Fic: Somewhere Between Plato and Disney (HSM/SGA, Chad/Ryan, PG-13)
Title: Somewhere Between Plato and Disney
Author:allyndra
Fandom: High School Musical/Stargate: Atlantis (if you're unfamiliar with either fandom, I made a super short guide to who's who)
Pairing: Chad/Ryan (McKay/Sheppard, Kelsi/Laura Cadman)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 7, 396 words
Disclaimer: I don't own either of these ‘verses. Nor these galaxies, for that matter.
Summary: Atlantis was dangerous and far away, but Chad couldn't wait to go. He expected to love it, but he didn't expect it to become home.
Note: This is sally_simpson76's Secret Santa fic. It is absurdly late, and I'll spare you the dramatic retelling of why it took so long. I'm sorry for the delay, dear, and I hope you like it.
As it's now February, I'm also posting this to 14valentines. Today's topic is transgender issues, and you can read the essay here.
Chad never expected to make it to Atlantis. He was a good scientist, but when people thought of ‘the best and the brightest,' Chad wasn't the guy that came to mind. But the fact was, the best and the brightest weren't usually interested in signing on for a mission that reported the kind of mortality rates that Atlantis dealt with.
Chad was interested.
When he was a kid, Chad had dreamt of being a hero. An astronaut, a basketball star, the president. He hadn't dreamt of spending his days hunched over a lab table. So when he heard that Atlantis was recruiting, he wanted in. Sure he'd still spend his days hunched over a lab table, but it would be a lab table on another planet. It just didn't get cooler than that.
Chad put in his application. He signed even more confidentiality forms than he'd had to sign when he first came to Area 51, he gave his CV a makeover, and he tied his hair back so he'd look respectable for his interview. He probably needn't have bothered about the hair. Dr. McKay showed up in an old plaid shirt, with what looked like a smear of peanut butter on his chin, and he barely looked at Chad. He did, however, grill him for twenty minutes about the B minus he'd gotten in his undergrad.
It was a nerve-wracking interview. Dr. McKay didn't seem impressed by any of Chad's qualifications or research, but Chad couldn't read him very well; he couldn't tell if the slant of Dr. McKay's mouth was a smile or a frown. When it was over, Chad flew back to Nevada feeling weighed down by more than just his carry-on luggage.
So when he got the call two days later telling he had gotten the job, Chad was so surprised he nearly dropped the phone. He managed to recover enough to hang onto it and stammer his acceptance. As soon as the voice on the other end hung up, Chad jumped on the couch for five minutes straight.
He was going to Atlantis. He was so the man.
***
There wasn't time for much. The Daedalus was scheduled to leave in a week, and Chad couldn't exactly ask that an intergalactic spaceship wait because he didn't know what to pack. Once he knew he was going, it took Chad a remarkably short time to get everything in order. He broke the lease on his apartment and put most of his stuff in storage. Since he was going to Atlantis, he didn't have any trouble putting in his notice at work.
Chad spent a day packing, sorting through his clothes and personal belongings, trying to decide what was important enough to take, considering the strict limit on how much he could bring. He'd been told he would be issued uniforms, so he only needed to bring clothes for when he was off-duty. He also brought along his iPod, some books and movies, and a carefully deflated basketball. He was sure that all of the brain power in Atlantis could find a way to inflate it, even if they didn't have a pump.
For his last few days on Earth, Chad went to New Mexico to visit his parents. He spent the whole time dodging their questions about where his new contract with the military was taking him, and what he'd be doing there. He also tried to hide the way he was watching them, storing up memories for when he was far from home. Earth had resumed contact with Atlantis, but Chad knew that nothing was certain. He knew he might never come back.
He didn't start to get nervous until he got to Colorado. Cheyenne Mountain was imposing on a whole different level than Area 51, and Chad felt dwarfed by it, tiny in the maze of stark corridors and crowds of bustling people. He swallowed down his nerves, though, and followed the directions he'd been given to assemble with the other new members of the Atlantis expedition.
