Truth, and Other Literary Endeavors by trinityofone (Documentation Challenge)
Title: Truth, and Other Literary Endeavors
Author: trinityofone
Rating: R
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘The Tower’
Length: ~2000 words
Summary: Rodney is writing his autobiography. John has some constructive criticism.
A/N: Huge thanks to randomeliza and siriaeve for fantastically fast betas and for listening to me whine. *clings to them*
I stared down the barrel of the Genii soldier’s enormous gun-the size was meant to be impressive, clearly, but to my perceptive eyes, nothing was clearer than the fact that they were compensating for something. Something that I happened to possess in spades: intelligence. I lifted my chin in defiance. “I happen to know almost everything about almost everything,” I said, “but if you think I’m going to tell you anything, you’re in for a rude surprise.”
Beside me, I felt some of the tension go out of Major Sheppard’s rigid back. He knew that no matter how hot the situation got, I would never, ever cra
“Stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything,” John said, voice all silky innocence. Nice try.
“You’re looking at me. I can’t write when you’re looking at me.”
“Aw, Rodney,” he said. “A little performance anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of.” He moved his hand-now he was being distracting on purpose. “But don’t stop now-you were just getting to the good part.” His head against Rodney’s bicep, he spared a glance at the screen. “Yep. The situation was heating up, I was rigid, and you were just about to crack under the pressure...”
Rodney jerked the laptop away. “This is a serious literary endeavor, you know!” he snapped. “A record for posterity-a vital piece of history, even! One day my autobiography will be studied by generations of grateful schoolchildren, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t degrade it with your puerile attempts at-at-”
John licked his lips. “Pornography?” he suggested. “Smut?”
“Humor!” said Rodney. “This is a serious, a very serious-”
“Literary endeavor, yes,” John said, rolling his eyes. “But you’re leaving out all the good bits.”
Rodney scrolled up a bit, frowning. “I had you blow stuff up earlier,” he said, indicating the relevant passage: Both the major and the lieutenant grinned like giddy, homicidal schoolchildren as the C4 exploded with a deafening bang, likely dooming everyone in a hundred metre radius to a lifetime of tinnitus. “And there’s lots of you pointlessly risking your life in gratuitous attempts to be dashing and heroic,” he added.
“Dashing,” John said. “You have a way with words, Rodney.”
“Thank you, I know,” Rodney said. “Now if you’ll let me get back to this, I’m afraid I’m way behind on my daily word count...”
“Hmm.” John shifted, his bare toes brushing across Rodney’s ankle, maintaining the same level of not-quite-mentionable distraction. Rodney had once chided John for breathing too loudly; that had not gone over well. So now he didn’t say anything, but instead furrowed his brow, squinting at the screen: he was focused, he was in the zone. -ck, he typed, then added the flourish of an emphatic period. He read the sentence over. Yes, good. The cursor blinked: it was ready to proceed.
“You know,” John said, “you’d hit that word count faster if you weren’t leaving out all the good bits.”
Rodney sighed. “For the last time, I am not leaving out the,” air quotes, “‘good bits.’ I already have a lengthy section on the colossal idiocy of the Genii’s scientific method that I’m planning to insert-”
John saw his opening and pounced. “I’d much rather you inserted your lengthy-”
He stopped, abruptly. Rodney’s expression spoke volumes. “Okay, I apologize for that,” John said, looking decently ashamed.
Clearly, he was expecting Rodney to say something like, “No apology can take away the sting of a double entendre that dire.” Instead, Rodney surprised them both by letting out a soft puff of air, something halfway between a snort and a sigh. He bit down on his lip and on the hot stab of anger he felt rising in his gut. I would never, ever crack, he read. Right. Yes. His fingers hovered over the keys.
A minute or so later, they were still hovering. Beside him, John had straightened up, his posture the antithesis of what it had been on the Genii homeworld: now it really was rigid instead of relaxed, calm, casual. Rodney closed his eyes and cast his mind back to the time he was writing about, the easy slope of Sheppard’s shoulders. Almost two years ago, now. A lot had changed.
