Vday: fic: [Godforsaken] (SGA/Bruno&Boots)
For rageprufrock's Vday challenge, and also for rageprufrock herself, because she is wonderful, with the writing and the links, and the giving me an excuse to get off my ass and finish stories and post them.
This story may in the future be expanded upon for reasons of plot. It's already the SGA Fic That Would Not Die (yes, for me, 2200 words is a lot), and it still wants to be bigger. I blame John, because I says to myself, "Self, what would be nice is a little story about Rodney and his nephew Bruno." And then I shot John Sheppard in the ass and he took over the story.
Working Title: Godforsaken
Author: siegeofangels
Fandom: SGA/Bruno & Boots
Rated PG-13
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis and Bruno & Boots are the property of someone not me. No copyright infringement is intended.
"Six to eight weeks, as far as I can tell," Carson tells him, and John can only close his eyes and shake his head in response. The nerve agent--whatever the hell they'd tipped the arrow with--makes him fuzzy and a little slow; he's still got all of his motor functions, but they're just a little behind, and thinking too much makes him tired.
Which makes him absolutely no good on away missions, or really anything else for a month and a half.
The first week he wanders around Atlantis like a ghost, trying to keep his body and mind a little active (doctor's orders--as long as he walks and plays with his Rubik's Cube Carson won't sic a nurse on him). It's frustrating for him, though, and clearly unnerving for his subordinates to see the Colonel frowning slowly, too clean, no sidearm or fresh wounds.
They save the arrowhead for him; he's been shot before, but never with anything that had been hand-crafted. Kind of makes him feel special. He spends more time than he should sitting cross-legged on his bed, rubbing his fingers across the glassy white stone point.
Teyla comes to visit him and talk; she makes him tell her story after story, makes him force the words and sentences to line up in his head. She asks about myths and fairytales; he talks for a while and then begins to falter, mixing them up and saying, "Ah, hell, I don't care. There was a prince and he kissed her. The end."
The next day she asks him about his family, about the friends he left behind: things too important for him to misrepresent to her, and he struggles but slowly tells her the stories of the people who made him. He doesn't usually talk about them, but it's Teyla. She'll keep them safe.
A couple more days and Elizabeth gently suggests that he take a vacation, return to Earth on the Daedalus. "Besides," she says. "It'll be Christmas."
John wonders if it's the easy way out for her or for him. He really wouldn't be able to bear fading away in Atlantis, and he wonders how being put out to pasture compares to being taken behind the shed and shot.
Elizabeth puts a hand on his shoulder, and he realizes he's spoken aloud.
"Just kidding," he says. Of course he was kidding. There are no sheds in Atlantis.
To his surprise (and to the complete lack of surprise of every other person in the city), Rodney gets on the Daedalus with him, and pesters him for the next two weeks with word puzzles and math and endless verbal baiting. Strangely enough, the baiting works: there's only so many times you can say "Fuck off, McKay," and anyway Rodney seems to take that phrase as a sign of victory. John gets very good at drawling insults, stretching the words long enough that he just sounds arrogant instead of slow.
He manages the physical aspects on his own: you couldn't trust a gun in his hand right now, but he used to run miles every morning, and getting up to walk (and later, gingerly jog) the hallways doesn't take much less discipline. He does push-ups--too few--and imagines the poison sweating out of his body, washing away in the shower.
Earth is louder than he remembers. It buzzes, and it smells funny, and he sees about six different doctors at the SGC before he's allowed to go with the same instructions that Carson gave him: just give it time, keep exercising, keep doing crossword puzzles.
Duh.
***
About ten percent of the people at the airport, John estimates, are wearing Santa hats.
"Kinda weird," he says. "Figured we'd be spending Christmas somewhere . . . else. Sleeping outside, you know." He's not exactly sure when he agreed to come to Canada with Rodney to spend Christmas with his sister and nephew. He thinks it was at the SGC, after being cornered by xenoanthropologists and very, very crisp USAF uniforms for two days; by the time Rodney poked his head into John's room and said, Our plane leaves at eleven, John was so eager to get the hell out of there he didn't even argue with Rodney's presumption.