They were all gathered together in a large room that was probably used for storage most of the time. There was no good place for the Daedalus to land without letting the populace know way more about aliens and space travel than the government wanted them to know. So they had to stand here like sheep, waiting for the ship to transport them up. As he took his place with the others, Chad's stomach started to twist. He'd watched Star Trek. He knew what could happen when transporter beams went wrong.
An announcement came over the PA, telling them that they had five minutes before departure. The guy standing next to him swallowed audibly and said, "Well, at least I packed plenty of clean underwear."
Chad wanted to chuckle at the man's fear, but instead his mind started to race. He hadn't packed all that much clean underwear. He'd been so concerned with which witty t-shirts he should bring that he hadn't even considered how much underwear he would need. Would he have to get military issue underwear along with his uniforms? What was military underwear even like?
The man next to him spoke again, jarring Chad out of his ridiculous panic. "Hey, if I faint, will you pretend you knocked me out? Give me a little dignity?" he asked.
Chad snorted, grateful for the distraction. "I don't even know you," he said. "What would I use as an excuse for knocking you out?"
"I can be really annoying," the guy said earnestly.
Chad smiled. His stomach settled into something approximating its usual shape. "Sorry, man. You'll just have to take the shame of fainting. I can't get a rep as a bully on the first day."
"You're no fun," the man accused. He was pouting a bit, but it was clearly just for show. Chad thought maybe the silliness of their exchange had been as good for the other guy as it had been for him.
He was still smiling and looking at the man when world disappeared in a beam of light.
***
Space travel sounded amazing, but in practice it was really boring. The Daedalus, as cool as it was, felt a whole lot like a giant traveling hotel. With no room service. Chad thought that if they'd been traveling through regular space, he could have amused himself by watching the stars and planets pass by. Since they were in hyperspace, though, there wasn't even anything to see.
He spent as much time as he could loitering in engineering, trying to learn as much as he could about how the ship worked. Even after working in Area 51, the technology was impressive. Plus, they had an alien. Even if traveling on the ship was boring, aliens could never be less than cool.
When they kicked him out of engineering, he wandered the corridors of the ship. It was better than being cooped up in his room, staring at the walls and counting the days until they got to the Pegasus galaxy. He liked finding the parts of the ship where other people weren't working, the sections where he could pretend he was exploring instead of just getting in people's way.
He was in one of those deserted sections when a body careened into him, knocking him against the bulkhead. Chad's hands came up automatically to clutch at the person's shoulders as he tried to get his breath back. Once he felt stable, he shoved himself free and looked at who had knocked him down.
It was the guy he'd talked to in Cheyenne Mountain. "Sorry," the man said. "Sorry. I didn't expect anyone to be here."
"Which is why you were doing your best cannonball impression?"
The man rolled his eyes. "No, it's why I was dancing," he said sharply. He ran a hand through his hair, and then he started and scanned the floor around them until he spotted a flat brown cap lying a few feet away. He must have dropped it when he was attacking Chad through dance. Stooping, he grabbed it and popped it onto his head.
"Oh, of course. Dancing. How silly of me," Chad said.
"I like to dance," the man said. He shuffled through a quick jazz square. "It's relaxing. Don't you have any hobbies?"
Chad wrinkled his nose. "I play basketball," he said. "But there's nowhere to play on board."
"The hoop isn't really that portable, huh? Hey, it could be worse. You could bowl." The man smiled at him, and Chad was relieved to see that he had a completely dorky smile. It was reassuring, somehow. "I'm Ryan Evans. Botany."
"Chad Danforth. Physics and Engineering." It was just like college, when people had introduced themselves by major.
"You can't play basketball," Ryan said unnecessarily. "So what do you do for fun around here?"
Chad shrugged. "I've just been rambling around the ship," he said.
