New Fic: Where We Ought to Be (3/5 - complete)
Title: Where We Ought to Be (Part 3/5 - complete)
Author:
wojelah
Fandom: SGA, McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through "Sunday"
Author's Notes: This fic was born the first time I saw this ep, on a bet/dare/whim/IM conversation with
omglawdork. Then it exploded. Now it's finally done, and I'm still standing around looking confused as to what, exactly, happened.
omglawdork stuck with this from brainstorm to beta and refused to let me cheat.
raisintorte and
smittywing, whom I had not met when I started this nonsense, graciously agreed to pick it to bits and listen to me flail as it got put back together - and then helped with coding and finding a place to put it up all in one piece. It is what it is because of these three. Title is from the hymn "Simple Gifts".
Summary: "Stop thinking," Elizabeth had told Rodney once, and he wished he understood how to do that now, but he'd never managed to explain to her that not thinking, for him, was as plausible a solution as not breathing. And yes, fine, this past week had been so utterly unpredictable that Rodney had spent a lot of time thinking what the hell and oh, god, please, no, but really, there was only so long that complete befuddlement was going to serve as a plausible distraction.
He was stuck in a cottage in the middle of Scotland with people he didn't know and one highly problematic lieutenant colonel and Carson wasn't even around to blame for it.
Part One / Part Two / Read it all in one piece here.
Part Three
They hurried down the stairs to find Carson's family assembled around the dining room table, talking quietly, only to fall into complete silence when Rodney stumbled into the room courtesy of a surreptitious and entirely unnecessary shove. Recovering from that inauspicious beginning, he looked across the room to see a petite woman in a dark suit glaring at him malevolently, and he wasn't sure if it was the venom in her eyes or the fact that it was like looking at a feminine version of Carson that rendered him speechless. Sheppard was still behind him in the hallway, muttering completely unhelpful, not-nearly silent enough imprecations at Rodney's back, when Anna Buchanan Beckett, Carson's youngest sister and far more like him in appearance than the picture in her file would suggest, stood up and smiled tightly. "Ah," she said, in a voice that Rodney knew, from long experience, boded no good, "our guests have found their way here - shall we start dinner?" She stalked off through the far door to what Rodney presumed was the kitchen.
For the space of a few seconds, no one spoke as the sound of Anna's heels on the hardwood faded away. Then Beth pushed her chair back and said something about going to lend a hand, and Andrew rose to join her, and Mary Beckett just looked at them both from the head of the table and said, "Well? Come and sit."
Rodney ended up at Mrs. Beckett's right hand; Sheppard sat down on Rodney's left. Across from Sheppard was Margaret; on his left was a sister Rodney hadn't yet met but who looked a lot like Katherine's picture. Sheppard offered the two sisters his patented "aw, shucks" smile and started in on some vague apology to the gathered company. Mrs. Beckett had only just pinned him with a skeptical look when the explanations were interrupted by Anna, Beth, and Andrew, carrying plates and bowls of real, honest-to-god, home-cooked food. Just as Rodney was about to erupt into paroxysms of joy at the thought, Mrs. Beckett turned to him.
"Doctor McKay," she said, "would you care to say grace?"
Rodney stared at her. "Oh. Ah, well, yes - that is...." That was, Rodney thought frantically, a terrible idea, and he had no idea how to say so without risking permanent offense, but some primitive warning system was telling him that, in fact, offending Carson's mother was, at this point, the worst of many, many bad options. "You see...," he started, and paused again, because the only grace Rodney could ever remember saying was Johnny Appleseed, which came with a series of terrible summer camp memories he had no desire to resurrect. "I...."
Sheppard kicked his ankle, hard. "What Doctor McKay's trying to say," Sheppard interjected, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, "is that he's a Quaker."
"A... Quaker?" said probably-Katherine, clearly confused.
"Yes ma'am." Sheppard answered, smiling. Anna narrowed her eyes. "They don't so much say grace as they have a period of silence, waiting for the spirit to move them." Rodney was beginning to understand just how Sheppard had managed to get hold of a multi-million dollar helicopter in direct opposition to orders. "Isn't that right, Rodney?" Sheppard said, and stepped on Rodney's toe.
"What?" Rodney yelped, "Yes, right, of course, I - we - you only -"
"Oh," said Margaret, and Rodney offered fervent thanks to whatever deity was listening, "Oh, yes - your church services are the same, aren't they?"
Before Rodney could answer, Sheppard was leaning in slightly, smiling at her. "That's it exactly. Quietest you'll ever see Doctor McKay," and a tentative laugh went around the table, skipping Anna, whose lips were now pinched so thin they looked bloodless. "But since dinner smells great, and much, much better than what we usually get, maybe you could let him off the hook for tonight?" Margaret blushed - unbelievable, Rodney thought - and smiled back.
"All right, then," Mary Beckett intruded, "Less talking, more praying, or we'll never eat. Beth, would you please?"
Rodney sagged in relief. Mrs. Beckett eyed him sharply, but she was smiling, so he figured he'd dodged the bullet. This gave him, he felt, every right to kick Sheppard back. Sheppard, damn him, didn't so much as flinch. The knot on the back of Rodney's head chose that moment to throb, and he winced, but by then Beth was praying and everyone had their heads bowed, so it went, he thought, relatively unnoticed.
Grace over, the ten minutes were something of a blur. Beth and Andrew made belated introductions around the table; Rodney frantically trying to match faces with the information in the SGC file while Beth explained that Katherine's (and score one for deduction, Rodney gloated) husband and children would be coming in the next day, as would Maire and her spouse. As Sheppard passed a beautiful, beautiful bowl of steaming mashed potatoes, Rodney was sufficiently distracted by the smell of melting butter that he forgot his instinctive caution and, vaguely recalling something about a fiancé, asked Anna when her husband was coming in.
In his lifetime, Rodney had been the cause of many, many awkward silences. The one that fell over the table as soon as the question left his mouth definitely ranked in the top five. Maybe the top three, given the fact that the saccharine smile on the face of the woman across the table from him looked a great deal like the one Carter had sported when he'd been sent off to Siberia.
"I am not," Anna said, "married. Nor am I engaged, Doctor McKay, although I admit to a brief moment of insanity in that regard several years ago. I am afraid," she said, too sweetly, "that what you see is what you get."
"Well," he said, attempting a conciliatory smile, "What I see looks just fine to me. I mean, obviously," he stammered as her eyes narrowed dangerously, "you are a lovely woman and, ah, clearly, in this day and age it's not... that is to say, there are all sorts of reasons a woman like you wouldn't choose to marry and, of course, one's lifestyle is, um, a very personal choice," he paused for breath. "I'm not married either, which isn't to say that I mean to compare the two of us because of course we're nothing alike and what I mean to say is that I'm sure you've made the right decision for you and your life." He put down the fork he'd been gesturing with. Margaret stared. Andrew's lips were twitching. Sheppard's eyes were closed. Rodney was not about to look at Mrs. Beckett. "I hope," Rodney faltered, "I hope that it makes you very happy."
"My lifestyle." Anna's voice was carefully mild, and a little piece of Rodney curled up and died of pure dread. "I see. So because I am single and childless and over the age of thirty, I must, of necessity, be a lesbian - is that it, Doctor McKay?"
"Ah, that's - well - no, that's not...," Rodney stammered, over Mrs. Beckett's stern "Anna," as he tried and utterly failed to follow Anna's thought processes.
