. Instead, he’s standing on the periphery of a circle that includes his roommate and two of their friends, and in the middle, a small worn-looking bean bag.
“Okay, look, when everyone in the circle gets to kick the bag at least before it hits the ground, that’s a hack.”
Rodney stares doubtfully down at the bag balanced on the toe of John Sheppard’s entirely too-large shoe.
“See, where I come from, ‘hack’ usually involves a lot of free time and the CIA database.”
“Or allergies,” Ronon says from the sidelines. Carson, very unhelpfully, snickers.
“I can’t believe I agreed to this. I have a paper due tomorrow. Kennedy’s modern poetry paper.” Damn liberal arts requirement.
“Yeah, and I’m writing it for you.” John performs some complicated kind of shuffle that transfers the hacky sack from his left foot to his right, then from his right foot to Ronon’s left. Ronon catches it, if that’s what you could be said to do with feet, and kicks it on to Carson. “And the condition of said cheating is that you learn to play hacky sack.”
“Not so loud,” Rodney hisses. Carson flips the bag back over to Ronon, who has to reach for the intercept, dreadlocks tossing. He whistles reprovingly at Carson, who grins back, very Scots and polite about it.
“Then get in the circle.” John gestures for Ronon and Carson to step back. “It’s simple, McKay, I swear. Basic physics, or something.” He motions for Carson to kick the bag back to him, a very authoritative gesture that has Rodney briefly distracted. “We’ll start easy, okay? I’ll kick it to you, and then you kick it back.”
Rodney has to admit that, for an exercise in searing and pointless torment, it looks pretty easy, and he’s been watching John, Ronon, and Carson play for a while. And Carson… Two left feet the guy has, though to be perfectly honest, most of the reason Rodney agrees to sit outside on spring semester afternoons is to watch John.
As patiently as he can, he waits as John explains the rules of the game, which also seem pretty easy, and tries to ignore the voice in his head that’s busy predicting he’s about to make an ass out of himself. Modern poetry paper, McKay, modern poetry paper, and he’s so busy concentrating on the relief of not having to write five pages on Ezra Pound - hey, the guy was an anti-Semite and pretentious as all hell, and Cantos? Come on - that he doesn’t hear John’s “Okay, ready?”
“Hey!” The hacky sack hits him below the shin. “What the hell?”
“Get your head in the game, Rodney.” For further incentive, John mouths Ezra Pound at him, though John's mouth, soft-looking and pretty, is really what matters. “C’mon, pass it back. Kick it back,” he adds, when Rodney bends down to pick the hacky sack off the ground.
The smiley face stitched into the bag beams up at him. Rodney wants very much to crush it and to scatter its plastic bean innards across the courtyard. He doesn’t, though. It’s Ronon’s, and Ronon can strangle him with his dreadlocks and then crush him with the strength of his python-like muscles.
Rodney maneuvers the bag onto his right foot, trying to remember how John and the others had done it. He’s been too distracted by John to pay much attention, on this occasion and pretty much every other since they became roommates this year, because John can make even something as idiotic-looking as hacky sack into something graceful in an offhand way Rodney knows he’d never manage in a million years, all long limbs and elbows and crazy hair and jeans that never stay up and he really is pretty, damn it, and -
“Any day now, McKay,” Ronon says.
“Right. Kicking.” Rodney flips the bag up into the air, and even as he watches the bag’s trajectory thinks this is going to suck, the hacky sack is going to hit John right in the face oh my God, and smack, the bag strikes John’s forehead with a soft thwap of plastic beans and fabric.
“Nice shot,” Ronon says approvingly.
“Oh my God,” Rodney says. “Fuck. Oh my God.”
John shakes his head and toes the bag up onto his sneaker. “Here. Why don’t I kick it to you this time?”
“That’s probably an equally bad idea.”
“McKay.”
“Sheppard.”
Mercifully, John breaks it off, though they could probably do this all day, and have done this occasionally - back and forth and back and forth - but Carson and Ronon are waiting. Carson and Ronon are here, and they’ve accused John and Rodney of flirting in the past. Rodney still isn’t entirely sure what they’re doing, though “arguing” probably covers it and Sheppard honest to God gives him migraines with his black t-shirts and obsessing over planes and skateboarding and his hair gives Rodney vertigo, but he’s John under and over it all, and Rodney really likes -
“I said, count of three.” John’s voice rudely interrupts the incipient digression into early mornings when John comes in from his run, sweaty and elated and obnoxiously cheerful, and completely, delightfully immodest about stripping all the way off before grabbing his towel and going - Wait. Three. “One, two…” John’s eyeing him suspiciously and Rodney nods to show that, yes, he’s been paying attention and not fantasizing.
John toes the bag up and over, and Rodney’s barely ready for it. The bag lands, thwap, on his right foot, and promptly slips to the side and splats on the sidewalk.
“Okay, good,” John says, sounding far too pleased. “You caught it, now you have to keep it on your foot. That’s the point.”