Ryan grinned. "Can I ramble with you? We can see how many ways we can find from the command deck to engineering before someone tells us to go away."
"Yeah, all right," Chad said. He was trying not to grin too widely, because he didn't need Ryan thinking about how dorky Chad's smile was.
It wasn't like he had anything better to do, anyway.
***
The very first thing the new scientists did on Atlantis, right after they'd stowed their gear in their assigned quarters, was have a security briefing. It was hosted Dr. Zelenka, and it primarily consisted of "Don't touch anything," repeated in different phrasing and intonations. Chad nodded and looked serious, but after the fourth repetition, he started imagining what the people around him would look like in drag.
He thought Dr. Zelenka would look pretty cool in platform heels and a sequined dress.
When the briefing was finally over, Ryan appeared at Chad's elbow, and Chad had to struggle not to snigger at the image of Ryan in a Carmen Miranda hat. When he was sure he could speak without laughing, Chad said, "Hey," and bumped his shoulder against Ryan's.
"Hey," Ryan said. He kept a straight face for a minute as a group of their fellow scientists streamed past them, but once they were alone he flashed Chad a bright smile. "We're on Atlantis," he said. "How cool is that?"
"Pretty damned cool," Chad agreed. He nudged Ryan with his shoulder again. "You wanna come with me to check out this Ancient lost city?"
"I could do that," Ryan said.
"Excellent," Chad said, running his hands together. "What are the chances that we could spontaneously discover the mess?"
"Let's find out. Oh, but can we stop by my room first?"
"Sure," Chad said with a shrug. "How come?" But he was already following Ryan down the hallway.
"I just need to grab my hat," Ryan said. A hat wasn't a bad idea. Ryan’s hair was kind of wild, like he'd been running his hands through it during the briefing. Either that, or Dr. Zelenka's hair had the power to influence the hair of everyone he spoke to, encouraging it to rebel. Chad hoped not; his own hair was rambunctious enough without bad influences.
"What's up with the hats?" Chad asked, dismissing thoughts of Dr. Zelenka's hair. In their time wandering around the Daedalus, he'd rarely seen Ryan without one. He'd actually been surprised to see Ryan bareheaded today, but he figured hats didn't really go with the uniform.
"I just …" Ryan shrugged and stopped in front of a door, swiping his hand over the crystals beside it. The door slid open. "I just like them." He ducked inside and came right back out, now wearing a soft blue hat. "I only had room to bring two," he said. He sounded sad. Not just a little bummed by how little room they'd had in their luggage, but really sad about his lack of hats. "I put the rest in storage."
Chad wanted to laugh at the idea of having enough hats to make storing them an issue, but he looked at Ryan's face and didn't. "Next time we're on Earth," he said. "You can get all your hats out and give me a fashion show."
Ryan's face lit up, and Chad to remind himself twice that it looked dorky. "Which way?" Chad asked.
Ryan closed his eyes and spun around in a circle. It wasn't quite a pirouette, but it definitely had flair. When he came to a halt, he lifted a hand and pointed in the direction he was facing. He opened his eyes and said, "That way."
***
They didn't manage to spontaneously find the mess on the first day, but they did find the armory, the ‘gate room, and three different training rooms. Finally, stomachs grumbling, they asked someone the way to the mess.
Three days later, Chad thought he could probably find his way to the mess blindfolded. There were still literally miles of corridors that he hadn't been down, but he'd been to the mess three times a day, every day, and he knew his way there from his room, his lab, and Ryan's lab.
At dinner on the third day, Chad eyed the food disapprovingly. "It's too normal," he told Ryan, who was standing behind him with a tray. "I thought there would be a bunch of weird, alien food." Instead, there was spaghetti, salad, and Jell-o cups. It was like being in his high school cafeteria all over again, only with fewer spirit banners.