"Yes, well," Rodney says. "After being held at gunpoint on my birthday, I just couldn't wait for what Christmas had in store. At least we're not in some godforsaken--" he trails off and they stare out the window.
Winnipeg stares back, gray and sullen.
"Oh, fine," Rodney says. "Godforsaken. But at least my sister will have hot chocolate."
***
John hangs on for dear life as Rodney takes to the road; Rodney's driving is like some bizarre microcosm of his life, all arm gestures, steering with his knees, a flurry of constant motion and sound.
"We used to come here on vacations, with the--you know, sometimes I prefer the people who are actively working toward my death over these color-blind octogenarians who going to kill me through their own oblivious incomptetence--where is she going? Is that her turn signal? It's not even blinking in rhythm--that can't be Jeannie's house and do you feel the brakes on this thing? It's like braking with cornbread--" and he mercifully stops and John lurches out of the car and manages to salvage some dignity standing on the gravel, clutching the car like he's just pausing to look at the house.
"You're not allowed to drive anymore," he tells Rodney.
Rodney's sister is petite and curvy, light brown hair in a soccer mom cut, and she tells John to call her Jean. There's a politeness there that's kind of icy (ha, he thinks. Canada), and he's not sure if it's because of him invading her house or something else.
But then she and Rodney fall into rapid sibling speech, a mile a minute in a sort of shorthand; John can't quite keep up and his headache's coming back. "I'm sorry," he says, " . . . just close my eyes for a little while?"
"Of course," Jeannie says, "But my son will be getting home soon," and John sinks gratefully into the sofa in the darkened living room and dozes while house-sounds come alive around him: Rodney and Jeannie moving around each other in the kitchen, spoons clinking on bowls and the beeping of the microwave. The Christmas tree is in the corner of the room and the clean sharp pine scent fills the room.
He's just half-asleep when Jeannie's son opens the front door and bounds into the living room, dropping a duffel bag on the floor. John jerks awake and says, "Nnrgh," and he hates his body, hates the poison, because a month ago he would have been on his feet in a second.
"Mom, where's your hippie book?" Bruno yells.
There's a hushed scolding from the kitchen telling him to be quiet, and Bruno spins around to see John.
John manages to sit up. "Hippie book?" he says.
"Yeah," the kid says with a horrifyingly Rodney-like forehead furrow. "For inspiration, we're having protests."
"Sticking it to the Man," John says, nodding.
"Exactly," Bruno says. "There's this completely unreasonable policy they started," and he launches into a foaming diatribe about oppression and a fish and someone with a shotgun, and when he stops for breath Jeannie pokes her head around the door and says, "Dinner."
As John gets up without any dizziness whatsoever--hooray for small victories--Bruno says, "So, who were you again?"
"Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, United States Air Force," John says, and because he can't resist baiting that face, "I'm the Man."
Dinner is good, simple food, tastes he'd missed and those he hadn't realized he'd missed. (Root beer. Honest-to-God root beer.) Rodney's eating like he's never going to see broccoli again. It's possible, John thinks.
Rodney and Jeannie get into a fight over dessert that devolves into what John figures must be an old, old argument for them: she doesn't approve of Rodney's working for the military, particularly the US military.
Hi, he feels like saying. Still sitting right here. He gets up instead, carrying his coffee cup and demolished pie to the sink.
Bruno follows him and turns the water on, rinsing off their plates.
"So," John says, searching desperately for a neutral topic, "what were you saying about school?"
Apparently, Bruno goes to a boarding school in Ontario, just got home for Christmas break today, and is considering desparate measures against the new policy Macdonald Hall has put into place regarding student government.
