FIC: Lunch at Stravaigin
Everyone was sick of it, TJ reflected, but typically, it was Rush who said something. And typically, it was Rush who drew all the ire, despite everyone in the room agreeing with him. People were tired. They were tired of the food, the water, the ship, their situation, and their helplessness.
It was the weekly meeting and to TJ’s surprise, Rush was there. The bowl in front of him indicated that he’d come in for breakfast rather than the meeting but he stayed anyway. He answered whatever questions were put to him; TJ even thought he was more polite than usual. He looked tired but then he generally did. In her head, she had a Rush tiredness meter. She put today at medium, thinking that he’d slept recently but had got up early, immersing himself in work. She upped the meter to tired and headachy when he put a hand up and rubbed the side of his head. He wasn’t the only one but she could guarantee that he was the only person with a real headache rather than a hangover.
They’d just finished celebrating-if that was the word for it-Christmas. They’d organized a Secret Santa and it was fun, although not everyone took part; some people said no and had spent Christmas in their quarters. It was amazing what people had stashed in their personal belongings. Park, to TJ’s great amusement, donated a book that no one had read. Lt James had a Hershey Bar. It was little things. TJ had taken it upon herself, since no one else would, to ask Rush if he wanted to be in on it. He’d said no but came by the infirmary later that day and handed her a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Gold.
She said, “You could trade these.”
“For what?” he’d shrugged.
He had told her he smoked but these were unopened. She didn’t put them in the Secret Santa. Instead she hid them for bartering later on. People had all sorts of things and after various searches of their quarters to find stolen food they concealed anything of value. Destiny was a big ship and personal items were easily hidden. Certain things were off limits. No one touched another’s computer; it was acknowledged they were for work. Likewise, no one touched another’s iPod or similar music or video storage, although most people pooled and traded the content. Park had timidly asked if she could borrow Rush’s iPod; she liked classical music, she said, and had studied it in high school before she got interested in science. Rush had the best collection of classical music and TJ wondered if it was all he listened to. Rush had handed Park his iPod without demur and sometimes when TJ wandered down what had become known as the ‘Scientists Quarter’, she could hear the same music coming from Park and Rush’s rooms.
Rush had recovered from his long illness, though he still wore the sweater and the fingerless gloves, the latter less and less. The shivering had mostly stopped, although she would spend surreptitious ages watching him to check. She would occasionally catch his arm and he’d pull away but not before she found that his hands were still cold. The more tired he was, the colder he became. Greer was no longer found outside Rush’s quarters but she would catch him checking on Rush during the day just as he would catch her. They would shrug wryly, silently acknowledging the other’s concern. Both of them avoided Colonel Young in their quest to keep Rush healthy and alive. As Chloe put it, Rush works, we go home. TJ told herself that was all she cared about.
Becker went all out for Christmas. There was some banana gloop left but everyone pretty much acknowledged by now that that the gloop belonged to Rush. Even the purple potatoes tasted less awful when spiced up but it turned out they had a better use. TJ primly called it medicinal alcohol but basically it was moonshine. Rush had turned a blind eye to Brody pilfering various bits of equipment to make a still; even more, he’d deflected Scott when questions were asked about certain items going missing. The moonshine tasted disgusting and smelled like some sort of industrial cleaning fluid but it was alcohol and it was Christmas. Even two days after, people were hungover and feeling sorry for themselves.
The problem that morning came when Eli started on a litany of complaints. He was just letting off steam, mainly at Scott and Chloe, but TJ could see everyone tensing up. It was not seeing a movie marathon as he always did on New Year’s Eve. It was missing turkey at Christmas and Thanksgiving. It was not having this, not having that, not having anything, not having everything. TJ’s head started to ache and she could see Colonel Young’s eyes glaze over and everyone else glancing at each other. TJ could even tell that Young was about to say something.
But Rush got in first. He increasingly held his head and she could see him grinding his teeth. She glanced at Greer but he was glaring in irritation at Eli. Admittedly, Eli wasn’t the only person talking but his voice was the most grating.
Finally, Rush snapped.