"Isn't that just typical," Anna snorted. "Keep the little woman at home to take care of her man, and heaven forbid she shouldn't have one. And if she doesn't want a man, or children, well clearly, then, she's a lesbian. Whereas a man can stay single as long as he pleases - after all, there's nothing like a 'swingin' bachelor,' is there? Unless, of course, he's homosexual. You hide-bound Americans, so busy worrying about your moral imperative that you won't let one of your own fight for his country if he happens to be gay, but you're happy to kill off a Scottish civilian in his stead."
"Anna, enough." This time the warning was Beth's. Rodney gaped, staring at Anna. Next to him, Sheppard was so tense Rodney was amazed he wasn't vibrating.
"Hardly." Anna's hands were gripping the table so hard her knuckles were white. "For god's sake, they're just sitting here at our dinner table, like they're not the ones responsible for the fact Carson's dead. Not that they'd ever admit it, mind, they'll just have their military step all over anyone who dares to think differently. Yes-men and grunts, all of them, good for nothing except following orders, and," her voice cracked, "Carson was worth twenty of them. I want to know what no one else here has the balls to ask," Anna demanded, tone strident. "Tell me why it is you're here, sitting in front of us and stuffing your faces, and why the pair of you weren't out protecting Carson from whatever it was that killed him. How dare you come here and smirk and smile and sit with us? He was a doctor, for Christ's sake - he was never supposed to be in the thick of things." She glared at Sheppard. "Did you even bother to try and save him? How many men did you lose, trying to protect him?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Rodney saw Sheppard twitch - a tiny motion he wouldn't even have caught if he hadn't seen Sheppard after too many missions gone wrong. It was enough, however, to jolt Rodney out of complete disbelief and mild terror and into a state of profound irritation usually associated with the newest batch of scientists. "I'm sorry," he interrupted, plowing over whatever piece of idiocy was about to come out of Anna's mouth. "Have you always been this stupid?"
"Excuse me?" Anna's head went back like she'd been slapped, her jaw dropping.
Rodney didn't really care. "No, really, because Carson was absolutely brilliant, and you look exactly like him, but I'm really not certain that you aren't swimming in the short end of your genetic pool. Clearly, however, you share the same complete and utter lack of any common sense that made him think it was a good plan to shut himself away in a room with a ticking time bomb because he had to try and -"
"Rodney," John muttered, "drop it."
"I will not," Rodney spat, turning to him. "I will not just drop it. You lost men too, men under your command, not just Carson," and oh, he hadn't meant to say that, and wasn't that just one more thing that arrogant, finger-pointing, lawyer across the table from him was going to have to answer for. Rodney whirled back to point at Anna, "and you're just sitting there, just as smug and self-certain as you're accusing us of being, without even the beginning of an idea of what actually happened. No, no, you just figure your stereotypes are perfectly applicable, because, of course, they're yours, and sure, why not tar them all with the same brush, because, you know, they're only the people whose job it is to die horribly and do it first. You have no idea what they have to do - and they signed up knowing it, and oh, by the way, so did your brother, and everyone else in your family seems to get that, so perhaps you need to reevaluate those conclusions of yours, Miss High-and-Mighty, because if you have to blame somebody, you should be blaming Carson -"
"That's enough, McKay," Sheppard snapped, and the tone of his voice was well past I am not kidding.
Anna was on her feet, and, Rodney realized, somewhere along the way he must have stood as well, because she was leaning across the table, asking him how he dared to say something like that, in this house, at this time. Then Beth was grabbing Anna by the arm and saying something, and Sheppard was manhandling Rodney out into the hallway, releasing him with a shove.
"What the hell, Sheppard?" Rodney snapped, rubbing his upper arm.
"Upstairs, McKay," Sheppard hissed. "You are done for tonight."
"Hardly! Damn it, she was just as out of line, Sheppard, and you know it."
"She also just found out her brother's dead, McKay, and I'm pretty sure if you stay in there much longer, Carson's siblings are going to band together and kill you in cold blood in front of his dear, sweet mother, and I really don't want to have to explain that to Elizabeth. You need," Sheppard ground out, "to go cool off."
"Please, they weren't exactly leaping to defend her -" Rodney tried to move past him, down the hall, but Sheppard wasn't budging.
"I'm not kidding, Rodney. Pack it in."
Rodney snorted. "What am I, twelve? You may be Atlantis's golden boy and Kirk to half the galaxy, but I'm pretty sure you're not my mother, which means you can't exactly send me to my room without supper, Colonel."
"I will make you a goddamn plate, McKay, but you are not going back in that room tonight. We're here till Saturday, and this is going to be hard enough without you and Carson's younger sister trying to throttle each other. Go. Up. Stairs." Sheppard was biting the words off so hard Rodney could see the muscles in his jaw twitch. From down the hall, he could hear Anna's voice, raised in furious protest, and suddenly Rodney just didn't want to deal with it any more.
"Fine." Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm right. You know I'm right, and oh, by the way, you're welcome. But fine. I'm going. And you'd damn well better send up food."
Sheppard just looked at him. "Sure, Rodney, whatever. If they don't tell me they're kicking us out when I walk back in the room. Just go." Rodney plodded upstairs as Sheppard turned and headed back to the dining room. Flopping onto the lower bunk, he realized that somehow he'd ended up grounded because he'd decided to defend the United States military, which was, really, just the latest episode of insanity attributable to this whole, miserable trip.
An hour later, he was sitting on the floor, back against the bed, hunched over the computer and promising himself that he'd find some way to make Sheppard vilely uncomfortable back in Atlantis if dinner didn't materialize soon. He'd managed to focus on work with moderate success when someone knocked on the door. Rodney hoped it was Sheppard bearing dinner and not bad news, because if it was, and they had to go back to Glasgow, today was only going to get infinitely worse. Irritated, he set the computer aside, heaved himself up, and went to answer it.
Anna Beckett stood on the other side. Rodney found himself rapidly revising his concept of infinity.
"My mother," she gritted out, thrusting a laden plate at him, "suggested that you might be hungry, since you had to leave so abruptly. She also suggested," and Rodney wondered if the muscle in her cheek always jumped like that, "that perhaps I owe you an apology for my comments at dinner."
Cradling the plate tenderly, Rodney looked at her, caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, she'd just blatantly attacked him in front of complete strangers. On the other hand, dinner. And also, he admitted, looking at tired, red eyes that still seemed far-too-familiar, Carson. Well. The absence of Carson, anyway. "Ah," he stammered. "Yes. Well. Perhaps I was a little, ah, that is, my choice of words may not have been the most, um, opportune, given the circumstances -"
Anna snorted and pushed past him before he could finish the sentence. "For heaven's sake. Apology accepted. For now," she amended, eyeing him. Rodney bristled and started to protest, but she cut him off again. "Don't. I'm not - " She stopped, clenching her hands at her sides. Rodney took a careful step away, setting the plate on the nearby dresser. "It has been pointed out to me," she said with an obvious effort, "that I am not well-suited to dealing with most people, and that perhaps I have not given either you or Colonel Sheppard sufficient credit. Certainly," she paused, considering, "certainly the Colonel is more upset than his initial demeanor would suggest, although he covers it well. And perhaps I was rather distraught when I, ah, provoked you at dinner."
Rodney stared at her, dumbfounded. "And so you're telling me this why, exactly?" He considered that statement and backtracked. "I mean, not that you shouldn't express what you're thinking, and I'm glad you've gotten it off your chest, but - why are you telling it to me and not, I don't know, someone you're related to? Or your, um, therapist?" She glared, and he hurried to cover, "Or, you know, someone... else?"
