Date day!

[scientificsnark]

A week, Rodney McKay had decided, was not a sufficient amount of time in which to plan a truly spectacular date. In fact, the date he had planned was merely spectacular, in his own humble opinion. Granted, he hadn't exactly gotten the idea on his own - he'd seen a blonde woman tugging a man out of the Compound the other day carrying a picnic basket

Comments

[jill_langston]

It had been two days since the far too truthful conversation with Lucifer and Jill was doing with it what she did best. She was blocking it out. If she didn't think about it, she could convince herself that it didn't happen and that things were fine. Everything was fine and normal and nothing at all in the world had to change.

Except for the fact that Rodney was currently at her door, prepared for a date. If said date went well, there was a possibility that things would have to change, but she was refusing to think about that right now. All she was going to do was enjoy her date and see where it went.

"Hi," she said with a smile, pushing open the door to see Rodney waiting there. With flowers. That was definitely a step up from what she was used to.

[jill_langston]

Ducking down, Jill helped Rodney spread the blanket, if only to hide the smile that blossomed when he squeezed her hand. It wasn't like she was fifteen anymore, for God's sake, but he still somehow managed to get that reaction out of her, leaving her feeling a little silly and more than a little surprised.

"Here's perfect," she decided once the blanket was spread, smoothing down one corner before she flashed a smile at Rodney and settled down and gestured for him to join her.

[scientificsnark]

Rodney only nodded, sitting awkwardly on the blanket and giving the sand surrounding it a worried look. He just hoped it wasn't going to get in the food.

"So, uh...you hungry?"

[jill_langston]

"Absolutely," Jill answered with a small smile, watching him more than anything else. Reaching out, she touched his knee gently, trying to get him to look at her instead of the sand. "Hey, relax, okay? We'll have a good time. Don't worry so much about it."

They'd have a better time, she figured, if they were both a little more relaxed. The wine was probably a great idea, now that she thought about it.

[scientificsnark]

"Sorry," cringed Rodney. "I'm not really good at the...relaxing." Still, he made an effort at loosening up - physically at least - taking a deep breath before he reached for the picnic basket.

"Wine first, I think," he said. "I don't know if it's any good, but apparently it's alcoholic, so." He just hoped there wasn't any citrus in it. He took out the bottle and two glasses, which he filled, and handed one to Jill.

"To...uh...us, I guess?" he suggested, raising his in a toast.

[jill_langston]

"If it's the fruit wine, it's passable," Jill answered, taking the glass from Rodney with a small smile. She probably didn't need to mention that she and John had gotten drunk off it once, after Rodney and David had both disappeared.

When he raised his glass, she looked a little surprised, but raised hers as well, tapping it lightly against his. "To us, I guess," she echoed, her mouth twitching faintly at the corners as she tried not to laugh, then took a sip of the wine.

[scientificsnark]

Rodney downed his glass in two gulps. The wine was surprisingly good, or maybe that was just because he hadn't really had time to taste it on the way down.

"So..." he began, after clearing his throat and refilling his glass. "Um."

Crap.

"What are your thoughts on, uh, soft-collinear effective theory? Personally I think having to use it is a pain in the ass. When you're dealing with interacting particles that travel at different speeds, directions and at different energy rates, you really can't be accurate while calculating them anyway. You know what I mean?"

[jill_langston]

Taking a drink from her wine, Jill managed not to laugh at the speed with which Rodney downed his, hoping that, if nothing else, it would relax him enough to realize that he didn't have to scramble to impress her.

"It's not really my field," she answered after she'd taken another sip of the wine. "But from what I know of it, I think it's interesting that it can handle more than one soft energy scale. If we're going to do this, then I'm curious about your opinion on the idea that addiction is a premeditated genetic trait, something that a person is essentially doomed to fall into because of a varying sets of genes their parents have stuck them with."

[scientificsnark]

Surprised, but pleasantly so, Rodney thought a moment before answering.