“The good bits,” John said finally. He tugged at the laptop, clearly intending to pry it from Rodney’s fingers if necessary. But Rodney simply let go, and the computer sagged back against John’s chest. Face schooled (Rodney had no words to describe such a face), John set the laptop aside. “The bits that take place after the missions are over, and we come home...”
Sometimes we bring the missions home with us, Rodney thought, Rodney scribbled in his mental margins. He didn’t say anything.
John loomed above him. His tongue drew a slow path across his parted lips. “We returned through the ‘gate,” he said after a minute. Speaking slowly, carefully, deliberately: “We returned through the ‘gate, having thwarted the Genii-for now. But thoughts of future political complications were the farthest thing from my mind. As we left the briefing room, Major Sheppard deftly brushed my arm, and I knew. I knew. Flush with anticipation-”
“Flush,” Rodney interjected, because he felt like he ought to interject something. “Flush?”
“Flush,” John said decidedly, “with anticipation and desire, I hurried to my quarters. The, uh, dashing major was already waiting for me. The moment the door slid shut, I was sinking to my knees, freeing his eager and intimidatingly large member-”
Rodney burst out laughing. “What?” said John, grinning, “What?” and while his look of studied innocence was no more believable now, Rodney found he was having a much more difficult time dismissing it.
“You’re really determined to sully my masterpiece with poorly-written prurience, aren’t you?” he said-lightly, because even if he was angry, it wasn’t about this. “You realize that you’re depriving future generations of an instruction manual surpassing even Benjamin Franklin’s classic autobiography as a guide to an intelligent and productive life?”
“Hey,” John said. “I’m just trying to help. Maybe change your bio from bargain basement doorstop into runaway bestseller.” He shot Rodney a sly (somewhat desperate, he noted, jotted down) look. “Sex sells.”
Rodney’d never been the best at impulse control; the words, “Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” were out of his mouth before he had a moment to reflect that perhaps they were not the most intelligent and productive thing to say.
John rolled off the bed, away from him. “This was a bad idea,” he said, tugging on his boots. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“No one asked you to!” Rodney said. “I-I told you I had work to do!”
“Yeah, go ahead,” John said. Jacket on. Sidearm straight. Hair as neat as it ever was. “Write yourself a tidy version of your life. See if you can make sense of it that way.”
“I’m perfectly logical!” Rodney shouted. “You’re the one who doesn’t make any-”
John opened the door, which in their world was the same as slamming it shut. He paused in the open doorway, lips parted as if ready with a rejoinder, but he had one foot out in the hall already. He left without another word.
Rodney sat for a moment, composing sentences in his head. He didn’t return to the computer, however. He’d lost his rhythm.
*
There were details of his life that were never going to make it into any autobiography. Forget Sheppard’s ‘good bits’ (forget them): these were simply the boring bits. Stumbling out of bed at half five in the morning and shivering as he waited for the shower to warm up, because the Ancients had mastered an impressive array of technologies, but apparently plumbing wasn’t one of them. Wiping the steam off the mirror and reminding himself that male pattern baldness was a sign of healthy testosterone levels and increased virility. Stomping back into the bedroom...and stopping short when he saw the open laptop placed-no, displayed-upon his bed.
That wasn’t ordinary. Or routine. Or boring.
It was infuriating, that’s what it was. There was only one person who could get around the locks on his door and the passwords on his computer-only one person who would dare, let alone be capable. And to sneak in here while Rodney was taking a shower...
There was a moment in which Rodney almost swept the computer off the bed, but inevitably his respect for the technology and his innate curiosity won out. Pulling his towel more tightly around his waist, he sat down and drew the computer onto his lap. He half-expected to see the file containing his 40-plus pages of masterfully-worded autobiography mysteriously deleted, although to be honest he knew that John would never do something that petty or passive-aggressive-not to mention the fact that any idiot would know Rodney kept multiple backups of everything. Yet the autobiography was the document that had been tampered with: under Rodney’s last sentence, someone-John-had hit the return key several times, then resumed typing:
He knew that no matter how hot the situation got, I would never, ever crack.