"Because, you great idiot, I'm trying to apologize!" she snapped, throwing up her hands.
"Oh," Rodney said, confused. "I thought we'd done that already."
"I've been in the room all of two minutes, Doctor McKay. Exactly when did we do that?"
"I don't know," he said. "Possibly when I opened the door and you said 'I owe you an apology' and then I said sorry and then you said 'Apology accepted'? I'm sorry if I misinterpreted what I thought was a pretty direct statement, but those of us who haven't had our minds polluted by legal education tend to take words like that at face value."
Anna boggled. Then she frowned. Then she brought a hand up to rub her forehead. "Point to you, Doctor McKay, she said. "Never let it be said I used my education against an unarmed civilian." She winced. "I mean -"
"Please," Rodney snorted, "Superior knowledge is meant to be deployed against the less fortunate. Clearly you've never taught graduate students."
"No," she allowed. "But there's a reason I have the record I do against opposing counsel."
"Yes, yes," he said, waving a hand dismissively, "but that's hardly the same being as paid to impart knowledge to the terminally incompetent."
"True." Anna cracked a small smile. "But then, I never had any desire to become a solicitor. I am not particularly fond of the hoi polloi."
"Nor the military, apparently," and why, Rodney wondered, was he constitutionally incapable of quitting while he was ahead.
"Ah." She shifted uncomfortably and paused. "No, I'm not," she said at last, "least of all when it's American, and the Colonel, perhaps, pushed a few buttons too many with that nonsense over grace." Anna fixed him with a considering stare, and Rodney was acutely aware that she was her mother's daughter. "You'll forgive me if I'm wrong, of course, but you hardly strike me as a Quaker. I don't," she continued, "much enjoy being lied to, or kept in the dark, and there's a great deal I'd dearly love to know that all of your paperwork simply doesn't tell me." She swallowed, swung away to look out the window as Rodney started to speak. "Don't." Her voice was suddenly ragged, and he recognized the set of her shoulders. "I am a barrister, after all, and I wouldn't want to tempt you to violate your confidentiality agreements." Anna hugged herself, holding on to her elbows. "I am a barrister," she repeated, "but I'm also his sister, and for all the good he may have been doing, he was my brother, and now he's gone." She lifted her chin. "It may have been what he wanted, but that doesn't mean a damn thing at the moment, except that I'd kill to tell him to his face what an utterly stupid justification I find that statement." Rodney just stood there, helpless and unexpectedly sympathetic, staring at the unforgiving lines of her back. "And then you lot blunder in to dinner," she continued, and Rodney made a heroic and mostly successful effort not to take umbrage at that remark, "running late and full of excuses and no explanations and perhaps," she shrugged, "as I said, you simply caught the edge of my temper." Rodney suppressed a shudder at the thought that he'd only seen the edge. "He was my older brother - my only brother, for all intents and purposes - and I miss him."
"So do I," he muttered, surprising himself. "I mean," he backtracked, "we all do, all of us on - on the - on this mission. It's just - we haven't - it's been so busy that - I know," he fumbled miserably, "about the stupidity, because yes, well, get in line. And it's not like I haven't spent the last few days asking myself the same questions," he said, sitting down on the bottom bunk and forcing the words out. "Only, you know, I was there, and all I can do now is second guess, because it's not even like I have someone else's incompetence to blame."
"I'm no priest, Doctor McKay. I can't grant you absolution," she said, voice flat, still looking out the window.
"I'm sorry," Rodney snapped, unreasonably irritated. "I wasn't asking for it. And you're kind of the wrong gender anyway, even if I didn't have too many misgivings to number about the plausibility of the propaganda put forth by the Catholic Church." Anna's shoulders hunched, and her hand flew to her face. A moment later, her shoulders started to shake.
Rodney shot to his feet, only to freeze, uncertain, debating the wisdom of flight in the face of a tearful Anna Beckett. "Oh god. Please - um, I mean, you're not, ah -" She quivered, and then - was that a snort? "I'm sorry?"
She turned around, her hand entirely failing to either 1) cover the smile on her face or 2) muffle her laughter, although her eyes were red - redder - and suspiciously damp. "You are a piece of work, aren't you?" she said. "Carson did say so, in his letters home, although he also warned me that if we ever met, he wasn't inclined to bet on the outcome. Still," she said, extending a hand as Rodney looked at her with extreme suspicion. "I think I could come to like you, Doctor McKay. Over time. A long time. If we didn't kill each other first. For now," she raised an eyebrow, "shall we call it a truce?"
"Oh yes," Rodney grumbled, but clasped her hand and shook it, "and next we can spit in our palms and do the secret handshake." Of course, that was when Sheppard showed up.
"So," he drawled, leaning against the doorframe and startling them both, "I guess I don't have to threaten you with detention after all, McKay." Rodney scowled. "I hate to break up the party, kids," Sheppard continued, and Rodney and Anna shared a completely sympathetic look of irritation, "but Mrs. Beckett asked me to send Anna down to her, if you two are finished making nice."
"Quite finished," Anna said crisply - and really, Rodney thought, she didn't need to dust off her hands. "Besides, it's getting late, and Doctor McKay's dinner will be going cold." Rodney's head swiveled to look at the dresser in alarm; when he looked back, Anna had crossed to the door and was standing in front of Sheppard. "I believe," she said quietly, "that I owe you an apology as well."
Sheppard smiled - the slow, lazy one he used all the time on local leaders from other planets, just before asking Teyla to invent some reason to avoid the local welcome ritual. "No harm, no foul," he said, and then grew serious. "I know this is a difficult time - "
Anna cut him off, rolling her eyes. "Indeed. And not all of us are quite so good at bluffing," she said sharply, and Sheppard's face froze. "I wonder," she said, and poked him in the chest with a finger, to Rodney's utter disbelief, "just how deep that mask goes, Colonel." She slipped past him and into the hallway. "Good night, gentlemen."
Her footsteps receded even as Rodney managed a half-hearted reply. Sheppard hadn't moved, propped up against the door jamb, eyes hooded, arms crossed. Rodney looked at the floor, tapped his fingers gently against the bed frame. He found himself reluctant to break the silence - at least, until his stomach growled and he remembered dinner, cooling rapidly on the dresser. He retrieved it, then settled himself on the floor, back to the bed, and tucked in with a will, because homemade roast chicken and mashed potatoes were homemade roast chicken and mashed potatoes, and rather harder to come by on Atlantis, where dinner was mess-hall processed at best. Feeling the beginnings of carbohydrate-induced bliss, Rodney looked up to find Sheppard still in the doorway, staring at him. "Hungry, McKay?" he drawled.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, ha, very funny," he grumbled, savoring the carrots. "Stop lurking and sit down, or whatever. You're ruining my appetite."
Sheppard smirked, but withheld comment, for which Rodney was grateful, because the chicken was demanding all available system resources. Crossing to the desk, he grabbed the chair and swung it around, straddled the back, and hooked an ankle around one of the legs, resting his chin on the chair back and closing his eyes. Rodney reminded himself that he was more interested in the food than the slump of Sheppard's shoulders. For awhile, no one said much; Rodney actually thought Sheppard had fallen asleep sitting up, when the man in question cracked open an eye and said, "So. You and the youngest Beckett called a truce?"
"More or less." Rodney applied himself to the mashed potatoes.
"McKay." John's voice was equal parts tired and annoyed.
