An Excellent Mystery, by Sophonisba [stuck on you challenge]
-title- An Excellent Mystery
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Suitable for general audiences; there are Implications implicating themselves all over the place, both McKay/Sheppardwise and in more Teylawardsly directions.
-characters- Miko, Simpson, Sheppard, Rodney, "Chuck," Teyla
-spoilers- Through "The Siege," although it takes place considerably later.
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. If it were, there would be considerably more linguistics geekery, and the Athosians would have been a solid presence with a defined culture from the first season on.
-notes- I seem to have mentally switched the challenge's preposition to "with." This is something of a sequel to an earlier story of mine called A Civil Contract.
-word count- 2876
-summary- "Means you're stuck with me now," the Lt. Colonel said cheerfully.
An Excellent Mystery
When Miko Kusanagi and Mary Simpson came into the lab that morning, it was hardly unoccupied; Dr. McKay was asleep in front of a computer, head forward and to one side at an angle that suggested that his neck would not be thanking him, and Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard was curled up on top of a table. He jerked his head up when the two of them entered (revealing a post-it note stuck to his right temple), relaxed once he'd identified them, and then began the process of uncoiling himself from the table as Miko and Dr. Simpson set up as quietly as they might, hoping not to wake their superior.
"Hey, Rodney," Lt. Col. Sheppard said loudly and cheerfully, grinning and swinging his legs down.
"Huh, huh, what?" Dr. McKay did not wake as smoothly as his teammate. "Just a little more, I'm working on this -- "
"You slept all night," Lt. Col. Sheppard told him.
Miko stared at the lab's coffeepot, hoping to encourage it to percolate more quickly. (As there is a set bound for the amount of time it takes coffee molecules to transfer themselves into water, most people would have thought this a rather hopeless pursuit even had the coffeemaker been Ancient technology rather than a recent import from China, but Miko had not reached her present position by closing her mind to extreme possibilities).
"Well -- I undoubtedly needed it," Dr. McKay changed gears hastily. He put out a hand, and Dr. Simpson sighed and passed him the coffee cup she had brought with her. "When did you give up?"
"Oh, I crashed here too -- roomie."
"What is it with you and that?"
"Oh... I was just noting how often it's been that we wind up roommates or tentmates or whatever for the night, offworld when we aren't all in one or here or on Earth or elsewhere."
"You've been counting since we got here?"
"Nah, the first year doesn't count," Lt. Col. Sheppard said cheerfully, "but since I came back to the city after taking out the hive ships -- "
"You mean after your insane, suicidal -- "
"Hey," Dr. Simpson interrupted. "You hit him for that already."
"Slapped," Dr. Zelenka corrected her, having slipped in unseen at some point during the proceedings. For the hundredth time, Miko considered inquiring whether he had had shinobi-specific training and discarded the idea when she could think of no polite way to ask. "Like indignant girl."
"Hey!" both Drs. McKay and Simpson protested. The former continued, "That was a bitchslap. Is it my fault if you don't have the cultural context to recognize -- "
It had not, quite, so seemed to Miko, if she understood the meaning of the term "bitchslap" correctly; she and some of the other members of the science team had been on their way to the conference room with the miraculously-returned Major (as he had been then) when Dr. McKay and Teyla-san had turned into the hallway from the other end.
Major Sheppard smiled, raising a hand as he walked towards his teammates.
Teyla-san held a hand out, keeping her usual control in some measure, except for the smile wide enough to hurt.
Dr. McKay froze for a moment, and then stepped forward, his face shifting from emotion to emotion too quickly to identify before draining of all of them, his arm coming up far too quickly and smoothly for it to be anything but mind-of-no-mind (and if anyone could manage that while still carried away by anger and fear, it would be Dr. McKay, although probably there was actually a word for this sort of occurence and she was just too tired to think of it) meeting its target open-palmed and transferring all of its force over the widest possible area --
Crack.
The Major had reacted in time to move with the blow, if not to block it, and still it threw him down on his buttocks, knees bent and right palm out to keep him sitting if not on his feet. A smile -- a true, honest smile, and it was now that she first could contrast it with the usual easy smiles of his shield-front -- spread across his face, nearly splitting it from ear to ear.
"Yes, of course," he said, rubbing at his cheek with one hand as he pushed off at to his feet with the other. "What took you so long?"