"I mean," Bruno says, "it's a big step up from not having a student council at all, but appointed by the faculty instead of elected? That's a joke!"
There's a shout from the dining room and Rodney comes into the kitchen, the door swinging back and forth behind him. "So," he says brightly. "This is extra fun. Almost as much as being shot at. What are we discussing in here?"
"The Hall," Bruno says. "Faculty-appointed student government."
"Not you?"
"My roommate. What'd you say to Mom?"
"She'll get over it," Rodney says. "She knows I'm right, it'll just take her a minute."
"What's wrong with your roommate?" John asks.
Bruno looks confused. "Nothing."
"Student union?" Rodney suggests.
"We'd need a faculty advisor. There was an, um, an incident a couple of years ago."
Bruno has unremarkable brown hair and medium build, Rodney's chin and Jeannie's brown eyes, his brain clicking like machinery: like how John imagines Rodney was at seventeen.
(Ronon told John once that he'd never really liked the name Dex, so he didn't mind so much that he'd never have an heir. Apparently Satedan lineage passed down the female line; Ronon's sisters' children would have been his heirs if the Wraith hadn't come. It seems like a good way to do things, John thinks. He's not planning on ever having children.)
John realizes his mind is wandering, and he nods toward the door. "I'm going to go sit for a minute."
Jeannie's still sitting in the dining room, tapping her thumb on the table and looking like she would very much like a cigarette, and they sit in silence for a moment, staring at the table before she speaks. "I know he said it's classified," she says. "I just . . . I need to know my baby brother's not making weapons that are going to annihilate the human race."
"He's not," John says truthfully.
"What does he do?" Jeannie says.
John thinks about poison arrows in the ass, and how Rodney piloted the jumper back; about shields and power overloads and how Jeannie's baby brother wears a sidearm now.
"He saves our lives a lot," he tells her.
The kitchen door bursts open again, and Rodney follows Bruno out. "You're a McKay, even if your name's Walton," Rodney says, finger stabbing the air. "If you play stupid, I won't believe you."
"I'm not playing stupid. I told you we tried that, okay?" Bruno says, plopping down at the table with a soda. "Apparently there's a rule against it."
Realization dawns on Rodney's face. "Forty-seven-a," he says, and then, smug, "I'm the reason for forty-seven-a."
"So how do we get around it?"
"You don't. MacDonald Hall rules are like laws of physics. You break them, you die. Or get expelled, which is probably the same thing for you."
"You break the laws of physics all the time," John protests.
Rodney points at him. "I rewrite them. That's different."
"Rewrite them," Bruno says. "Oh, my God," and launches into another stream of plans and ideas and what John thinks might be a manifesto.
The kid stops for breath and John says, alarmed, "You were born in Canada, right?" He wonders what would happen if there was ever a brain like Rodney's in the White House, turned toward furthering society instead of science. It's a terrifying idea.
"Yeah, of course," Bruno says, puzzled. "Why?"
"No reason," John tells him, and grins a little to himself.
Before long John realizes that he's supposed to have another walk before he goes to bed (Rodney makes inappropriate puppy jokes, and John threatens to find a leash just so he can strangle Rodney with it), so he and Rodney bundle up and venture outside, their boots squeaking on the hard snow as the lights that outline the houses and trees twinkle and blur.
Crunch, crunch. Canada is huge and stark around them, flat in every direction.
"Hey, how many Christmas lights do you think we'd need to decorate Atlantis?" Rodney says, his breath white in the glow of the streetlights. He looks happy, cheeks red and hat bobble bobbling as they walk.
John's suddenly glad of Jeannie and Bruno: it's unlikely that Rodney will have any children, not on Atlantis, and it's good to think that there will be someone running around and being brilliant and pissing people off when they're gone. He thinks about Bruno in Atlantis, wearing red.
"A hundred and ten miles?" John imagines running lights along the piers, the spires of his city lit up in celebration, in memorial; every peak outlined in a million white lights for Pegasus souls when the Wraith are finally gone and there's no hiding anymore. "I'll start stockpiling them," he says. "It'll be a hell of a party."