"What?" Rodney looked up, irritated. "Yes. I apologized, she apologized, we shook on it. End of story."
Sheppard opened the other eye. "Right." Rodney started to protest, but Sheppard cut him off. "We've got two more days here, Rodney. You have got to pull it together. I can't spend the whole time running interference."
"Look," Rodney said, setting the regrettably empty plate aside, "what more do you want me to say?"
"Trust me," Sheppard answered, sitting up and glaring, "I don't want you to say anything. I just spent forty-five minutes coping with what you did say."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Rodney snapped. "Next time I'll just leave you to be slandered where you sit."
"Damn right you will, if it means you won't try and take a piece out of someone's hide two days before her brother's funeral!" Rodney told himself he was imagining the way Sheppard's voice shook on the last word.
"I told you I'm no good at this," Rodney reminded him. "I told you that. I told you this was a bad idea. And frankly," he said angrily, getting to his feet, and matching John's glare, "I've had about enough of the 'oh poor Anna' line, Colonel. Yes, fine. She lost her brother. But we lost Carson - " his voice cracked. He swallowed and looked away, tried again. "We lost Carson. That counts for something." Sheppard said nothing. Rodney glanced over - Sheppard's head was down, forehead resting on his crossed arms. "Ah," Rodney muttered, picking up the empty plate, "I'll just... take this downstairs."
"Yeah," Sheppard said, voice low, not moving. "You do that. Just..." Sheppard paused, "'come back when you're done. You know."
"Yes," Rodney stammered, slightly confused and a little taken aback, "um, okay. Yes. I will." That, he thought as he made his way downstairs, had been a supremely odd conversation. Coming from Sheppard, it was practically a request for company, given that the man could've been the poster child for Stoicism as a life philosophy. Not for the first time, Rodney wished like hell they were back in Atlantis, because honest to god, if Sheppard decided to have a breakdown now, the whole week was only going to end in complete disaster - as opposed, Rodney conceded, to the minor catastrophe already in progress.
Beth was in the kitchen when he finally found it. She started into an apology, and Rodney, awkward, fumbled through his own version, and got the hell back out of there as fast as he possibly could, only to realize, halfway up the stairs, that he was about to walk back in on a possibly unstable Sheppard. Faced with the prospect, he clung wholeheartedly to the one tactic that had served him beautifully in two galaxies: sheer, single-minded avoidance.
"Right," he said, opening the door. "I need you to - what are you doing?" he finished, distracted. Sheppard had, in the interim, changed into sweats and a t-shirt, and was looking up in surprise from his new seat on the floor, where he was tapping idly away at Rodney's laptop.
"Minesweeper," he confessed, scrubbing a hand over his face, and Rodney was content to ignore the fact that Sheppard's eyes were slightly red, or, at least, to chalk it up to allergies.
Rodney scowled. "You do realize that resetting my high scores does not mean that you've actually beaten them, right?" Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "Yes, yes, silence means assent. Look," he continued before Sheppard could respond, rummaging through his own bag for his own pair of sweats, "Zelenka left me with the latest data from the jumper runs and some new sims, based on the changes we thought up after we all didn't die from that bizarre, whale-related manifestation of the Gaia hypothesis. He dragged Lorne out a few days ago and he needs to know where you think we ought to start tweaking, since the damn things would follow you around like puppies if they were any closer to sentient. They're the newest file on the desktop," Rodney directed, as he headed for the bathroom, "so stop playing around and go take a look."
By the time he got back, Sheppard was, as Rodney had hoped, several windows deep in the most-recent mock-ups, comparing them against Lorne's run and complaining about the fact that he could've gotten better results. Rodney acknowledged that this was probably so, given that Sheppard pretty much knew how to get the jumper to roll over and beg. At that point Sheppard inquired as to how Jinto was doing after Rodney nearly ran him over on the last trip to the mainland. Clearly, that remark deserved no kind of response, and besides, Rodney had simply been testing the boy's reflexes to make sure he hadn't been developmentally stunted by over-reliance on tuttle root, and, furthermore, Sheppard needed to be paying more attention to the proposed changes to the jumper's shield design the new Greek aerospace engineer had come up with. What with one thing and another and the fact that the laptop screen simply wasn't big enough to be seen from across the room, they ended up side-by-side on the floor, passing the computer back and forth as need be.
"No, no, no, look," Rodney jabbed a finger at the screen. "If we rewire the shield generator like this," he said, tugging the laptop away and entering a few commands, "so the shape of the shield is less blunt," Rodney thrust the laptop over at Sheppard, "and use the naquadah to boost it, you should be able to get even farther down." Sheppard frowned, scanning the results, and Rodney allowed himself to think that perhaps, just perhaps, his face looked a little less drawn than when he'd first come upstairs, which meant that Operation Dear-God-Please-Save-The-Meltdown-For-Atlantis was, for the moment, succeeding.
"I don't know, McKay," Sheppard said, pointing at the screen. "Those results just look wrong. These damn things are fast, and the resistance isn't a problem in space - or, hell, even in the air, mostly - but underwater it's like maneuvering a Tootsie Roll. A really, really big Tootsie Roll."
"Yes, well," Rodney grumbled, snatching the computer back, "bumblebees aren't supposed to be aerodynamically feasible either. Let me look. Where?" Sheppard leaned over, pointed at the screen, and wow, Rodney thought, the man gave off heat like a radiator. "Okay, okay, right, I see." He batted Sheppard's hand away and started reading, mildly distracted by the fact that the Colonel hadn't shifted but was, in fact, still pressed against him. "Huh."
"Huh, I'm right, or huh, you're going to kill Papadopoulos?" Sheppard drawled, tipping his head back to rest it on the edge of the mattress.
"Huh, both, probably, and I will never say that again - the first part, anyway - so enjoy it. Now, stop talking, busy here," Rodney muttered.
He should have been more annoyed, he thought as he resurfaced two hours later, eyes watering from the glare of the screen, at finding out that the results were useless because Papadopoulos hadn't proofread the simulation's equations well enough. It was just that irritation was somewhat harder to maintain when Rodney was kind of wrapped up in the unexpected sensation of Sheppard's body, leaning warm and heavy against his right side. The man himself, Rodney realized somewhere along the way, had actually fallen asleep. It was only because Rodney was starting to lose feeling in his right hand that he was contemplating waking Sheppard up at all, which was also the point at which Rodney realized that he was walking very close to a very carefully drawn line. For tonight, however, he was too damn tired to care, and gave himself another minute to just enjoy it, until his back started to protest. He nudged Sheppard carefully as he stood up. "Sheppard."
Hazy almost-green eyes peered up at him. Rodney's breath caught in his throat. He blamed it on the pins and needles attacking his right arm. "McKay?"
"Wake up," he forced out. "I found the errors, and the whole simulation needs to be entirely rewritten, only I'm not going to deal with it now, because it's Papadopoulos's problem and, more importantly, it's midnight and we have an entire day of Carson's family ahead."
"What?" Sheppard blinked at him muzzily.
"It is time," Rodney pronounced, "for all good little lieutenant colonels to stop coming between a tired genius and his extremely well-earned bed. Get up, Sheppard," he said, insistent. "You're in the way."
Sheppard grunted, stumbling to his feet and clambering, with visible effort, into the top bunk. "Nigh', Ro'ney," he mumbled, as Rodney hit the lights and fumbled his way under his own covers.
"Yes, yes. Sweet dreams, whatever," he yawned. If Sheppard said anything more, Rodney never heard it.