Dr. McKay looked up from his stunned contemplation of his own right hand, mouth beginning to work, as beside him Teyla said "Do not ever do that to us again. If it can be helped."
"What she said," Dr. McKay said awkwardly, still looking back and forth from the Major's face to his own palm. "... you are so weird."
"... and anyway," Dr. McKay had apparently continued his harangue while she was lost in recollection, "considering the insane stunts you've put me through since, I'm not even sure it took -- do I need to bitchslap you AGAIN?"
"Oh, no, that's not necessary," Lt. Col. Sheppard said, running his fingers through his hair and failing to instill any noticeable order or dislodge the yellow note, "but I appreciate the thought."
Dr. McKay snorted.
"And since then, last night's been the three hundred and sixty-sixth time we've bivouacked together."
"Is that supposed to mean anything?"
"Means you're stuck with me now," the Lt. Colonel said cheerfully. "Well, I'd better get moving if I want to get changed before I go running with Ronon." He waved jauntily and jogged out the door.
"You are so weird," Dr. McKay told the door as it closed behind his comrade.
"We knew that already, also," Dr. Zelenka said dryly.
"And what are you doing here at this hour of the dawn anyway?" Dr. McKay demanded. "It's too early for sane people to be up. Except for Simpson and Miko-kun, they've got their -- " he flapped one arm -- "thing."
Dr. Simpson rolled her eyes. Miko, too well mannered to dream of doing such a thing, busied herself by pouring out the coffee, trying to order her plans for their experiment and think of what it was that the previous conversation had reminded her of at the same time.
*
It was several hours later that it came to her, while she was stuck at her computer waiting for a model to finish running and wishing that she had thought to bring the latest Matsumoto Temari novel to the lab with her.
Of course, the second thought that came to her was that she hadn't known Lt. Col. Sheppard read Japanese, let alone Matsumoto Temari; it was quickly overtaken by the third, however, a puzzled wondering what three hundred and sixty-six nights could have to do with it -- she didn't remember any bizarre variations on the three-night rule in the books; maybe it was something in the real world.
During the next long break period, therefore, she went to track down a suitably expository Canadian.
"I'm afraid I don't know what the period to qualify for common-law is," the gate technician who rejoiced in the nickname of "Chuck" apologized, thumb running nervously over the tape of the splint on his hand. "Most of my family got married in their in-laws' religious traditions, or they, well, didn't get married at all." He shrugged. "Actually, for all I know, my grandparents might have gotten married by virtue of writing down that they were on the immigration documentation -- I would not put it past my grandfather."
"Is he, then, so... " Miko trailed off.
"Arrogant? Pragmatic?" The technician shrugged. "Well -- actually... I don't suppose that was, probably not, I should ask Wanda or Aunt Madge anyway...?"
"Eh?"
"Oh, nothing important, not at the moment... how long have you had that 'Miko-kun' nickname Dr. McKay calls you sometimes? I've been wondering."
Miko blushed, started to say something, stopped, and tried again "Dr. McKay means well... " She gestured, trying to describe something she couldn't put into words. "I think someone said to him that '-kun' is for subordinates, I think he wishes me to be at ease."
"Chuck" blinked. "So '-kun' is the right way for him to speak to you?"
"Er, ah, um, well... "
He smiled, reassuringly, the same kind of easy smile that Lt. Col. Sheppard used, and, on the two occasions she had been in prolonged contact with him, Brig. Gen. O'Neill. Perhaps it was something the American military taught; she had heard somewhere that he had been working for the SGC before he joined the Atlantis Expedition. "Would you like me to tell Dr. McKay he's got it wrong?"
Miko flapped her hands worriedly. "That's, sort of, the doctor's been doing it for so long, it would be bad if he were embarrassed..."
"As long as you don't mind, then." The technician paused for a moment, thinking. "Anyway, three hundred sixty-six would be a year and a day, which sounds right, but that's probably only because doing something for that length of time is important in fairy tales." He smiled, leaving it open for Miko to explain the reasons for her inquiry, not asking in case she didn't wish to divulge them.
Which, as it happened, she didn't; she made her excuses, commenting on the lunch selections (grilled fish again; she hoped that there would perhaps be sashimi the next day, for variety) and wishing his fractured finger a speedy recovery before returning to the labs.
Perhaps, given the nature of the connection, it was according to Athosian laws; certainly she could picture the Lt. Colonel using the local customs if they proved to be to his advantage.