This story may in the future be expanded upon for reasons of plot. It's already the SGA Fic That Would Not Die (yes, for me, 2200 words is a lot), and it still wants to be bigger. I blame John, because I says to myself, "Self, what would be nice is a little story about Rodney and his nephew Bruno." And then I shot John Sheppard in the ass and he took over the story.
Working Title: Godforsaken
Author: siegeofangels
Fandom: SGA/Bruno & Boots
Rated PG-13
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis and Bruno & Boots are the property of someone not me. No copyright infringement is intended.
"Six to eight weeks, as far as I can tell," Carson tells him, and John can only close his eyes and shake his head in response. The nerve agent--whatever the hell they'd tipped the arrow with--makes him fuzzy and a little slow; he's still got all of his motor functions, but they're just a little behind, and thinking too much makes him tired.
Which makes him absolutely no good on away missions, or really anything else for a month and a half.
The first week he wanders around Atlantis like a ghost, trying to keep his body and mind a little active (doctor's orders--as long as he walks and plays with his Rubik's Cube Carson won't sic a nurse on him). It's frustrating for him, though, and clearly unnerving for his subordinates to see the Colonel frowning slowly, too clean, no sidearm or fresh wounds.
They save the arrowhead for him; he's been shot before, but never with anything that had been hand-crafted. Kind of makes him feel special. He spends more time than he should sitting cross-legged on his bed, rubbing his fingers across the glassy white stone point.
Teyla comes to visit him and talk; she makes him tell her story after story, makes him force the words and sentences to line up in his head. She asks about myths and fairytales; he talks for a while and then begins to falter, mixing them up and saying, "Ah, hell, I don't care. There was a prince and he kissed her. The end."
The next day she asks him about his family, about the friends he left behind: things too important for him to misrepresent to her, and he struggles but slowly tells her the stories of the people who made him. He doesn't usually talk about them, but it's Teyla. She'll keep them safe.
A couple more days and Elizabeth gently suggests that he take a vacation, return to Earth on the Daedalus. "Besides," she says. "It'll be Christmas."
John wonders if it's the easy way out for her or for him. He really wouldn't be able to bear fading away in Atlantis, and he wonders how being put out to pasture compares to being taken behind the shed and shot.
Elizabeth puts a hand on his shoulder, and he realizes he's spoken aloud.
"Just kidding," he says. Of course he was kidding. There are no sheds in Atlantis.
To his surprise (and to the complete lack of surprise of every other person in the city), Rodney gets on the Daedalus with him, and pesters him for the next two weeks with word puzzles and math and endless verbal baiting. Strangely enough, the baiting works: there's only so many times you can say "Fuck off, McKay," and anyway Rodney seems to take that phrase as a sign of victory. John gets very good at drawling insults, stretching the words long enough that he just sounds arrogant instead of slow.
He manages the physical aspects on his own: you couldn't trust a gun in his hand right now, but he used to run miles every morning, and getting up to walk (and later, gingerly jog) the hallways doesn't take much less discipline. He does push-ups--too few--and imagines the poison sweating out of his body, washing away in the shower.
Earth is louder than he remembers. It buzzes, and it smells funny, and he sees about six different doctors at the SGC before he's allowed to go with the same instructions that Carson gave him: just give it time, keep exercising, keep doing crossword puzzles.
Duh.
***
About ten percent of the people at the airport, John estimates, are wearing Santa hats.
"Kinda weird," he says. "Figured we'd be spending Christmas somewhere . . . else. Sleeping outside, you know." He's not exactly sure when he agreed to come to Canada with Rodney to spend Christmas with his sister and nephew. He thinks it was at the SGC, after being cornered by xenoanthropologists and very, very crisp USAF uniforms for two days; by the time Rodney poked his head into John's room and said, Our plane leaves at eleven, John was so eager to get the hell out of there he didn't even argue with Rodney's presumption.