Part Four
Author:
wojelah
Fandom: SGA, McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through "Sunday"
Author's Notes: This fic was born the first time I saw this ep, on a bet/dare/whim/IM conversation with
omglawdork. Then it exploded. Now it's finally done, and I'm still standing around looking confused as to what, exactly, happened.
omglawdork stuck with this from brainstorm to beta and refused to let me cheat.
raisintorte and
smittywing, whom I had not met when I started this nonsense, graciously agreed to pick it to bits and listen to me flail as it got put back together - and then helped with coding and finding a place to put it up all in one piece. It is what it is because of these three. Title is from the hymn "Simple Gifts".
Summary: "Stop thinking," Elizabeth had told Rodney once, and he wished he understood how to do that now, but he'd never managed to explain to her that not thinking, for him, was as plausible a solution as not breathing. And yes, fine, this past week had been so utterly unpredictable that Rodney had spent a lot of time thinking what the hell and oh, god, please, no, but really, there was only so long that complete befuddlement was going to serve as a plausible distraction.
He was stuck in a cottage in the middle of Scotland with people he didn't know and one highly problematic lieutenant colonel and Carson wasn't even around to blame for it.
Part One / Part Two / Read it all in one piece here.
Part Three
They hurried down the stairs to find Carson's family assembled around the dining room table, talking quietly, only to fall into complete silence when Rodney stumbled into the room courtesy of a surreptitious and entirely unnecessary shove. Recovering from that inauspicious beginning, he looked across the room to see a petite woman in a dark suit glaring at him malevolently, and he wasn't sure if it was the venom in her eyes or the fact that it was like looking at a feminine version of Carson that rendered him speechless. Sheppard was still behind him in the hallway, muttering completely unhelpful, not-nearly silent enough imprecations at Rodney's back, when Anna Buchanan Beckett, Carson's youngest sister and far more like him in appearance than the picture in her file would suggest, stood up and smiled tightly. "Ah," she said, in a voice that Rodney knew, from long experience, boded no good, "our guests have found their way here - shall we start dinner?" She stalked off through the far door to what Rodney presumed was the kitchen.
For the space of a few seconds, no one spoke as the sound of Anna's heels on the hardwood faded away. Then Beth pushed her chair back and said something about going to lend a hand, and Andrew rose to join her, and Mary Beckett just looked at them both from the head of the table and said, "Well? Come and sit."
Rodney ended up at Mrs. Beckett's right hand; Sheppard sat down on Rodney's left. Across from Sheppard was Margaret; on his left was a sister Rodney hadn't yet met but who looked a lot like Katherine's picture. Sheppard offered the two sisters his patented "aw, shucks" smile and started in on some vague apology to the gathered company. Mrs. Beckett had only just pinned him with a skeptical look when the explanations were interrupted by Anna, Beth, and Andrew, carrying plates and bowls of real, honest-to-god, home-cooked food. Just as Rodney was about to erupt into paroxysms of joy at the thought, Mrs. Beckett turned to him.
"Doctor McKay," she said, "would you care to say grace?"
Rodney stared at her. "Oh. Ah, well, yes - that is...." That was, Rodney thought frantically, a terrible idea, and he had no idea how to say so without risking permanent offense, but some primitive warning system was telling him that, in fact, offending Carson's mother was, at this point, the worst of many, many bad options. "You see...," he started, and paused again, because the only grace Rodney could ever remember saying was Johnny Appleseed, which came with a series of terrible summer camp memories he had no desire to resurrect. "I...."
Sheppard kicked his ankle, hard. "What Doctor McKay's trying to say," Sheppard interjected, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, "is that he's a Quaker."
"A... Quaker?" said probably-Katherine, clearly confused.
"Yes ma'am." Sheppard answered, smiling. Anna narrowed her eyes. "They don't so much say grace as they have a period of silence, waiting for the spirit to move them." Rodney was beginning to understand just how Sheppard had managed to get hold of a multi-million dollar helicopter in direct opposition to orders. "Isn't that right, Rodney?" Sheppard said, and stepped on Rodney's toe.
"What?" Rodney yelped, "Yes, right, of course, I - we - you only -"
"Oh," said Margaret, and Rodney offered fervent thanks to whatever deity was listening, "Oh, yes - your church services are the same, aren't they?"
Before Rodney could answer, Sheppard was leaning in slightly, smiling at her. "That's it exactly. Quietest you'll ever see Doctor McKay," and a tentative laugh went around the table, skipping Anna, whose lips were now pinched so thin they looked bloodless. "But since dinner smells great, and much, much better than what we usually get, maybe you could let him off the hook for tonight?" Margaret blushed - unbelievable, Rodney thought - and smiled back.
"All right, then," Mary Beckett intruded, "Less talking, more praying, or we'll never eat. Beth, would you please?"
Rodney sagged in relief. Mrs. Beckett eyed him sharply, but she was smiling, so he figured he'd dodged the bullet. This gave him, he felt, every right to kick Sheppard back. Sheppard, damn him, didn't so much as flinch. The knot on the back of Rodney's head chose that moment to throb, and he winced, but by then Beth was praying and everyone had their heads bowed, so it went, he thought, relatively unnoticed.
Grace over, the ten minutes were something of a blur. Beth and Andrew made belated introductions around the table; Rodney frantically trying to match faces with the information in the SGC file while Beth explained that Katherine's (and score one for deduction, Rodney gloated) husband and children would be coming in the next day, as would Maire and her spouse. As Sheppard passed a beautiful, beautiful bowl of steaming mashed potatoes, Rodney was sufficiently distracted by the smell of melting butter that he forgot his instinctive caution and, vaguely recalling something about a fiancé, asked Anna when her husband was coming in.
In his lifetime, Rodney had been the cause of many, many awkward silences. The one that fell over the table as soon as the question left his mouth definitely ranked in the top five. Maybe the top three, given the fact that the saccharine smile on the face of the woman across the table from him looked a great deal like the one Carter had sported when he'd been sent off to Siberia.
"I am not," Anna said, "married. Nor am I engaged, Doctor McKay, although I admit to a brief moment of insanity in that regard several years ago. I am afraid," she said, too sweetly, "that what you see is what you get."
"Well," he said, attempting a conciliatory smile, "What I see looks just fine to me. I mean, obviously," he stammered as her eyes narrowed dangerously, "you are a lovely woman and, ah, clearly, in this day and age it's not... that is to say, there are all sorts of reasons a woman like you wouldn't choose to marry and, of course, one's lifestyle is, um, a very personal choice," he paused for breath. "I'm not married either, which isn't to say that I mean to compare the two of us because of course we're nothing alike and what I mean to say is that I'm sure you've made the right decision for you and your life." He put down the fork he'd been gesturing with. Margaret stared. Andrew's lips were twitching. Sheppard's eyes were closed. Rodney was not about to look at Mrs. Beckett. "I hope," Rodney faltered, "I hope that it makes you very happy."
"My lifestyle." Anna's voice was carefully mild, and a little piece of Rodney curled up and died of pure dread. "I see. So because I am single and childless and over the age of thirty, I must, of necessity, be a lesbian - is that it, Doctor McKay?"
"Ah, that's - well - no, that's not...," Rodney stammered, over Mrs. Beckett's stern "Anna," as he tried and utterly failed to follow Anna's thought processes.