*
Miko did not, as it turned out, have time to go to lunch after that: she spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon with Dr. Simpson, pulling apart and rebuilding one of the duplicators to run on a spare naquadah generator. (The first year, they hadn't realized the function of the one in the room they'd used for storage until well after it had run down much of the city's reserve power duplicating florentine ravioli MREs, paracetaminophenol tablets, and military issue sticky bandages. On the bright side, at least the articles had proved useful once they had them.)
By the time they had hooked it up and run the first successful test (bowing to tradition and setting the machine's scanning laser on an orange) -- scanning the foodstuff, waiting for the machine to reconstitute it twice over, and grabbing a first-class private passing through the corridor outside to run one of the duplicates down to biosciences to see whether or not it was an edible copy -- it was an hour before the mess would begin serving dinner. Miko left her partner to set up the multiple-items test (including, as well as the original orange, a rather squashed chocolate truffle Dr. Simpson had been saving for something, a quarter of a bag of coffee beans, and some antihistamine tablets out of Dr. McKay's desk) and headed to the mess herself; nobody, of course, was serving food, but one of the pantries was left open for just such cases and she signed out some fruit and the articles necessary to make herself delicious nattou sandwich.
She was not the only one in the pantry at that hour: Dr. Heightmeyer was making herself unappetizing peanut-butter-paste sandwich and Teyla-san was making herself delicious fruit and cheese sandwich.
They exchanged polite greetings as they assembled their food and proceeded to the dining hall itself, and Miko was just wondering whether she could outlast Dr. Heightmeyer when the psychiatrist looked at her wrist-watch and made an annoyed sound.
"I have an appointment in five minutes," she said. "Sorry to run like this. Miko. Teyla." The doctor bent her head to Teyla's in a quick touch and trotted off as soon as Teyla-san let her shoulders go, giantberry in one hand and sandwich in the other.
"I still do not see how she can eat peanut-butter-paste," Miko finally ventured, at the same time as Teyla-san mused "Kate has been much happier since the other healers-of-minds came; they have been good for her."
Then both women hastily apologized for interrupting each other and agreed with each other's thoughts. Dr. Heightmeyer had been more relaxed and less -- Miko hesitated to think the words "patronizingly obstinate," but could not think of a better way to describe the mood that had all too often gripped their psychologist -- since the arrival of Dr. van Haalse and Psychiatric Nurse Moriya, and --
"I am fond enough of the taste of peanut," Teyla-san said, "but I do not like the oily stickiness of the paste. It is perhaps an acquired taste."
"Probably," Miko agreed. "Most Athosian foods don't have that texture, then?"
"No, although it has proved most useful as a solvent. When the lump of aravis-tree gum was stuck in Jinto's hair, Doctor McKay rubbed at it with the peanut-paste from his bread roll until it came loose, nobly sacrificing his meal."
"I expect the doctor said as much."
"Very many times."
Aravis-tree gum proved a useful conversational thread to begin a discussion of Athosian customs with, and the two women had finished their sandwiches by the time Miko led the conversation to her goal.
"No, we have no set period," Teyla-san said. "It is customary to hold a celebration both for the leavetaking from one's former House and for the reception into the new one -- certainly Charin and my people feasted me for the former -- but all that is truly required for it to be valid is for it to be acknowledged before the people. At least three times, to be sure, although certainly the multiplicity of the paper records your people keep should suffice at once."
"Ah, is that so," Miko said, and was about to comment on its similarity when the earlier statement struck her. "Charin-san and the others feasted you -- you have gone as a bride, then? I did not know you were married."
"Everyone was happy to help, because I had your people's assistance as my bride-price not only to Emmagan but to all the Houses of Athos, and the new AR-1 House bound our peoples together." She looked at Miko earnestly. "We hoped perhaps more closely than proved to be the case, but, well... "
Miko nodded automatically, blinking. "Yes, well... your people have enrolled you in... Lt. Col. Sheppard's family register, then?"
"It is a new House, so it would be as true to say that they have enrolled Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay and Aiden Ford and Ronon upon mine. Or that you have; certainly I have been introduced as one of their team-bound many and many a time." She looked off over Miko's shoulder. "Although I am not now entirely certain of Aiden's status with respect to our Team, but I should think that Col. Sheppard's views on the matter carry more weight than those of higher authority in other matters..."