"Well," he said, eventually. "There's a lot of stock set by genetic predisposition to that sort of thing, and I definitely think it's a big factor in deciding a person's predilections. But in my opinion, it all depends on said person's...well...personality. I mean, if you've got a person with, say, the gene for alcoholism - if there is such a thing - but they, as a personality, don't like the act of drinking? Then yeah, they're probably not going to end up on the street swigging from a bottle in a brown paper bag and asking passersby for spare change. But if that same person likes the taste of alcohol, they enjoy going out drinking, it's a pretty fair bet they're gonna be dancing on tables by the end of the night

[jill_langston]

"Well, we hadn't gotten quite so far as telekinesis back on earth," Jill admitted with a laugh, finishing off her glass of wine, "But we had been working with a young boy named Owen. He was a meth addict, absolutely convinced that he wanted to stop and I truly believe he did." She knew addicts better than she wanted to admit, she knew all the lies and all the excuses and she knew when the lies and excuses turned into genuine pleas for help and Owen's had. He'd wanted to get better.

"We know that there are thirty-eight genes responsible for addiction and a regular person can easily overcome about eight of these genes being active. Owen had thirty-two of the thirty-eight genes, which made his recovery near to impossible, but the only problem with this discovery is that gene treatment for addiction was at least a decade off." And they'd essentially turned Owen into a lab rat. Jill had never been sure if that was better or worse than prison for a kid like him.

[scientificsnark]

"Sucks for him," Rodney said, a little more flippantly than he'd intended. Frowning, he decided to blame it on the wine.

"I mean, some people are just dealt the crappy cards in the double-helix deck, y'know? Take me for example. I'll bet you anything I inherited every one of the genes for arrogance, hypochondria and overwhelming intelligence."

[jill_langston]

"Definitely arrogance," Jill teased lightly, filling up her own glass again. It had to be obvious by now, she figured, that she liked the arrogance for whatever reason. It seemed to be the common thread among all the men she dated. Every single one of them was so sure about himself in at least one part of his life. So sure that it came off as arrogance.

"It is nice to have someone else who understands what I'm saying when I start in on genes and viruses and stem cells," she admitted after a moment, offering Rodney a smile. "Mayko understands, but she and I don't talk about work as much as we used to."

[scientificsnark]

"My area is more mathematics and theoretical physics," shrugged Rodney, ignoring the 'arrogance' bit, "But you pick up a little of everything when you're stationed in an alien galaxy fighting life-sucking aliens every day. Who's Mayko?" he added.

He was beginning to wonder if he was getting a little tipsy, but decided fruit wine couldn't possibly be that strong. Could it?

[jill_langston]

"A friend of mine from back home," Jill explained after she'd taken another sip of her wine. Maybe she was used to it by now or maybe it was just tasting better, but she thought the wine he'd found was fairly good. "She and I worked at NorBAC together and she arrived here about four months after I did. Four months later in island time, anyway, as she left home from the exact same moment I did."

Jill still wasn't sure how that was possible, but she thought if she really tried to figure it out, she might drive herself crazy. The island didn't exactly lend itself to new scientific discoveries.

[scientificsnark]

"I don't really know all that much about you, do I?" Rodney mused. "I've spent all this time talking about and feeling sorry for myself and I never even bothered to ask what your favourite food is. Oh! Food!" He'd almost forgotten, too wrapped up in the technical aspects of the conversation.

"The steaks are probably a little cold by now," he said regretfully as he set aside his glass and unpacked the rest of the hamper. "If you don't want it, I'll eat it, though," he added, perhaps a little more hopefully than was intended.

[jill_langston]

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Jill answered, watching him with faint amusement, even though her smile was tempered slightly with something bordering on regret. This Rodney didn't know as much about her as the other one had and she sometimes forgot that. Sometimes she forgot that all the things she'd told him before had never happened.

"My favourite meal is lamb shanks and asparagus," she added, thinking of all the times the group had gathered at David's for exactly that meal. "My favourite colour is purple, I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, I'm thirty-seven, I lived in Norway for two years, which I loved more than anything and I have three tattoos. Now you know a little bit more about me than you did, right?"