"Isn't that just typical," Anna snorted. "Keep the little woman at home to take care of her man, and heaven forbid she shouldn't have one. And if she doesn't want a man, or children, well clearly, then, she's a lesbian. Whereas a man can stay single as long as he pleases - after all, there's nothing like a 'swingin' bachelor,' is there? Unless, of course, he's homosexual. You hide-bound Americans, so busy worrying about your moral imperative that you won't let one of your own fight for his country if he happens to be gay, but you're happy to kill off a Scottish civilian in his stead."
"Anna, enough." This time the warning was Beth's. Rodney gaped, staring at Anna. Next to him, Sheppard was so tense Rodney was amazed he wasn't vibrating.
"Hardly." Anna's hands were gripping the table so hard her knuckles were white. "For god's sake, they're just sitting here at our dinner table, like they're not the ones responsible for the fact Carson's dead. Not that they'd ever admit it, mind, they'll just have their military step all over anyone who dares to think differently. Yes-men and grunts, all of them, good for nothing except following orders, and," her voice cracked, "Carson was worth twenty of them. I want to know what no one else here has the balls to ask," Anna demanded, tone strident. "Tell me why it is you're here, sitting in front of us and stuffing your faces, and why the pair of you weren't out protecting Carson from whatever it was that killed him. How dare you come here and smirk and smile and sit with us? He was a doctor, for Christ's sake - he was never supposed to be in the thick of things." She glared at Sheppard. "Did you even bother to try and save him? How many men did you lose, trying to protect him?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Rodney saw Sheppard twitch - a tiny motion he wouldn't even have caught if he hadn't seen Sheppard after too many missions gone wrong. It was enough, however, to jolt Rodney out of complete disbelief and mild terror and into a state of profound irritation usually associated with the newest batch of scientists. "I'm sorry," he interrupted, plowing over whatever piece of idiocy was about to come out of Anna's mouth. "Have you always been this stupid?"
"Excuse me?" Anna's head went back like she'd been slapped, her jaw dropping.
Rodney didn't really care. "No, really, because Carson was absolutely brilliant, and you look exactly like him, but I'm really not certain that you aren't swimming in the short end of your genetic pool. Clearly, however, you share the same complete and utter lack of any common sense that made him think it was a good plan to shut himself away in a room with a ticking time bomb because he had to try and -"
"Rodney," John muttered, "drop it."
"I will not," Rodney spat, turning to him. "I will not just drop it. You lost men too, men under your command, not just Carson," and oh, he hadn't meant to say that, and wasn't that just one more thing that arrogant, finger-pointing, lawyer across the table from him was going to have to answer for. Rodney whirled back to point at Anna, "and you're just sitting there, just as smug and self-certain as you're accusing us of being, without even the beginning of an idea of what actually happened. No, no, you just figure your stereotypes are perfectly applicable, because, of course, they're yours, and sure, why not tar them all with the same brush, because, you know, they're only the people whose job it is to die horribly and do it first. You have no idea what they have to do - and they signed up knowing it, and oh, by the way, so did your brother, and everyone else in your family seems to get that, so perhaps you need to reevaluate those conclusions of yours, Miss High-and-Mighty, because if you have to blame somebody, you should be blaming Carson -"
"That's enough, McKay," Sheppard snapped, and the tone of his voice was well past I am not kidding.
Anna was on her feet, and, Rodney realized, somewhere along the way he must have stood as well, because she was leaning across the table, asking him how he dared to say something like that, in this house, at this time. Then Beth was grabbing Anna by the arm and saying something, and Sheppard was manhandling Rodney out into the hallway, releasing him with a shove.
"What the hell, Sheppard?" Rodney snapped, rubbing his upper arm.
"Upstairs, McKay," Sheppard hissed. "You are done for tonight."
"Hardly! Damn it, she was just as out of line, Sheppard, and you know it."
"She also just found out her brother's dead, McKay, and I'm pretty sure if you stay in there much longer, Carson's siblings are going to band together and kill you in cold blood in front of his dear, sweet mother, and I really don't want to have to explain that to Elizabeth. You need," Sheppard ground out, "to go cool off."
"Please, they weren't exactly leaping to defend her -" Rodney tried to move past him, down the hall, but Sheppard wasn't budging.
"I'm not kidding, Rodney. Pack it in."
Rodney snorted. "What am I, twelve? You may be Atlantis's golden boy and Kirk to half the galaxy, but I'm pretty sure you're not my mother, which means you can't exactly send me to my room without supper, Colonel."
"I will make you a goddamn plate, McKay, but you are not going back in that room tonight. We're here till Saturday, and this is going to be hard enough without you and Carson's younger sister trying to throttle each other. Go. Up. Stairs." Sheppard was biting the words off so hard Rodney could see the muscles in his jaw twitch. From down the hall, he could hear Anna's voice, raised in furious protest, and suddenly Rodney just didn't want to deal with it any more.
"Fine." Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm right. You know I'm right, and oh, by the way, you're welcome. But fine. I'm going. And you'd damn well better send up food."
Sheppard just looked at him. "Sure, Rodney, whatever. If they don't tell me they're kicking us out when I walk back in the room. Just go." Rodney plodded upstairs as Sheppard turned and headed back to the dining room. Flopping onto the lower bunk, he realized that somehow he'd ended up grounded because he'd decided to defend the United States military, which was, really, just the latest episode of insanity attributable to this whole, miserable trip.
An hour later, he was sitting on the floor, back against the bed, hunched over the computer and promising himself that he'd find some way to make Sheppard vilely uncomfortable back in Atlantis if dinner didn't materialize soon. He'd managed to focus on work with moderate success when someone knocked on the door. Rodney hoped it was Sheppard bearing dinner and not bad news, because if it was, and they had to go back to Glasgow, today was only going to get infinitely worse. Irritated, he set the computer aside, heaved himself up, and went to answer it.
Anna Beckett stood on the other side. Rodney found himself rapidly revising his concept of infinity.
"My mother," she gritted out, thrusting a laden plate at him, "suggested that you might be hungry, since you had to leave so abruptly. She also suggested," and Rodney wondered if the muscle in her cheek always jumped like that, "that perhaps I owe you an apology for my comments at dinner."
Cradling the plate tenderly, Rodney looked at her, caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, she'd just blatantly attacked him in front of complete strangers. On the other hand, dinner. And also, he admitted, looking at tired, red eyes that still seemed far-too-familiar, Carson. Well. The absence of Carson, anyway. "Ah," he stammered. "Yes. Well. Perhaps I was a little, ah, that is, my choice of words may not have been the most, um, opportune, given the circumstances -"
Anna snorted and pushed past him before he could finish the sentence. "For heaven's sake. Apology accepted. For now," she amended, eyeing him. Rodney bristled and started to protest, but she cut him off again. "Don't. I'm not - " She stopped, clenching her hands at her sides. Rodney took a careful step away, setting the plate on the nearby dresser. "It has been pointed out to me," she said with an obvious effort, "that I am not well-suited to dealing with most people, and that perhaps I have not given either you or Colonel Sheppard sufficient credit. Certainly," she paused, considering, "certainly the Colonel is more upset than his initial demeanor would suggest, although he covers it well. And perhaps I was rather distraught when I, ah, provoked you at dinner."
Rodney stared at her, dumbfounded. "And so you're telling me this why, exactly?" He considered that statement and backtracked. "I mean, not that you shouldn't express what you're thinking, and I'm glad you've gotten it off your chest, but - why are you telling it to me and not, I don't know, someone you're related to? Or your, um, therapist?" She glared, and he hurried to cover, "Or, you know, someone... else?"