"Poor Chad," Ryan said mockingly. "Forced to eat Earth food." He leaned forward and snagged a fruit out of a basket. It looked like an apple, but it was cylindrical, like it had been grown in a Pepsi can. He deposited it on Chad's tray with a smirk. "There. Extraterrestrial fruit. Enjoy."
Chad gave Ryan a mocking glare and led the way out to the tables. The cliquish groups of scientists and soldiers sitting in clumps around the room made it feel even more like high school. He spotted an empty table near a window, with a great view of the ocean. He was just sitting down when he heard a familiar laugh. It threw him, because he didn't know anyone here well enough for their laughs to be familiar. No one but Ryan, anyway, and he was sitting right next to him. Chad craned his next in the direction of the laugh and saw a back of someone's head, just as familiar as the laugh.
It couldn't be.
Chad stood up from the table and stepped around Ryan, walking toward the laugh and the head and Troy Bolton sitting in the middle of the mess in Atlantis. "Troy?" Chad said disbelievingly.
Troy's head snapped around, and he stared at Chad. "Chad? Oh my God, what are you doing here?"
"I just got in on the Daedalus," Chad said. He laughed. He had to laugh, it was too crazy. “What are you doing here? Last I heard, you joined the army or something, and then no one heard from you again. It was like you dropped off the face of the Earth. Literally, I guess."
Troy laughed to, standing up to grab Chad in a rough hug. "It was the Marines, but otherwise, yeah. That's pretty much how it happened. This is crazy."
Chad nodded frantically. "No kidding. I ran into Jason once in a hotel in Iowa, and I thought that was a hell of a coincidence."
Troy shook his head. "Man, I can't believe you're here." One of the men he'd been sitting with nudged him in the side, and Troy looked at his watch. "I have to go," he said. "My shift starts in five. But we've got to get together. Hey, we should play some time."
"I brought a ball," Chad said.
"Of course you did." Troy grinned at him, and his friend nudged him again. "I'll see you later."
Chad was almost dizzy with the weirdness of it when he walked back over to his table. He was excited to tell Ryan all about it, but when he got to the table by the window, Ryan was gone. Chad would think he had the wrong table, but there was still a tray sitting there, covered in spaghetti and bearing one cylindrical fruit. Chad frowned and picked up the tray. He put it away, still full of food, and bit into the fruit on his way out the door.
It tasted like celery.
***
Chad swiped his hand over the crystals by Ryan's door and listened to the chime. When the door slid open, Ryan was standing there, looking rumpled. He'd changed into a worn t-shirt and soft yoga pants. His head was bare, and his hair was tousled. For a heart stopping moment, Chad thought there must be someone in the room with Ryan, someone who had made him look that way. Then Ryan shifted to lean against the doorframe, and Chad saw the empty room behind him, the empty bed with mussed sheets.
He tried to tell himself he wasn't relieved. He wasn't very convincing.
"Hey," Ryan said, crossing his arms over his chest. "What's up?"
"No, what's up with you? I turned around, and you were gone, man." Chad was trying not to lose his temper, but really. What was up with that?
"I thought you were busy," Ryan said. He didn't sound upset, but his face had a strange, closed off look.
"I was just talking to someone," Chad said. He couldn't help feeling happy and excited about seeing Troy, even with Ryan acting weird. "My best friend from when we were kids is here. How trippin' is that?"
"Trippin'," Ryan agreed.
"Okay, you don't get to say that word anymore," Chad told him. "But seriously, what's up?"
Ryan tightened his arms so it looked almost like he was hugging himself. "I just thought you'd be busy for a while. With your friend."
"So you decided to go to bed?" Chad asked incredulously. "It's not even nine o'clock yet. You're a freak. And I didn't get to eat my dinner because I was hunting your freaky ass down."
Ryan's mouth curved in a reluctant smile. "Sorry. You think the cooks would let us go through the line a second time?"
"They better," Chad said. He gave Ryan a pointed look. "Now hurry up. I'm not waiting here for you all night."