“Oh, there’s a point?” Rodney persuades the bag up onto his foot again, like a red and brown, smiley-faced piece of bird crap right on top of his shoe.
“Just kick it back.” The McKay, stretched tight with irritation and John’s drawly voice, is unspoken.
“You asked for it.” Rodney thinks about aiming for John’s forehead on purpose, or maybe the thatch of electrified hair to see how impervious that hair gel really is, but then realizes that if he actually tries to hit John’s forehead, he’ll end up hitting Ronon, or the bag will go flying into the reflecting pool just beyond them.
With exceeding care and precision, he kicks the bag back to John, and wonder of all possible wonders, thwap it goes, cradled on the top of John’s foot.
“Cool.” And John’s smile is the rare, unguarded one, that he sometimes lets slip when they’re hanging out on the quad together and Rodney says something snarky that John likes. “Okay, now I’m going to kick it to Ronon, and we’re gonna try to make it once around.”
Ronon and Carson are a lot fancier, showing off Rodney knows, and Ronon somehow turns a 360 on one foot before kicking the bag over to John, who catches it, all understated, and Rodney’s heart kerthumps unexpectedly so he almost chokes on it.
John’s saying something about kicking it back to Rodney to finish the circle, and it’s important and he knows he should pay attention, but John’s eyes are bright and a bead of sweat has caught in his eyebrow from the warmth of the sun, and Rodney’s a scientist so he notices these things. He can’t help it.
Despite his distraction, Rodney manages to catch the hacky sack, and they’ve managed to complete a ‘hack,’ as John calls it. Ronon dislocates Rodney’s shoulder in approval and Carson says hey not bad, Rodney, but John’s grin is the best out of all of this, better even than the amazement of him, Rodney McKay, himself, having performed a feat of physical skill and dexterity.
“Can I get back to actual work now?” he asks, too unsettled by how ridiculous and pleased he feels, pleased because, hey, hacky sack genius, and ridiculous because John’s looking at him, like the way Rodney thinks he looks at his experiments, really close and analytic, but oddly happy.
“Sure you don’t want to stay and play?” Ronon asks. “It’s better with four anyway.”
“Maybe next time.” Unofficially released, he retreats to the safety of his backpack and laptop case, checks to make sure no one’s molested either of them.
A shadow falls over him and he looks up into the brightness of the sun.
John. Rodney’s heart kerthumps again, and really, he’s eighteen, far too young to have his first stroke.
“You going to the library?” John’s hands are stuffed in his pockets, shoulders lazy and slouched, though from what little he’s said about himself Rodney knows he was brought up in a military family.
“Um, back to our room… I forgot something.” He didn’t, but the library is really the last place he wants to be right now, when he’s too busy obsessing about how John’s t-shirt has the bad habit of riding up and his jeans have the bad habit of riding down, and how Rodney would really like to touch that small strip of skin between hem and boxers. He’s never quite gotten up the courage to masturbate back in the philosophy and theology section, where in theory no one ever goes, but he’s heard stories. Some of them involve John, and jealousy curls mean and low and tight in the pit of his stomach, thinking about that.
“Cool.” And John just falls into step next to him, like Rodney’s given him permission. “I have to go to Newland’s office hours.” And while Newland’s office isn’t exactly on the way to their dorm, it’s on the way enough that Rodney can’t complain.
John tells him about how they play around this time every Tuesday, and he should come along and actually play next time instead of just watch, which to be kind of honest has gotten a bit, you know, weird, and hey Rodney, you’re turning red.
Yes, that would be the humiliation.
He doesn’t say this, so John keeps going on this and heading off on brief tangents related to Rodney’s geekery and general weirdness, like someone who has a shrine to Johnny Cash has any right to accuse someone else of weirdness, and something else about “You looked pretty good, you know,” which nearly sends Rodney into the stroke he’d been worried about having.
“Here’s McFarlane,” John says, right after delivering that pronouncement, you looked pretty good, you know. “I’ll see you later?”
The heat of the day and John’s eyes, shadowed under that ridiculous hair, make the question into something very nearly indecent, something that has Rodney stuttering like an idiot. And John’s looking at him again, very intent and serious and perilously close to figuring everything out on his own.
“See you later,” Rodney croaks after a moment, and hopes very much the light-headedness and terror are really a hypoglycemic reaction speaking. Or heat stroke. Either one.
“Yeah,” John agrees, and turns, and as he turns the fingers of his right hand - his right, Rodney thinks dully, amazedly - trail across Rodney’s wrist, a moment when they dip down to trace the line of his palm, but a moment only and then they’re gone, and John’s stepping away, mad grin plastered across his face now, eyes alight under the shadows that try to hide them.
Rodney watches him go until the doors to McFarlane swing shut behind him, then wanders blindly back to their room, thinking about that idiot anti-Semite Pound, bright sun and John’s brighter smile, quantum physics, John’s smile again, his thoughts like kicking a small bag in circles over and over.
-end-
Next up: Possibly quiet!McShep or some John Winchester :D