"Because, you great idiot, I'm trying to apologize!" she snapped, throwing up her hands.
"Oh," Rodney said, confused. "I thought we'd done that already."
"I've been in the room all of two minutes, Doctor McKay. Exactly when did we do that?"
"I don't know," he said. "Possibly when I opened the door and you said 'I owe you an apology' and then I said sorry and then you said 'Apology accepted'? I'm sorry if I misinterpreted what I thought was a pretty direct statement, but those of us who haven't had our minds polluted by legal education tend to take words like that at face value."
Anna boggled. Then she frowned. Then she brought a hand up to rub her forehead. "Point to you, Doctor McKay, she said. "Never let it be said I used my education against an unarmed civilian." She winced. "I mean -"
"Please," Rodney snorted, "Superior knowledge is meant to be deployed against the less fortunate. Clearly you've never taught graduate students."
"No," she allowed. "But there's a reason I have the record I do against opposing counsel."
"Yes, yes," he said, waving a hand dismissively, "but that's hardly the same being as paid to impart knowledge to the terminally incompetent."
"True." Anna cracked a small smile. "But then, I never had any desire to become a solicitor. I am not particularly fond of the hoi polloi."
"Nor the military, apparently," and why, Rodney wondered, was he constitutionally incapable of quitting while he was ahead.
"Ah." She shifted uncomfortably and paused. "No, I'm not," she said at last, "least of all when it's American, and the Colonel, perhaps, pushed a few buttons too many with that nonsense over grace." Anna fixed him with a considering stare, and Rodney was acutely aware that she was her mother's daughter. "You'll forgive me if I'm wrong, of course, but you hardly strike me as a Quaker. I don't," she continued, "much enjoy being lied to, or kept in the dark, and there's a great deal I'd dearly love to know that all of your paperwork simply doesn't tell me." She swallowed, swung away to look out the window as Rodney started to speak. "Don't." Her voice was suddenly ragged, and he recognized the set of her shoulders. "I am a barrister, after all, and I wouldn't want to tempt you to violate your confidentiality agreements." Anna hugged herself, holding on to her elbows. "I am a barrister," she repeated, "but I'm also his sister, and for all the good he may have been doing, he was my brother, and now he's gone." She lifted her chin. "It may have been what he wanted, but that doesn't mean a damn thing at the moment, except that I'd kill to tell him to his face what an utterly stupid justification I find that statement." Rodney just stood there, helpless and unexpectedly sympathetic, staring at the unforgiving lines of her back. "And then you lot blunder in to dinner," she continued, and Rodney made a heroic and mostly successful effort not to take umbrage at that remark, "running late and full of excuses and no explanations and perhaps," she shrugged, "as I said, you simply caught the edge of my temper." Rodney suppressed a shudder at the thought that he'd only seen the edge. "He was my older brother - my only brother, for all intents and purposes - and I miss him."
"So do I," he muttered, surprising himself. "I mean," he backtracked, "we all do, all of us on - on the - on this mission. It's just - we haven't - it's been so busy that - I know," he fumbled miserably, "about the stupidity, because yes, well, get in line. And it's not like I haven't spent the last few days asking myself the same questions," he said, sitting down on the bottom bunk and forcing the words out. "Only, you know, I was there, and all I can do now is second guess, because it's not even like I have someone else's incompetence to blame."
"I'm no priest, Doctor McKay. I can't grant you absolution," she said, voice flat, still looking out the window.
"I'm sorry," Rodney snapped, unreasonably irritated. "I wasn't asking for it. And you're kind of the wrong gender anyway, even if I didn't have too many misgivings to number about the plausibility of the propaganda put forth by the Catholic Church." Anna's shoulders hunched, and her hand flew to her face. A moment later, her shoulders started to shake.
Rodney shot to his feet, only to freeze, uncertain, debating the wisdom of flight in the face of a tearful Anna Beckett. "Oh god. Please - um, I mean, you're not, ah -" She quivered, and then - was that a snort? "I'm sorry?"
She turned around, her hand entirely failing to either 1) cover the smile on her face or 2) muffle her laughter, although her eyes were red - redder - and suspiciously damp. "You are a piece of work, aren't you?" she said. "Carson did say so, in his letters home, although he also warned me that if we ever met, he wasn't inclined to bet on the outcome. Still," she said, extending a hand as Rodney looked at her with extreme suspicion. "I think I could come to like you, Doctor McKay. Over time. A long time. If we didn't kill each other first. For now," she raised an eyebrow, "shall we call it a truce?"
"Oh yes," Rodney grumbled, but clasped her hand and shook it, "and next we can spit in our palms and do the secret handshake." Of course, that was when Sheppard showed up.
"So," he drawled, leaning against the doorframe and startling them both, "I guess I don't have to threaten you with detention after all, McKay." Rodney scowled. "I hate to break up the party, kids," Sheppard continued, and Rodney and Anna shared a completely sympathetic look of irritation, "but Mrs. Beckett asked me to send Anna down to her, if you two are finished making nice."
"Quite finished," Anna said crisply - and really, Rodney thought, she didn't need to dust off her hands. "Besides, it's getting late, and Doctor McKay's dinner will be going cold." Rodney's head swiveled to look at the dresser in alarm; when he looked back, Anna had crossed to the door and was standing in front of Sheppard. "I believe," she said quietly, "that I owe you an apology as well."
Sheppard smiled - the slow, lazy one he used all the time on local leaders from other planets, just before asking Teyla to invent some reason to avoid the local welcome ritual. "No harm, no foul," he said, and then grew serious. "I know this is a difficult time - "
Anna cut him off, rolling her eyes. "Indeed. And not all of us are quite so good at bluffing," she said sharply, and Sheppard's face froze. "I wonder," she said, and poked him in the chest with a finger, to Rodney's utter disbelief, "just how deep that mask goes, Colonel." She slipped past him and into the hallway. "Good night, gentlemen."
Her footsteps receded even as Rodney managed a half-hearted reply. Sheppard hadn't moved, propped up against the door jamb, eyes hooded, arms crossed. Rodney looked at the floor, tapped his fingers gently against the bed frame. He found himself reluctant to break the silence - at least, until his stomach growled and he remembered dinner, cooling rapidly on the dresser. He retrieved it, then settled himself on the floor, back to the bed, and tucked in with a will, because homemade roast chicken and mashed potatoes were homemade roast chicken and mashed potatoes, and rather harder to come by on Atlantis, where dinner was mess-hall processed at best. Feeling the beginnings of carbohydrate-induced bliss, Rodney looked up to find Sheppard still in the doorway, staring at him. "Hungry, McKay?" he drawled.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, ha, very funny," he grumbled, savoring the carrots. "Stop lurking and sit down, or whatever. You're ruining my appetite."
Sheppard smirked, but withheld comment, for which Rodney was grateful, because the chicken was demanding all available system resources. Crossing to the desk, he grabbed the chair and swung it around, straddled the back, and hooked an ankle around one of the legs, resting his chin on the chair back and closing his eyes. Rodney reminded himself that he was more interested in the food than the slump of Sheppard's shoulders. For awhile, no one said much; Rodney actually thought Sheppard had fallen asleep sitting up, when the man in question cracked open an eye and said, "So. You and the youngest Beckett called a truce?"
"More or less." Rodney applied himself to the mashed potatoes.
"McKay." John's voice was equal parts tired and annoyed.