"Yes, but... " Miko wrestled with her conscience for a moment, and then blurted out "Excuse me, but what did they say when you told them?"
"Ah..." Teyla-san looked slightly apologetic. "At first it was too important to risk, and now that the matter is secured, there has not been a good moment to tell them. Either my mind is occupied with something else, or we are very busy, or they are not eating or drinking just at that moment."
Miko, who was drinking water, coughed most of it over her plate.
Teyla-san politely handed her some napkins. "There is an old saying of my people as well: better to seize the chance than wait on the argument."
"Yes, but for marriage?"
"You know Doctor McKay well at least; to whom should it apply more?"
*
When she returned to the labs that evening, they were empty of everyone save for a tower of coffee bags, a crate of oranges, and Dr. Simpson, scrubbing at antihistamine tablet sheets with a sterile wipe.
"Er, forgive me, but, your elbow," Miko said tentatively.
Dr. Simpson stopped, plucked the very-squashed-indeed truffle off her elbow, and dropped it into the biological waste disposal. "Figures. That's just the way my day's been going."
"I am sorry to hear that," Miko said, taking another sterile wipe and picking up one of the tablet sheets.
The American doctor shot her a look. "Did you get whatever it was on your mind today settled?"
She hadn't realized that she was being quite so obvious, but... "Somewhat, yes. I am not certain as to Dr. McKay's just deserts -- "
"Oh, he deserves everything you can think of and more," Dr. Simpson grumbled. "First he pitched a fit about us raiding his desk -- you'd think he'd want more pills, if anything -- and then he set me to wiping off any possible vaguely lemonlike particles that might have migrated through some bit of ORANGE rind off of every single one."
" -- but I am quite sure," she continued once the other woman had vented, "that Lt. Col. Sheppard and Teyla-san deserve each other."
nota bene:
The three-night rule is the ancient Japanese method of common-law marriage: the guy snuck into her room three nights running, and on the morning of the fourth day they had breakfast with her parents, and so became married.
Matsumoto Temari wrote a hysterical series called Kyou Kara Maoh!, in which, among other things, one plights one's troth by an open-palm strike to the left cheek of the betrothed.
Miko, fond as I am of her, is not necessarily the most reliable of narrators.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Suitable for general audiences; there are Implications implicating themselves all over the place, both McKay/Sheppardwise and in more Teylawardsly directions.
-characters- Miko, Simpson, Sheppard, Rodney, "Chuck," Teyla
-spoilers- Through "The Siege," although it takes place considerably later.
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. If it were, there would be considerably more linguistics geekery, and the Athosians would have been a solid presence with a defined culture from the first season on.
-notes- I seem to have mentally switched the challenge's preposition to "with." This is something of a sequel to an earlier story of mine called A Civil Contract.
-word count- 2876
-summary- "Means you're stuck with me now," the Lt. Colonel said cheerfully.
An Excellent Mystery
When Miko Kusanagi and Mary Simpson came into the lab that morning, it was hardly unoccupied; Dr. McKay was asleep in front of a computer, head forward and to one side at an angle that suggested that his neck would not be thanking him, and Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard was curled up on top of a table. He jerked his head up when the two of them entered (revealing a post-it note stuck to his right temple), relaxed once he'd identified them, and then began the process of uncoiling himself from the table as Miko and Dr. Simpson set up as quietly as they might, hoping not to wake their superior.
"Hey, Rodney," Lt. Col. Sheppard said loudly and cheerfully, grinning and swinging his legs down.
"Huh, huh, what?" Dr. McKay did not wake as smoothly as his teammate. "Just a little more, I'm working on this -- "
"You slept all night," Lt. Col. Sheppard told him.
Miko stared at the lab's coffeepot, hoping to encourage it to percolate more quickly. (As there is a set bound for the amount of time it takes coffee molecules to transfer themselves into water, most people would have thought this a rather hopeless pursuit even had the coffeemaker been Ancient technology rather than a recent import from China, but Miko had not reached her present position by closing her mind to extreme possibilities).
"Well -- I undoubtedly needed it," Dr. McKay changed gears hastily. He put out a hand, and Dr. Simpson sighed and passed him the coffee cup she had brought with her. "When did you give up?"
"Oh, I crashed here too -- roomie."
"What is it with you and that?"