Ryan hurried, which was a good thing. Because Chad didn't need Ryan knowing that he would have waited for him all night.
***
Dr. McKay didn't remember anyone's names. Like, if your name was ‘Royce,' chances were good you'd be called ‘Reese,' ‘Ross,' or ‘Renfield.' It was just the way he was. Most of the other scientists knew how much it bothered the new people to be forgotten by the man in charge, so after someone had their names especially mangled, there would be a brief period when everyone else in the lab called them by their proper name, in loud, clear voices.
It didn't happen that way for Chad. He didn't even get a mangled version of his name from Dr. McKay; he got called ‘The One with the Hair.' It probably wouldn't have bothered him too much, but then other people started referring to him the same way. Before long, everyone he worked with called him The One with the Hair, unless they were speaking directly to him. Chad even heard Dr. Weir call him that, once.
The only people who consistently referred to him by his actual name were Ryan, Troy, and Teyla. Ryan and Troy didn't count, and Teyla called everyone by their proper names and titles. Chad wasn't surprised in the least when he found out she'd been the leader of her people before she'd thrown in with the Lanteans. He'd put her up against the President any day of the week.
After a shift in which he'd heard himself called The One with the Hair seven times (he'd counted), Chad lay on his bed with his head hanging over the edge, so he could stare at his curls. Stupid curls. He usually liked his hair - otherwise he wouldn't go through all the trouble to take care of it - but that didn't mean he wanted to be defined by it.
When door chimed, Chad shouted, "Come in," without moving.
"Your head is going to explode from all the blood rushing to it," Ryan told him.
Chad rolled his eyes, even though it was probably less effective when he was upside down. "It's a good thing you're a botanist," he said, wriggling so his head was up on the bed. "You have a lousy grasp of how human bodies work."
Ryan grinned at him. "Oh, I have a fabulous knowledge of how human bodies work," he said. It sounded like a promise. Chad's face went hot. It was probably a delayed reaction from hanging upside down. Ryan sat down on the edge of the bed, and the stiff mattress shifted, making Chad roll toward him. "What's the matter?" Ryan asked.
"I think I need to shave my head," Chad said. "Everyone calls me The One with the Hair, and it sucks." He didn't care that he sounded like a sulky child.
"If you shave your head, everyone will call you The Bald Guy," Ryan said logically. He leaned across Chad, so he was looking down at him with his weight propped on one hand. "Besides, I like your hair." Ryan lifted the hand his free hand and touched Chad's hair. He didn't try to run his fingers through it, just lifted one long curl and slid his fingers down it, tugging gently until it bounced back. Chad shivered and instantly regretted it. There was no way Ryan could miss it when he was this close.
"You do?" Chad asked breathlessly. Which was as big a giveaway as the shivering. He could hit himself.
"I do," Ryan said solemnly. He dropped his hand to the bed so his weight was on both arms and slowly, slowly lowered himself until his face was inches away from Chad's. This close, his eyes should have looked really blue, but they were dark. Chad held himself still and waited, but Ryan wasn't moving.
It ought to have been easy to lift his head and close the tiny distance between himself and Ryan, but it was hard. He'd been keeping himself from kissing Ryan since the day they met; it was hard to decide that now it was okay, now he should do this, should risk this. Chad took a deep breath, knowing Ryan could feel it across his lips, and raised his head.
Chad thought - inasmuch as he was thinking anything - that since Ryan had waited for him to make the move, maybe Ryan was going to make him work for this. Maybe Ryan didn't want this as much as Chad did, and so he was fine with holding back. When Ryan melted down against Chad, pressing him to the mattress and meeting him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, Chad knew he wasn't holding anything back.
And when Ryan said his name in a long, low moan, Chad decided he didn't mind what the rest of Atlantis called him. Then he set about making Ryan say it again and again.