“For christ’s sake, would you quit your fucking moaning,” Rush said harshly. “Just shut the fuck up for once in your fucking life.”
There was dead silence.
Eli’s jaw dropped; his eyes were wide. Everyone else put on appropriately shocked faces. TJ and Greer glanced at each other.
“Rush,” Young began.
“Oh, what,” Rush said, his voice venomous.
People were too busy glaring at him to notice him wincing at the sound of his own voice. TJ upped the Rush tiredness meter to high. Young ripped him to shreds. Rush simply went silent, lowering his head, as Young got closer to him then he raised his eyes defiantly, sneered, and stalked out.
Eli’s usual crowd clucked around him.
“You okay?” Young asked Eli gruffly.
“Yeah,” Eli nodded unhappily. “Sorry, I …”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Chloe emphatically.
Scott patted him on the shoulder. “You know, sometimes I think we’re all just getting along and then there's Rush,” he said. “What the hell brought that on?”
One of the scientists, a victim of Rush’s oft stated view that incompetent people should stay the hell well away from him, piped up to say, “He didn’t even take part in Christmas.”
“Scrooge,” someone else snickered.
Ah right, now Rush was now apparently the only person not to take part in Christmas. Young didn’t stop any of the murmuring around the room. He stomped out himself.
Greer said in TJ’s ear, “You’d just be blowin’ in the wind if you said something, Lieutenant.”
“I know,” she said. “He’s not the easiest person to deal with, Sergeant.”
“You get along with him,” Greer said promptly.
“So do you,” TJ said back at him.
“You’re the medic,” Greer said, with complete finality.
“Thanks,” she said snappily.
“Why don’t I see if Eli’s okay?” Greer suggested.
“Eli’s fine,” TJ muttered. “His ego’s the one of the few things on the ship that keeps getting fed.”
She bit her lip immediately but Greer murmured, “Nasty.”
When she tracked down Rush, he was in the observation room, sitting on a bench holding his head. She’d stopped by the infirmary first.
“Luckily, everyone already thinks you’re the most horrible and unpleasant person on Destiny,” she said sitting next to him, “so no one was really surprised at this latest little display.”
He huffed out the ghost of a laugh and winced again.
“Here,” she said. “Lt Johansen’s excellent headache cure.”
She held out some water. In it was mixed in some herbs from one of the planets Destiny visited. It tasted, Rush had said to her previously, bloody awful but it worked. She’d become a herbalist as well as the ship’s medic.
“I’ll be unconscious for two days,” Rush objected half-heartedly. He took the potion anyway and drank it down. He coughed and mumbled, “God, that’s shite.”
“You out of the way is a good thing,” she said. He shrugged. “Picking on poor little Eli like that.”
He snorted unrepentantly. “Poor little Eli,” he repeated.
“Look, people just miss home, okay?” she said. “Everyone else just wants to go home. It’s different for you; you like it here.”
“Aye,” he said. “It’s a bundle of laughs.”
As he stood and handed back the cup, his hand shook. He said something in a language she didn’t know then that he was going to bed. She stood and he said, “You don’t have to follow me.”
“Yes, I do,” TJ said. “Firstly, everyone wants to kill you; I know you don’t care about that but I have things to do that don’t involve cleaning up your corpse. Secondly, if you fall over unconscious on the way, I’m the one who will have to drag you to your quarters just like last time, so I may as well just come along and get it over with rather than having to go to the infirmary then all the way back.”
“This is you applying logic again, isn’t it,” Rush said drily.
“See how good my headache cure is,” TJ noted. “You’re feeling better enough to snark at me.”
“Piss off,” Rush muttered.
“After you’re in bed,” she said cheerfully.
She stopped smiling after he closed the door to his quarters. Colonel Young would say that Rush was a lot of work and he was. She didn’t know what brought on this morning’s outburst but he looked like he was dwelling on something. Could be Young, could be anything. It wasn’t as if he’d tell her.
Young was waiting for her in the infirmary.
“And how’s our Dr Rush,” he asked, the usual tense edge in his voice.
“Migraine,” TJ said.
He knew she’d gone to find Rush. Shit, shit, bugger.
“Overwork?” Young asked.