"Oh... I was just noting how often it's been that we wind up roommates or tentmates or whatever for the night, offworld when we aren't all in one or here or on Earth or elsewhere."
"You've been counting since we got here?"
"Nah, the first year doesn't count," Lt. Col. Sheppard said cheerfully, "but since I came back to the city after taking out the hive ships -- "
"You mean after your insane, suicidal -- "
"Hey," Dr. Simpson interrupted. "You hit him for that already."
"Slapped," Dr. Zelenka corrected her, having slipped in unseen at some point during the proceedings. For the hundredth time, Miko considered inquiring whether he had had shinobi-specific training and discarded the idea when she could think of no polite way to ask. "Like indignant girl."
"Hey!" both Drs. McKay and Simpson protested. The former continued, "That was a bitchslap. Is it my fault if you don't have the cultural context to recognize -- "
It had not, quite, so seemed to Miko, if she understood the meaning of the term "bitchslap" correctly; she and some of the other members of the science team had been on their way to the conference room with the miraculously-returned Major (as he had been then) when Dr. McKay and Teyla-san had turned into the hallway from the other end.
Major Sheppard smiled, raising a hand as he walked towards his teammates.
Teyla-san held a hand out, keeping her usual control in some measure, except for the smile wide enough to hurt.
Dr. McKay froze for a moment, and then stepped forward, his face shifting from emotion to emotion too quickly to identify before draining of all of them, his arm coming up far too quickly and smoothly for it to be anything but mind-of-no-mind (and if anyone could manage that while still carried away by anger and fear, it would be Dr. McKay, although probably there was actually a word for this sort of occurence and she was just too tired to think of it) meeting its target open-palmed and transferring all of its force over the widest possible area --
Crack.
The Major had reacted in time to move with the blow, if not to block it, and still it threw him down on his buttocks, knees bent and right palm out to keep him sitting if not on his feet. A smile -- a true, honest smile, and it was now that she first could contrast it with the usual easy smiles of his shield-front -- spread across his face, nearly splitting it from ear to ear.
"Yes, of course," he said, rubbing at his cheek with one hand as he pushed off at to his feet with the other. "What took you so long?"
Dr. McKay looked up from his stunned contemplation of his own right hand, mouth beginning to work, as beside him Teyla said "Do not ever do that to us again. If it can be helped."
"What she said," Dr. McKay said awkwardly, still looking back and forth from the Major's face to his own palm. "... you are so weird."
"... and anyway," Dr. McKay had apparently continued his harangue while she was lost in recollection, "considering the insane stunts you've put me through since, I'm not even sure it took -- do I need to bitchslap you AGAIN?"
"Oh, no, that's not necessary," Lt. Col. Sheppard said, running his fingers through his hair and failing to instill any noticeable order or dislodge the yellow note, "but I appreciate the thought."
Dr. McKay snorted.
"And since then, last night's been the three hundred and sixty-sixth time we've bivouacked together."
"Is that supposed to mean anything?"
"Means you're stuck with me now," the Lt. Colonel said cheerfully. "Well, I'd better get moving if I want to get changed before I go running with Ronon." He waved jauntily and jogged out the door.
"You are so weird," Dr. McKay told the door as it closed behind his comrade.
"We knew that already, also," Dr. Zelenka said dryly.
"And what are you doing here at this hour of the dawn anyway?" Dr. McKay demanded. "It's too early for sane people to be up. Except for Simpson and Miko-kun, they've got their -- " he flapped one arm -- "thing."
Dr. Simpson rolled her eyes. Miko, too well mannered to dream of doing such a thing, busied herself by pouring out the coffee, trying to order her plans for their experiment and think of what it was that the previous conversation had reminded her of at the same time.
*
It was several hours later that it came to her, while she was stuck at her computer waiting for a model to finish running and wishing that she had thought to bring the latest Matsumoto Temari novel to the lab with her.
Of course, the second thought that came to her was that she hadn't known Lt. Col. Sheppard read Japanese, let alone Matsumoto Temari; it was quickly overtaken by the third, however, a puzzled wondering what three hundred and sixty-six nights could have to do with it -- she didn't remember any bizarre variations on the three-night rule in the books; maybe it was something in the real world.
During the next long break period, therefore, she went to track down a suitably expository Canadian.