"Yes, well," Rodney says. "After being held at gunpoint on my birthday, I just couldn't wait for what Christmas had in store. At least we're not in some godforsaken--" he trails off and they stare out the window.
Winnipeg stares back, gray and sullen.
"Oh, fine," Rodney says. "Godforsaken. But at least my sister will have hot chocolate."
***
John hangs on for dear life as Rodney takes to the road; Rodney's driving is like some bizarre microcosm of his life, all arm gestures, steering with his knees, a flurry of constant motion and sound.
"We used to come here on vacations, with the--you know, sometimes I prefer the people who are actively working toward my death over these color-blind octogenarians who going to kill me through their own oblivious incomptetence--where is she going? Is that her turn signal? It's not even blinking in rhythm--that can't be Jeannie's house and do you feel the brakes on this thing? It's like braking with cornbread--" and he mercifully stops and John lurches out of the car and manages to salvage some dignity standing on the gravel, clutching the car like he's just pausing to look at the house.
"You're not allowed to drive anymore," he tells Rodney.
Rodney's sister is petite and curvy, light brown hair in a soccer mom cut, and she tells John to call her Jean. There's a politeness there that's kind of icy (ha, he thinks. Canada), and he's not sure if it's because of him invading her house or something else.
But then she and Rodney fall into rapid sibling speech, a mile a minute in a sort of shorthand; John can't quite keep up and his headache's coming back. "I'm sorry," he says, " . . . just close my eyes for a little while?"
"Of course," Jeannie says, "But my son will be getting home soon," and John sinks gratefully into the sofa in the darkened living room and dozes while house-sounds come alive around him: Rodney and Jeannie moving around each other in the kitchen, spoons clinking on bowls and the beeping of the microwave. The Christmas tree is in the corner of the room and the clean sharp pine scent fills the room.
He's just half-asleep when Jeannie's son opens the front door and bounds into the living room, dropping a duffel bag on the floor. John jerks awake and says, "Nnrgh," and he hates his body, hates the poison, because a month ago he would have been on his feet in a second.
"Mom, where's your hippie book?" Bruno yells.
There's a hushed scolding from the kitchen telling him to be quiet, and Bruno spins around to see John.
John manages to sit up. "Hippie book?" he says.
"Yeah," the kid says with a horrifyingly Rodney-like forehead furrow. "For inspiration, we're having protests."
"Sticking it to the Man," John says, nodding.
"Exactly," Bruno says. "There's this completely unreasonable policy they started," and he launches into a foaming diatribe about oppression and a fish and someone with a shotgun, and when he stops for breath Jeannie pokes her head around the door and says, "Dinner."
As John gets up without any dizziness whatsoever--hooray for small victories--Bruno says, "So, who were you again?"
"Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, United States Air Force," John says, and because he can't resist baiting that face, "I'm the Man."
Dinner is good, simple food, tastes he'd missed and those he hadn't realized he'd missed. (Root beer. Honest-to-God root beer.) Rodney's eating like he's never going to see broccoli again. It's possible, John thinks.
Rodney and Jeannie get into a fight over dessert that devolves into what John figures must be an old, old argument for them: she doesn't approve of Rodney's working for the military, particularly the US military.
Hi, he feels like saying. Still sitting right here. He gets up instead, carrying his coffee cup and demolished pie to the sink.
Bruno follows him and turns the water on, rinsing off their plates.
"So," John says, searching desperately for a neutral topic, "what were you saying about school?"
Apparently, Bruno goes to a boarding school in Ontario, just got home for Christmas break today, and is considering desparate measures against the new policy Macdonald Hall has put into place regarding student government.
"I mean," Bruno says, "it's a big step up from not having a student council at all, but appointed by the faculty instead of elected? That's a joke!"