He didn’t pretend to be concerned but TJ pretended not to be.
“No idea, sir,” she said briskly. “I just made sure he wasn’t going to fall over.” She gave the cup a rinse. “Is Eli okay?”
“His ego’s bruised a bit but he’s fine,” Young said. “At least he stopped talking. If Rush hadn’t said something, I probably would have.”
And yet he got in Rush’s face over it.
“Christmas is hard no matter where people are,” TJ said.
“Even for Rush?” Young asked, a note of skepticism in his voice.
“I’ve no idea what Rush thinks about Christmas,” TJ said truthfully. And then she lied. “I don’t really care what he thinks about anything.”
Young nodded thoughtfully.
“You’re, uh, due to use the communication stones,” he said. “Thought I’d come and remind you.”
“I hadn’t forgotten, sir,” TJ said. “I want to talk to the SGC doctors.”
“You should visit your family,” Young said.
“Yes, sir,” she said with no intention of doing so. She couldn’t imagine turning up at her family’s house in someone else’s body. Better that she write an email when she got back to Earth. “I’ll do that.”
She was transported to the SGC at her request and spent hours with Dr Lam, cramming in as much as she could. They found her a specialist to discuss herbal medicine and when she was finally left alone at the end of the day, she sat at a computer.
“An hour, Lieutenant,” a voice called from the door.
“Thank you,” TJ said.
She paused and looked around. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She bit her lip and typed in “Doctor Nicholas Rush”, pressing enter. It was mostly academic articles. She opened a couple at random. Physics, language, philosophy, math. There were even a few photos in Google images, his eyes generally down and away from the camera. She touched the screen and wished she understood at least something that he liked; nothing in the papers she flicked through meant anything to her. She went through a few more pages. In one photo, he was standing next to a dark-haired woman. She was smiling into the camera. She was attractive and elegant. Both of them were in evening dress, TJ lingering over the sight of Rush in a tuxedo. There was no caption, no clue as to who the woman was or where the photo had been taken-some academic thing, no doubt. He used to wear a wedding ring; his wife, maybe? When she deleted some of the address to find out more, it came up as a 404 error. She wouldn’t ask him. It would be one question too familiar.
Part Two
It was the weekly meeting and to TJ’s surprise, Rush was there. The bowl in front of him indicated that he’d come in for breakfast rather than the meeting but he stayed anyway. He answered whatever questions were put to him; TJ even thought he was more polite than usual. He looked tired but then he generally did. In her head, she had a Rush tiredness meter. She put today at medium, thinking that he’d slept recently but had got up early, immersing himself in work. She upped the meter to tired and headachy when he put a hand up and rubbed the side of his head. He wasn’t the only one but she could guarantee that he was the only person with a real headache rather than a hangover.
They’d just finished celebrating-if that was the word for it-Christmas. They’d organized a Secret Santa and it was fun, although not everyone took part; some people said no and had spent Christmas in their quarters. It was amazing what people had stashed in their personal belongings. Park, to TJ’s great amusement, donated a book that no one had read. Lt James had a Hershey Bar. It was little things. TJ had taken it upon herself, since no one else would, to ask Rush if he wanted to be in on it. He’d said no but came by the infirmary later that day and handed her a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Gold.
She said, “You could trade these.”
“For what?” he’d shrugged.
He had told her he smoked but these were unopened. She didn’t put them in the Secret Santa. Instead she hid them for bartering later on. People had all sorts of things and after various searches of their quarters to find stolen food they concealed anything of value. Destiny was a big ship and personal items were easily hidden. Certain things were off limits. No one touched another’s computer; it was acknowledged they were for work. Likewise, no one touched another’s iPod or similar music or video storage, although most people pooled and traded the content. Park had timidly asked if she could borrow Rush’s iPod; she liked classical music, she said, and had studied it in high school before she got interested in science. Rush had the best collection of classical music and TJ wondered if it was all he listened to. Rush had handed Park his iPod without demur and sometimes when TJ wandered down what had become known as the ‘Scientists Quarter’, she could hear the same music coming from Park and Rush’s rooms.