Colonel Sheppard grabbed me firmly by the wrist and hauled me out of the shaft (and John was definitely a bad influence, because Rodney could no longer read a perfectly innocuous word like that without having Bad Thoughts) to safety. “There,” he said, “you going to stop complaining now?” I rolled my eyes at the “insult”-I knew that Sheppard had been nervous, and this was his idiotic way of hiding it. He slapped me casually on the back, sending dust and grime billowing into the air, but because I am a genius, after all, I could see through the refuse and to the truth. Why would he rush to save me from the bottom of the ocean one week, then make me wait for hours in a collapsed tunnel while he tied up loose ends with the local open-minded alien women the next? Because he was scared and stupid, and tell-all tales are always easier when they’re about somebody else.
Sometimes I wondered why I put up with him. But then, I’m not exactly a smooth jumper flight myself.
Rodney blinked at the screen. Then with a few rapid keystrokes, he brought up his e-mail program.
To: j.sheppard@atlantis.net
From: r.mckay@atlantis.net
Subject: You idiot.
____________________________________________
I would never use a metaphor like that.
Still, the services of a good editor can never be appreciated enough.
-R.
Rodney hit send, then set the computer aside, discarding it as if it wasn’t even there. He had to get ready: he had work to do, a very full day. Socks, underwear, t-shirt. All the boring bits.
He was nervously jerking on his trousers when the program pinged. He forced himself to take the to finish doing up all the buttons before going back to the computer.
To: r.mckay@atlantis.net
From: j.sheppard@atlantis.net
Subject: I don’t know.
____________________________________________
My agent’s advised me to hold out for co-author.
-J.
Rodney hit reply. He tabbed down to the body of the e-mail, the sat for a moment, watching the blinking cursor. He was a skilled typist-he could do over 90 words a minute with perfect accuracy. But now he stared at the screen, watching as each finger deliberately struck each key.
I suppose, he typed, that I’m willing to negotiate.
He let out a breath, fingers relaxing, releasing. It was the truest thing he had written in weeks.
*************
Author: trinityofone
Rating: R
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘The Tower’
Length: ~2000 words
Summary: Rodney is writing his autobiography. John has some constructive criticism.
A/N: Huge thanks to randomeliza and siriaeve for fantastically fast betas and for listening to me whine. *clings to them*
I stared down the barrel of the Genii soldier’s enormous gun-the size was meant to be impressive, clearly, but to my perceptive eyes, nothing was clearer than the fact that they were compensating for something. Something that I happened to possess in spades: intelligence. I lifted my chin in defiance. “I happen to know almost everything about almost everything,” I said, “but if you think I’m going to tell you anything, you’re in for a rude surprise.”
Beside me, I felt some of the tension go out of Major Sheppard’s rigid back. He knew that no matter how hot the situation got, I would never, ever cra
“Stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything,” John said, voice all silky innocence. Nice try.
“You’re looking at me. I can’t write when you’re looking at me.”
“Aw, Rodney,” he said. “A little performance anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of.” He moved his hand-now he was being distracting on purpose. “But don’t stop now-you were just getting to the good part.” His head against Rodney’s bicep, he spared a glance at the screen. “Yep. The situation was heating up, I was rigid, and you were just about to crack under the pressure...”
Rodney jerked the laptop away. “This is a serious literary endeavor, you know!” he snapped. “A record for posterity-a vital piece of history, even! One day my autobiography will be studied by generations of grateful schoolchildren, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t degrade it with your puerile attempts at-at-”
John licked his lips. “Pornography?” he suggested. “Smut?”
“Humor!” said Rodney. “This is a serious, a very serious-”
“Literary endeavor, yes,” John said, rolling his eyes. “But you’re leaving out all the good bits.”
Rodney scrolled up a bit, frowning. “I had you blow stuff up earlier,” he said, indicating the relevant passage: Both the major and the lieutenant grinned like giddy, homicidal schoolchildren as the C4 exploded with a deafening bang, likely dooming everyone in a hundred metre radius to a lifetime of tinnitus. “And there’s lots of you pointlessly risking your life in gratuitous attempts to be dashing and heroic,” he added.