There's a shout from the dining room and Rodney comes into the kitchen, the door swinging back and forth behind him. "So," he says brightly. "This is extra fun. Almost as much as being shot at. What are we discussing in here?"
"The Hall," Bruno says. "Faculty-appointed student government."
"Not you?"
"My roommate. What'd you say to Mom?"
"She'll get over it," Rodney says. "She knows I'm right, it'll just take her a minute."
"What's wrong with your roommate?" John asks.
Bruno looks confused. "Nothing."
"Student union?" Rodney suggests.
"We'd need a faculty advisor. There was an, um, an incident a couple of years ago."
Bruno has unremarkable brown hair and medium build, Rodney's chin and Jeannie's brown eyes, his brain clicking like machinery: like how John imagines Rodney was at seventeen.
(Ronon told John once that he'd never really liked the name Dex, so he didn't mind so much that he'd never have an heir. Apparently Satedan lineage passed down the female line; Ronon's sisters' children would have been his heirs if the Wraith hadn't come. It seems like a good way to do things, John thinks. He's not planning on ever having children.)
John realizes his mind is wandering, and he nods toward the door. "I'm going to go sit for a minute."
Jeannie's still sitting in the dining room, tapping her thumb on the table and looking like she would very much like a cigarette, and they sit in silence for a moment, staring at the table before she speaks. "I know he said it's classified," she says. "I just . . . I need to know my baby brother's not making weapons that are going to annihilate the human race."
"He's not," John says truthfully.
"What does he do?" Jeannie says.
John thinks about poison arrows in the ass, and how Rodney piloted the jumper back; about shields and power overloads and how Jeannie's baby brother wears a sidearm now.
"He saves our lives a lot," he tells her.
The kitchen door bursts open again, and Rodney follows Bruno out. "You're a McKay, even if your name's Walton," Rodney says, finger stabbing the air. "If you play stupid, I won't believe you."
"I'm not playing stupid. I told you we tried that, okay?" Bruno says, plopping down at the table with a soda. "Apparently there's a rule against it."
Realization dawns on Rodney's face. "Forty-seven-a," he says, and then, smug, "I'm the reason for forty-seven-a."
"So how do we get around it?"
"You don't. MacDonald Hall rules are like laws of physics. You break them, you die. Or get expelled, which is probably the same thing for you."
"You break the laws of physics all the time," John protests.
Rodney points at him. "I rewrite them. That's different."
"Rewrite them," Bruno says. "Oh, my God," and launches into another stream of plans and ideas and what John thinks might be a manifesto.
The kid stops for breath and John says, alarmed, "You were born in Canada, right?" He wonders what would happen if there was ever a brain like Rodney's in the White House, turned toward furthering society instead of science. It's a terrifying idea.
"Yeah, of course," Bruno says, puzzled. "Why?"
"No reason," John tells him, and grins a little to himself.
Before long John realizes that he's supposed to have another walk before he goes to bed (Rodney makes inappropriate puppy jokes, and John threatens to find a leash just so he can strangle Rodney with it), so he and Rodney bundle up and venture outside, their boots squeaking on the hard snow as the lights that outline the houses and trees twinkle and blur.
Crunch, crunch. Canada is huge and stark around them, flat in every direction.
"Hey, how many Christmas lights do you think we'd need to decorate Atlantis?" Rodney says, his breath white in the glow of the streetlights. He looks happy, cheeks red and hat bobble bobbling as they walk.
John's suddenly glad of Jeannie and Bruno: it's unlikely that Rodney will have any children, not on Atlantis, and it's good to think that there will be someone running around and being brilliant and pissing people off when they're gone. He thinks about Bruno in Atlantis, wearing red.
"A hundred and ten miles?" John imagines running lights along the piers, the spires of his city lit up in celebration, in memorial; every peak outlined in a million white lights for Pegasus souls when the Wraith are finally gone and there's no hiding anymore. "I'll start stockpiling them," he says. "It'll be a hell of a party."