Rush had recovered from his long illness, though he still wore the sweater and the fingerless gloves, the latter less and less. The shivering had mostly stopped, although she would spend surreptitious ages watching him to check. She would occasionally catch his arm and he’d pull away but not before she found that his hands were still cold. The more tired he was, the colder he became. Greer was no longer found outside Rush’s quarters but she would catch him checking on Rush during the day just as he would catch her. They would shrug wryly, silently acknowledging the other’s concern. Both of them avoided Colonel Young in their quest to keep Rush healthy and alive. As Chloe put it, Rush works, we go home. TJ told herself that was all she cared about.
Becker went all out for Christmas. There was some banana gloop left but everyone pretty much acknowledged by now that that the gloop belonged to Rush. Even the purple potatoes tasted less awful when spiced up but it turned out they had a better use. TJ primly called it medicinal alcohol but basically it was moonshine. Rush had turned a blind eye to Brody pilfering various bits of equipment to make a still; even more, he’d deflected Scott when questions were asked about certain items going missing. The moonshine tasted disgusting and smelled like some sort of industrial cleaning fluid but it was alcohol and it was Christmas. Even two days after, people were hungover and feeling sorry for themselves.
The problem that morning came when Eli started on a litany of complaints. He was just letting off steam, mainly at Scott and Chloe, but TJ could see everyone tensing up. It was not seeing a movie marathon as he always did on New Year’s Eve. It was missing turkey at Christmas and Thanksgiving. It was not having this, not having that, not having anything, not having everything. TJ’s head started to ache and she could see Colonel Young’s eyes glaze over and everyone else glancing at each other. TJ could even tell that Young was about to say something.
But Rush got in first. He increasingly held his head and she could see him grinding his teeth. She glanced at Greer but he was glaring in irritation at Eli. Admittedly, Eli wasn’t the only person talking but his voice was the most grating.
Finally, Rush snapped.
“For christ’s sake, would you quit your fucking moaning,” Rush said harshly. “Just shut the fuck up for once in your fucking life.”
There was dead silence.
Eli’s jaw dropped; his eyes were wide. Everyone else put on appropriately shocked faces. TJ and Greer glanced at each other.
“Rush,” Young began.
“Oh, what,” Rush said, his voice venomous.
People were too busy glaring at him to notice him wincing at the sound of his own voice. TJ upped the Rush tiredness meter to high. Young ripped him to shreds. Rush simply went silent, lowering his head, as Young got closer to him then he raised his eyes defiantly, sneered, and stalked out.
Eli’s usual crowd clucked around him.
“You okay?” Young asked Eli gruffly.
“Yeah,” Eli nodded unhappily. “Sorry, I …”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Chloe emphatically.
Scott patted him on the shoulder. “You know, sometimes I think we’re all just getting along and then there's Rush,” he said. “What the hell brought that on?”
One of the scientists, a victim of Rush’s oft stated view that incompetent people should stay the hell well away from him, piped up to say, “He didn’t even take part in Christmas.”
“Scrooge,” someone else snickered.
Ah right, now Rush was now apparently the only person not to take part in Christmas. Young didn’t stop any of the murmuring around the room. He stomped out himself.
Greer said in TJ’s ear, “You’d just be blowin’ in the wind if you said something, Lieutenant.”
“I know,” she said. “He’s not the easiest person to deal with, Sergeant.”
“You get along with him,” Greer said promptly.
“So do you,” TJ said back at him.
“You’re the medic,” Greer said, with complete finality.
“Thanks,” she said snappily.
“Why don’t I see if Eli’s okay?” Greer suggested.
“Eli’s fine,” TJ muttered. “His ego’s the one of the few things on the ship that keeps getting fed.”
She bit her lip immediately but Greer murmured, “Nasty.”
When she tracked down Rush, he was in the observation room, sitting on a bench holding his head. She’d stopped by the infirmary first.
“Luckily, everyone already thinks you’re the most horrible and unpleasant person on Destiny,” she said sitting next to him, “so no one was really surprised at this latest little display.”
He huffed out the ghost of a laugh and winced again.
“Here,” she said. “Lt Johansen’s excellent headache cure.”