Chad's newfound Zen about his name worked for him for another week and a half, and then he didn't need it anymore. Colonel Sheppard's team brought Ronon Dex home from a mission. Most of the expedition seemed divided between fearing Ronon and admiring him, but Chad just smiled whenever he saw him.
With Ronon Dex around, Chad could never be The One with the Hair again.
***
Chad's parents had raised him to be respectful, so he felt a little guilty about the joy he got from antagonizing Dr. McKay, but Dr. McKay made it so easy. He could be driven to shouting and ranting by anything, from his chair being moved to differences of opinion on major theories.
It was fantastic.
There was an unofficial contest on Atlantis to see who could irritate Dr. McKay the most. Not because people hated him; for a man with an ego the size of Jupiter, Dr. McKay was surprisingly well liked. But they were stranded in a galaxy that had no Netflix. People had to make their own fun.
The current record holder was Dr. Kavanaugh, but no one really counted him. He could get anyone - anyone at all - to yell and shake their fists. The trick was to drive Dr. McKay nuts without irritating everyone else.
Chad had an unfair advantage. He had Ryan.
Ryan was a botanist, and as such, his very existence was generally good for several minutes of aggravated grumbling. If all Ryan did was sit quietly in the lab while Chad worked, it would have bothered Dr. McKay. But Ryan was Ryan, and that meant he never sat quietly. Ryan danced. Not constantly; he was capable of standing still. But that almost made it worse. You never knew when he was going to frown seriously and talk about the life cycles of the flora on the mainland, and when he was going to break into a jazz square.
Sometimes it would be a quick step-ball-change, and then he'd go back to acting like a normal person. But sometimes it was a dance, sweeping around the lab in complex patterns, picking up random objects to use as props, possibly grabbing a scientist to partner him for a verse or two.
Dr. McKay hated it. He glared suspiciously at Ryan every time he came into the lab. If Ryan's feet started tapping, or even twitching, Dr. McKay would pull his coffee, his laptop, and his research notes closer to him, as though to protect them from becoming accessories to Ryan's next performance. And when Ryan did start to dance, Dr. McKay would start to yell.
"Did you see a sign on the door proclaiming this an Arthur Miller Dance Studio?" he would shout. "No, because it's a physics lab. Where the physics happens."
On days when he really wanted to irritate Dr. McKay, Chad would pipe up with an argument about how dance was all about physics, really. It was usually good for another twenty minutes of disgruntled McKay.
It got to the point where Dr. McKay would rant about Ryan's dancing when Ryan wasn't even present. All Chad had to do was hum a little bit while he worked, and Dr. McKay would go off about discipline and respect and the scientific method. Chad didn't take him too seriously.
After all, Dr. McKay's friends were even worse. When Colonel Sheppard came into the lab, he had to be watched like a hawk to be sure he didn't walk off with an unclassified piece of Ancient tech. He didn't even mean to; he just picked the stuff up and wandered away with it the way most people did with ballpoint pens. (Although, since office supplies were harder to replenish on Atlantis, most people got pretty tetchy if you walked off with their pens, too.) Or sometimes Colonel Sheppard would start playing video games on one of the laptops they were using to run simulations.
Compared to that, Chad didn't think a little dancing was a big deal. And he liked the way Ryan looked when he launched into a soft shoe routine next to Chad's workstation. He looked … happy. Like he couldn't think of anywhere he'd rather be than the physics lab on Atlantis, talking to Chad and dancing to music no one else heard. Once in a while, it was enough to get Chad up and dancing with him, just to see Ryan's face light up in his stupid, glowing smile.
It didn't hurt that the only thing Dr. McKay hated worse than Ryan dancing in the lab was Ryan and Chad dancing in the lab.
***
Chad wasn't completely idiotic. He did eventually realize that Ryan was insecure about Chad's friendship with Troy. He was a little embarrassed that it took him three months to realize it, but whatever. He wasn't psychic.