"What?" Rodney looked up, irritated. "Yes. I apologized, she apologized, we shook on it. End of story."
Sheppard opened the other eye. "Right." Rodney started to protest, but Sheppard cut him off. "We've got two more days here, Rodney. You have got to pull it together. I can't spend the whole time running interference."
"Look," Rodney said, setting the regrettably empty plate aside, "what more do you want me to say?"
"Trust me," Sheppard answered, sitting up and glaring, "I don't want you to say anything. I just spent forty-five minutes coping with what you did say."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Rodney snapped. "Next time I'll just leave you to be slandered where you sit."
"Damn right you will, if it means you won't try and take a piece out of someone's hide two days before her brother's funeral!" Rodney told himself he was imagining the way Sheppard's voice shook on the last word.
"I told you I'm no good at this," Rodney reminded him. "I told you that. I told you this was a bad idea. And frankly," he said angrily, getting to his feet, and matching John's glare, "I've had about enough of the 'oh poor Anna' line, Colonel. Yes, fine. She lost her brother. But we lost Carson - " his voice cracked. He swallowed and looked away, tried again. "We lost Carson. That counts for something." Sheppard said nothing. Rodney glanced over - Sheppard's head was down, forehead resting on his crossed arms. "Ah," Rodney muttered, picking up the empty plate, "I'll just... take this downstairs."
"Yeah," Sheppard said, voice low, not moving. "You do that. Just..." Sheppard paused, "'come back when you're done. You know."
"Yes," Rodney stammered, slightly confused and a little taken aback, "um, okay. Yes. I will." That, he thought as he made his way downstairs, had been a supremely odd conversation. Coming from Sheppard, it was practically a request for company, given that the man could've been the poster child for Stoicism as a life philosophy. Not for the first time, Rodney wished like hell they were back in Atlantis, because honest to god, if Sheppard decided to have a breakdown now, the whole week was only going to end in complete disaster - as opposed, Rodney conceded, to the minor catastrophe already in progress.
Beth was in the kitchen when he finally found it. She started into an apology, and Rodney, awkward, fumbled through his own version, and got the hell back out of there as fast as he possibly could, only to realize, halfway up the stairs, that he was about to walk back in on a possibly unstable Sheppard. Faced with the prospect, he clung wholeheartedly to the one tactic that had served him beautifully in two galaxies: sheer, single-minded avoidance.
"Right," he said, opening the door. "I need you to - what are you doing?" he finished, distracted. Sheppard had, in the interim, changed into sweats and a t-shirt, and was looking up in surprise from his new seat on the floor, where he was tapping idly away at Rodney's laptop.
"Minesweeper," he confessed, scrubbing a hand over his face, and Rodney was content to ignore the fact that Sheppard's eyes were slightly red, or, at least, to chalk it up to allergies.
Rodney scowled. "You do realize that resetting my high scores does not mean that you've actually beaten them, right?" Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "Yes, yes, silence means assent. Look," he continued before Sheppard could respond, rummaging through his own bag for his own pair of sweats, "Zelenka left me with the latest data from the jumper runs and some new sims, based on the changes we thought up after we all didn't die from that bizarre, whale-related manifestation of the Gaia hypothesis. He dragged Lorne out a few days ago and he needs to know where you think we ought to start tweaking, since the damn things would follow you around like puppies if they were any closer to sentient. They're the newest file on the desktop," Rodney directed, as he headed for the bathroom, "so stop playing around and go take a look."
By the time he got back, Sheppard was, as Rodney had hoped, several windows deep in the most-recent mock-ups, comparing them against Lorne's run and complaining about the fact that he could've gotten better results. Rodney acknowledged that this was probably so, given that Sheppard pretty much knew how to get the jumper to roll over and beg. At that point Sheppard inquired as to how Jinto was doing after Rodney nearly ran him over on the last trip to the mainland. Clearly, that remark deserved no kind of response, and besides, Rodney had simply been testing the boy's reflexes to make sure he hadn't been developmentally stunted by over-reliance on tuttle root, and, furthermore, Sheppard needed to be paying more attention to the proposed changes to the jumper's shield design the new Greek aerospace engineer had come up with. What with one thing and another and the fact that the laptop screen simply wasn't big enough to be seen from across the room, they ended up side-by-side on the floor, passing the computer back and forth as need be.
"No, no, no, look," Rodney jabbed a finger at the screen. "If we rewire the shield generator like this," he said, tugging the laptop away and entering a few commands, "so the shape of the shield is less blunt," Rodney thrust the laptop over at Sheppard, "and use the naquadah to boost it, you should be able to get even farther down." Sheppard frowned, scanning the results, and Rodney allowed himself to think that perhaps, just perhaps, his face looked a little less drawn than when he'd first come upstairs, which meant that Operation Dear-God-Please-Save-The-Meltdown-For-Atlantis was, for the moment, succeeding.
"I don't know, McKay," Sheppard said, pointing at the screen. "Those results just look wrong. These damn things are fast, and the resistance isn't a problem in space - or, hell, even in the air, mostly - but underwater it's like maneuvering a Tootsie Roll. A really, really big Tootsie Roll."
"Yes, well," Rodney grumbled, snatching the computer back, "bumblebees aren't supposed to be aerodynamically feasible either. Let me look. Where?" Sheppard leaned over, pointed at the screen, and wow, Rodney thought, the man gave off heat like a radiator. "Okay, okay, right, I see." He batted Sheppard's hand away and started reading, mildly distracted by the fact that the Colonel hadn't shifted but was, in fact, still pressed against him. "Huh."
"Huh, I'm right, or huh, you're going to kill Papadopoulos?" Sheppard drawled, tipping his head back to rest it on the edge of the mattress.
"Huh, both, probably, and I will never say that again - the first part, anyway - so enjoy it. Now, stop talking, busy here," Rodney muttered.
He should have been more annoyed, he thought as he resurfaced two hours later, eyes watering from the glare of the screen, at finding out that the results were useless because Papadopoulos hadn't proofread the simulation's equations well enough. It was just that irritation was somewhat harder to maintain when Rodney was kind of wrapped up in the unexpected sensation of Sheppard's body, leaning warm and heavy against his right side. The man himself, Rodney realized somewhere along the way, had actually fallen asleep. It was only because Rodney was starting to lose feeling in his right hand that he was contemplating waking Sheppard up at all, which was also the point at which Rodney realized that he was walking very close to a very carefully drawn line. For tonight, however, he was too damn tired to care, and gave himself another minute to just enjoy it, until his back started to protest. He nudged Sheppard carefully as he stood up. "Sheppard."
Hazy almost-green eyes peered up at him. Rodney's breath caught in his throat. He blamed it on the pins and needles attacking his right arm. "McKay?"
"Wake up," he forced out. "I found the errors, and the whole simulation needs to be entirely rewritten, only I'm not going to deal with it now, because it's Papadopoulos's problem and, more importantly, it's midnight and we have an entire day of Carson's family ahead."
"What?" Sheppard blinked at him muzzily.
"It is time," Rodney pronounced, "for all good little lieutenant colonels to stop coming between a tired genius and his extremely well-earned bed. Get up, Sheppard," he said, insistent. "You're in the way."
Sheppard grunted, stumbling to his feet and clambering, with visible effort, into the top bunk. "Nigh', Ro'ney," he mumbled, as Rodney hit the lights and fumbled his way under his own covers.
"Yes, yes. Sweet dreams, whatever," he yawned. If Sheppard said anything more, Rodney never heard it.
Part Four