She held out some water. In it was mixed in some herbs from one of the planets Destiny visited. It tasted, Rush had said to her previously, bloody awful but it worked. She’d become a herbalist as well as the ship’s medic.
“I’ll be unconscious for two days,” Rush objected half-heartedly. He took the potion anyway and drank it down. He coughed and mumbled, “God, that’s shite.”
“You out of the way is a good thing,” she said. He shrugged. “Picking on poor little Eli like that.”
He snorted unrepentantly. “Poor little Eli,” he repeated.
“Look, people just miss home, okay?” she said. “Everyone else just wants to go home. It’s different for you; you like it here.”
“Aye,” he said. “It’s a bundle of laughs.”
As he stood and handed back the cup, his hand shook. He said something in a language she didn’t know then that he was going to bed. She stood and he said, “You don’t have to follow me.”
“Yes, I do,” TJ said. “Firstly, everyone wants to kill you; I know you don’t care about that but I have things to do that don’t involve cleaning up your corpse. Secondly, if you fall over unconscious on the way, I’m the one who will have to drag you to your quarters just like last time, so I may as well just come along and get it over with rather than having to go to the infirmary then all the way back.”
“This is you applying logic again, isn’t it,” Rush said drily.
“See how good my headache cure is,” TJ noted. “You’re feeling better enough to snark at me.”
“Piss off,” Rush muttered.
“After you’re in bed,” she said cheerfully.
She stopped smiling after he closed the door to his quarters. Colonel Young would say that Rush was a lot of work and he was. She didn’t know what brought on this morning’s outburst but he looked like he was dwelling on something. Could be Young, could be anything. It wasn’t as if he’d tell her.
Young was waiting for her in the infirmary.
“And how’s our Dr Rush,” he asked, the usual tense edge in his voice.
“Migraine,” TJ said.
He knew she’d gone to find Rush. Shit, shit, bugger.
“Overwork?” Young asked.
He didn’t pretend to be concerned but TJ pretended not to be.
“No idea, sir,” she said briskly. “I just made sure he wasn’t going to fall over.” She gave the cup a rinse. “Is Eli okay?”
“His ego’s bruised a bit but he’s fine,” Young said. “At least he stopped talking. If Rush hadn’t said something, I probably would have.”
And yet he got in Rush’s face over it.
“Christmas is hard no matter where people are,” TJ said.
“Even for Rush?” Young asked, a note of skepticism in his voice.
“I’ve no idea what Rush thinks about Christmas,” TJ said truthfully. And then she lied. “I don’t really care what he thinks about anything.”
Young nodded thoughtfully.
“You’re, uh, due to use the communication stones,” he said. “Thought I’d come and remind you.”
“I hadn’t forgotten, sir,” TJ said. “I want to talk to the SGC doctors.”
“You should visit your family,” Young said.
“Yes, sir,” she said with no intention of doing so. She couldn’t imagine turning up at her family’s house in someone else’s body. Better that she write an email when she got back to Earth. “I’ll do that.”
She was transported to the SGC at her request and spent hours with Dr Lam, cramming in as much as she could. They found her a specialist to discuss herbal medicine and when she was finally left alone at the end of the day, she sat at a computer.
“An hour, Lieutenant,” a voice called from the door.
“Thank you,” TJ said.
She paused and looked around. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She bit her lip and typed in “Doctor Nicholas Rush”, pressing enter. It was mostly academic articles. She opened a couple at random. Physics, language, philosophy, math. There were even a few photos in Google images, his eyes generally down and away from the camera. She touched the screen and wished she understood at least something that he liked; nothing in the papers she flicked through meant anything to her. She went through a few more pages. In one photo, he was standing next to a dark-haired woman. She was smiling into the camera. She was attractive and elegant. Both of them were in evening dress, TJ lingering over the sight of Rush in a tuxedo. There was no caption, no clue as to who the woman was or where the photo had been taken-some academic thing, no doubt. He used to wear a wedding ring; his wife, maybe? When she deleted some of the address to find out more, it came up as a 404 error. She wouldn’t ask him. It would be one question too familiar.
Part Two