"I'm afraid I don't know what the period to qualify for common-law is," the gate technician who rejoiced in the nickname of "Chuck" apologized, thumb running nervously over the tape of the splint on his hand. "Most of my family got married in their in-laws' religious traditions, or they, well, didn't get married at all." He shrugged. "Actually, for all I know, my grandparents might have gotten married by virtue of writing down that they were on the immigration documentation -- I would not put it past my grandfather."
"Is he, then, so... " Miko trailed off.
"Arrogant? Pragmatic?" The technician shrugged. "Well -- actually... I don't suppose that was, probably not, I should ask Wanda or Aunt Madge anyway...?"
"Eh?"
"Oh, nothing important, not at the moment... how long have you had that 'Miko-kun' nickname Dr. McKay calls you sometimes? I've been wondering."
Miko blushed, started to say something, stopped, and tried again "Dr. McKay means well... " She gestured, trying to describe something she couldn't put into words. "I think someone said to him that '-kun' is for subordinates, I think he wishes me to be at ease."
"Chuck" blinked. "So '-kun' is the right way for him to speak to you?"
"Er, ah, um, well... "
He smiled, reassuringly, the same kind of easy smile that Lt. Col. Sheppard used, and, on the two occasions she had been in prolonged contact with him, Brig. Gen. O'Neill. Perhaps it was something the American military taught; she had heard somewhere that he had been working for the SGC before he joined the Atlantis Expedition. "Would you like me to tell Dr. McKay he's got it wrong?"
Miko flapped her hands worriedly. "That's, sort of, the doctor's been doing it for so long, it would be bad if he were embarrassed..."
"As long as you don't mind, then." The technician paused for a moment, thinking. "Anyway, three hundred sixty-six would be a year and a day, which sounds right, but that's probably only because doing something for that length of time is important in fairy tales." He smiled, leaving it open for Miko to explain the reasons for her inquiry, not asking in case she didn't wish to divulge them.
Which, as it happened, she didn't; she made her excuses, commenting on the lunch selections (grilled fish again; she hoped that there would perhaps be sashimi the next day, for variety) and wishing his fractured finger a speedy recovery before returning to the labs.
Perhaps, given the nature of the connection, it was according to Athosian laws; certainly she could picture the Lt. Colonel using the local customs if they proved to be to his advantage.
*
Miko did not, as it turned out, have time to go to lunch after that: she spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon with Dr. Simpson, pulling apart and rebuilding one of the duplicators to run on a spare naquadah generator. (The first year, they hadn't realized the function of the one in the room they'd used for storage until well after it had run down much of the city's reserve power duplicating florentine ravioli MREs, paracetaminophenol tablets, and military issue sticky bandages. On the bright side, at least the articles had proved useful once they had them.)
By the time they had hooked it up and run the first successful test (bowing to tradition and setting the machine's scanning laser on an orange) -- scanning the foodstuff, waiting for the machine to reconstitute it twice over, and grabbing a first-class private passing through the corridor outside to run one of the duplicates down to biosciences to see whether or not it was an edible copy -- it was an hour before the mess would begin serving dinner. Miko left her partner to set up the multiple-items test (including, as well as the original orange, a rather squashed chocolate truffle Dr. Simpson had been saving for something, a quarter of a bag of coffee beans, and some antihistamine tablets out of Dr. McKay's desk) and headed to the mess herself; nobody, of course, was serving food, but one of the pantries was left open for just such cases and she signed out some fruit and the articles necessary to make herself delicious nattou sandwich.
She was not the only one in the pantry at that hour: Dr. Heightmeyer was making herself unappetizing peanut-butter-paste sandwich and Teyla-san was making herself delicious fruit and cheese sandwich.
They exchanged polite greetings as they assembled their food and proceeded to the dining hall itself, and Miko was just wondering whether she could outlast Dr. Heightmeyer when the psychiatrist looked at her wrist-watch and made an annoyed sound.
"I have an appointment in five minutes," she said. "Sorry to run like this. Miko. Teyla." The doctor bent her head to Teyla's in a quick touch and trotted off as soon as Teyla-san let her shoulders go, giantberry in one hand and sandwich in the other.
"I still do not see how she can eat peanut-butter-paste," Miko finally ventured, at the same time as Teyla-san mused "Kate has been much happier since the other healers-of-minds came; they have been good for her."