“Dashing,” John said. “You have a way with words, Rodney.”
“Thank you, I know,” Rodney said. “Now if you’ll let me get back to this, I’m afraid I’m way behind on my daily word count...”
“Hmm.” John shifted, his bare toes brushing across Rodney’s ankle, maintaining the same level of not-quite-mentionable distraction. Rodney had once chided John for breathing too loudly; that had not gone over well. So now he didn’t say anything, but instead furrowed his brow, squinting at the screen: he was focused, he was in the zone. -ck, he typed, then added the flourish of an emphatic period. He read the sentence over. Yes, good. The cursor blinked: it was ready to proceed.
“You know,” John said, “you’d hit that word count faster if you weren’t leaving out all the good bits.”
Rodney sighed. “For the last time, I am not leaving out the,” air quotes, “‘good bits.’ I already have a lengthy section on the colossal idiocy of the Genii’s scientific method that I’m planning to insert-”
John saw his opening and pounced. “I’d much rather you inserted your lengthy-”
He stopped, abruptly. Rodney’s expression spoke volumes. “Okay, I apologize for that,” John said, looking decently ashamed.
Clearly, he was expecting Rodney to say something like, “No apology can take away the sting of a double entendre that dire.” Instead, Rodney surprised them both by letting out a soft puff of air, something halfway between a snort and a sigh. He bit down on his lip and on the hot stab of anger he felt rising in his gut. I would never, ever crack, he read. Right. Yes. His fingers hovered over the keys.
A minute or so later, they were still hovering. Beside him, John had straightened up, his posture the antithesis of what it had been on the Genii homeworld: now it really was rigid instead of relaxed, calm, casual. Rodney closed his eyes and cast his mind back to the time he was writing about, the easy slope of Sheppard’s shoulders. Almost two years ago, now. A lot had changed.
“The good bits,” John said finally. He tugged at the laptop, clearly intending to pry it from Rodney’s fingers if necessary. But Rodney simply let go, and the computer sagged back against John’s chest. Face schooled (Rodney had no words to describe such a face), John set the laptop aside. “The bits that take place after the missions are over, and we come home...”
Sometimes we bring the missions home with us, Rodney thought, Rodney scribbled in his mental margins. He didn’t say anything.
John loomed above him. His tongue drew a slow path across his parted lips. “We returned through the ‘gate,” he said after a minute. Speaking slowly, carefully, deliberately: “We returned through the ‘gate, having thwarted the Genii-for now. But thoughts of future political complications were the farthest thing from my mind. As we left the briefing room, Major Sheppard deftly brushed my arm, and I knew. I knew. Flush with anticipation-”
“Flush,” Rodney interjected, because he felt like he ought to interject something. “Flush?”
“Flush,” John said decidedly, “with anticipation and desire, I hurried to my quarters. The, uh, dashing major was already waiting for me. The moment the door slid shut, I was sinking to my knees, freeing his eager and intimidatingly large member-”
Rodney burst out laughing. “What?” said John, grinning, “What?” and while his look of studied innocence was no more believable now, Rodney found he was having a much more difficult time dismissing it.
“You’re really determined to sully my masterpiece with poorly-written prurience, aren’t you?” he said-lightly, because even if he was angry, it wasn’t about this. “You realize that you’re depriving future generations of an instruction manual surpassing even Benjamin Franklin’s classic autobiography as a guide to an intelligent and productive life?”
“Hey,” John said. “I’m just trying to help. Maybe change your bio from bargain basement doorstop into runaway bestseller.” He shot Rodney a sly (somewhat desperate, he noted, jotted down) look. “Sex sells.”
Rodney’d never been the best at impulse control; the words, “Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” were out of his mouth before he had a moment to reflect that perhaps they were not the most intelligent and productive thing to say.
John rolled off the bed, away from him. “This was a bad idea,” he said, tugging on his boots. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“No one asked you to!” Rodney said. “I-I told you I had work to do!”