Then both women hastily apologized for interrupting each other and agreed with each other's thoughts. Dr. Heightmeyer had been more relaxed and less -- Miko hesitated to think the words "patronizingly obstinate," but could not think of a better way to describe the mood that had all too often gripped their psychologist -- since the arrival of Dr. van Haalse and Psychiatric Nurse Moriya, and --
"I am fond enough of the taste of peanut," Teyla-san said, "but I do not like the oily stickiness of the paste. It is perhaps an acquired taste."
"Probably," Miko agreed. "Most Athosian foods don't have that texture, then?"
"No, although it has proved most useful as a solvent. When the lump of aravis-tree gum was stuck in Jinto's hair, Doctor McKay rubbed at it with the peanut-paste from his bread roll until it came loose, nobly sacrificing his meal."
"I expect the doctor said as much."
"Very many times."
Aravis-tree gum proved a useful conversational thread to begin a discussion of Athosian customs with, and the two women had finished their sandwiches by the time Miko led the conversation to her goal.
"No, we have no set period," Teyla-san said. "It is customary to hold a celebration both for the leavetaking from one's former House and for the reception into the new one -- certainly Charin and my people feasted me for the former -- but all that is truly required for it to be valid is for it to be acknowledged before the people. At least three times, to be sure, although certainly the multiplicity of the paper records your people keep should suffice at once."
"Ah, is that so," Miko said, and was about to comment on its similarity when the earlier statement struck her. "Charin-san and the others feasted you -- you have gone as a bride, then? I did not know you were married."
"Everyone was happy to help, because I had your people's assistance as my bride-price not only to Emmagan but to all the Houses of Athos, and the new AR-1 House bound our peoples together." She looked at Miko earnestly. "We hoped perhaps more closely than proved to be the case, but, well... "
Miko nodded automatically, blinking. "Yes, well... your people have enrolled you in... Lt. Col. Sheppard's family register, then?"
"It is a new House, so it would be as true to say that they have enrolled Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay and Aiden Ford and Ronon upon mine. Or that you have; certainly I have been introduced as one of their team-bound many and many a time." She looked off over Miko's shoulder. "Although I am not now entirely certain of Aiden's status with respect to our Team, but I should think that Col. Sheppard's views on the matter carry more weight than those of higher authority in other matters..."
"Yes, but... " Miko wrestled with her conscience for a moment, and then blurted out "Excuse me, but what did they say when you told them?"
"Ah..." Teyla-san looked slightly apologetic. "At first it was too important to risk, and now that the matter is secured, there has not been a good moment to tell them. Either my mind is occupied with something else, or we are very busy, or they are not eating or drinking just at that moment."
Miko, who was drinking water, coughed most of it over her plate.
Teyla-san politely handed her some napkins. "There is an old saying of my people as well: better to seize the chance than wait on the argument."
"Yes, but for marriage?"
"You know Doctor McKay well at least; to whom should it apply more?"
*
When she returned to the labs that evening, they were empty of everyone save for a tower of coffee bags, a crate of oranges, and Dr. Simpson, scrubbing at antihistamine tablet sheets with a sterile wipe.
"Er, forgive me, but, your elbow," Miko said tentatively.
Dr. Simpson stopped, plucked the very-squashed-indeed truffle off her elbow, and dropped it into the biological waste disposal. "Figures. That's just the way my day's been going."
"I am sorry to hear that," Miko said, taking another sterile wipe and picking up one of the tablet sheets.
The American doctor shot her a look. "Did you get whatever it was on your mind today settled?"
She hadn't realized that she was being quite so obvious, but... "Somewhat, yes. I am not certain as to Dr. McKay's just deserts -- "
"Oh, he deserves everything you can think of and more," Dr. Simpson grumbled. "First he pitched a fit about us raiding his desk -- you'd think he'd want more pills, if anything -- and then he set me to wiping off any possible vaguely lemonlike particles that might have migrated through some bit of ORANGE rind off of every single one."
" -- but I am quite sure," she continued once the other woman had vented, "that Lt. Col. Sheppard and Teyla-san deserve each other."
nota bene:
The three-night rule is the ancient Japanese method of common-law marriage: the guy snuck into her room three nights running, and on the morning of the fourth day they had breakfast with her parents, and so became married.
Matsumoto Temari wrote a hysterical series called Kyou Kara Maoh!, in which, among other things, one plights one's troth by an open-palm strike to the left cheek of the betrothed.
Miko, fond as I am of her, is not necessarily the most reliable of narrators.