“Yeah, go ahead,” John said. Jacket on. Sidearm straight. Hair as neat as it ever was. “Write yourself a tidy version of your life. See if you can make sense of it that way.”
“I’m perfectly logical!” Rodney shouted. “You’re the one who doesn’t make any-”
John opened the door, which in their world was the same as slamming it shut. He paused in the open doorway, lips parted as if ready with a rejoinder, but he had one foot out in the hall already. He left without another word.
Rodney sat for a moment, composing sentences in his head. He didn’t return to the computer, however. He’d lost his rhythm.
*
There were details of his life that were never going to make it into any autobiography. Forget Sheppard’s ‘good bits’ (forget them): these were simply the boring bits. Stumbling out of bed at half five in the morning and shivering as he waited for the shower to warm up, because the Ancients had mastered an impressive array of technologies, but apparently plumbing wasn’t one of them. Wiping the steam off the mirror and reminding himself that male pattern baldness was a sign of healthy testosterone levels and increased virility. Stomping back into the bedroom...and stopping short when he saw the open laptop placed-no, displayed-upon his bed.
That wasn’t ordinary. Or routine. Or boring.
It was infuriating, that’s what it was. There was only one person who could get around the locks on his door and the passwords on his computer-only one person who would dare, let alone be capable. And to sneak in here while Rodney was taking a shower...
There was a moment in which Rodney almost swept the computer off the bed, but inevitably his respect for the technology and his innate curiosity won out. Pulling his towel more tightly around his waist, he sat down and drew the computer onto his lap. He half-expected to see the file containing his 40-plus pages of masterfully-worded autobiography mysteriously deleted, although to be honest he knew that John would never do something that petty or passive-aggressive-not to mention the fact that any idiot would know Rodney kept multiple backups of everything. Yet the autobiography was the document that had been tampered with: under Rodney’s last sentence, someone-John-had hit the return key several times, then resumed typing:
He knew that no matter how hot the situation got, I would never, ever crack.
Colonel Sheppard grabbed me firmly by the wrist and hauled me out of the shaft (and John was definitely a bad influence, because Rodney could no longer read a perfectly innocuous word like that without having Bad Thoughts) to safety. “There,” he said, “you going to stop complaining now?” I rolled my eyes at the “insult”-I knew that Sheppard had been nervous, and this was his idiotic way of hiding it. He slapped me casually on the back, sending dust and grime billowing into the air, but because I am a genius, after all, I could see through the refuse and to the truth. Why would he rush to save me from the bottom of the ocean one week, then make me wait for hours in a collapsed tunnel while he tied up loose ends with the local open-minded alien women the next? Because he was scared and stupid, and tell-all tales are always easier when they’re about somebody else.
Sometimes I wondered why I put up with him. But then, I’m not exactly a smooth jumper flight myself.
Rodney blinked at the screen. Then with a few rapid keystrokes, he brought up his e-mail program.
To: j.sheppard@atlantis.net
From: r.mckay@atlantis.net
Subject: You idiot.
____________________________________________
I would never use a metaphor like that.
Still, the services of a good editor can never be appreciated enough.
-R.
Rodney hit send, then set the computer aside, discarding it as if it wasn’t even there. He had to get ready: he had work to do, a very full day. Socks, underwear, t-shirt. All the boring bits.
He was nervously jerking on his trousers when the program pinged. He forced himself to take the to finish doing up all the buttons before going back to the computer.
To: r.mckay@atlantis.net
From: j.sheppard@atlantis.net
Subject: I don’t know.
____________________________________________
My agent’s advised me to hold out for co-author.
-J.
Rodney hit reply. He tabbed down to the body of the e-mail, the sat for a moment, watching the blinking cursor. He was a skilled typist-he could do over 90 words a minute with perfect accuracy. But now he stared at the screen, watching as each finger deliberately struck each key.
I suppose, he typed, that I’m willing to negotiate.
He let out a breath, fingers relaxing, releasing. It was the truest thing he had written in weeks.
*************