Once he figured out that Ryan had issues with Troy, he made a point to include Ryan in more of his guys' nights. Ryan didn't like to play basketball, but Chad invited him to watch. When they got a baseball game together in the big, open courtyard near the center of the city, Ryan shocked the hell out of everyone by kicking their collective asses, and Chad felt kind of proud that he'd been the one to bring Ryan into the group.
He didn't really notice that Ryan, while accepted, wasn't friends with Troy or any of Troy's buddy's. It didn't seem important. Until Ryan made a friend of his own.
Kelsi was a little slip of an anthropologist. Chad didn't know how she and Ryan met, because anthro and botany didn't usually work together, but suddenly she and Ryan were joined at the hip. When he went to the greenhouse to talk to Ryan (or tempt him into a storage closet for illicit sex), Kelsi was there, perched on a crate and talking about how planting tobacco was important in old Crow ceremonies. When he went to meet Ryan for lunch, Kelsi was there, joining Ryan in an impromptu show tune duet in the middle of the mess.
At first, Chad smiled when he saw them together. He hadn't thought about it much, but Ryan hadn't made any close friends other than Chad. It was good that Ryan was finally settling in. He kept on smiling right up until Ryan and Kelsi started whispering and giggling and disappearing for hours at a time.
Walking to dinner after the third time they‘d disappeared together, Chad casually asked Ryan what he and Kelsi were up to. Ryan said, "Nothing." But he blushed, and for all that he looked innocent, Ryan didn't blush easily.
Chad would have asked more questions, but Ryan slid a hand up Chad's chest and stroked it along his collarbone. "You're not that hungry, are you?" Ryan asked.
Maybe Chad couldn't take Dr. McKay or Dr. Zelenka in an IQ death match, but he was smart enough to know how to respond to that.
Ryan was amazingly good at distraction, and Chad forgot about Ryan and Kelsi's secret until the next time they disappeared. They were supposed to meet Chad for a movie night, but he wound up sitting there along, watching the DVD menu screen for The Fast and the Furious over and over. Finally, Chad shut it off and went searching. He cursed the fact that off-duty personnel weren't required to wear their radios. It would have made tracking much easier if he could cave just radioed Ryan and demanded to know where he was.
There was no one in Ryan's room, and no one in Kelsi's, so Chad had to think hard about where else they might be. He checked the mess, Ryan's lab, and Kelsi's office. Since they also hadn't been in the lounge where they'd all planned to watch the movie, Chad was out of ideas. He started wandering idly, sticking his head around corners and into empty rooms. When he came to a fork in the hallway, he closed his eyes and spun around, feeling ridiculous. Apparently, the gods of spinning and guessing weren't with him, because he was pointing at a wall when he opened his eyes.
Chad was feeling downright grumpy when he headed back to his room. Halfway there, he heard a familiar giggle coming from one of the balconies. He stepped out the door to the balcony, and sure enough. There were Ryan and Kelsi, leaning against the railing and against each other, watching the waves surging around Atlantis.
"Really, Kelsi," Ryan was saying. "You're beautiful. And fun. I never met anyone like you before."
Kelsi rested her head on Ryan's shoulder. "You're pretty great, too," she said. Ryan wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and they stared out at the ocean together.
Chad left.
He felt ill. Confused and ill. Confused, ill, and angry. What the hell was that? Who thought it was fine to ditch their boyfriend and hang all over some girl?
Chad went back to his room. The DVD from the abortive movie night was sitting on the bed where he'd left it before beginning his search, and he threw it at the wall. The stupid thing didn't even break, just slid down the wall and hit the floor.
He went to bed.
He didn't get much sleep, and he wasn't in the mood to see Ryan sitting at their usually table in the mess at breakfast. Silently, Chad got his tray and sat down. Ryan reached over to steal part of his muffin, and Chad nearly snarled at him.
"Whoa. Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Ryan said. In Chad's opinion, there was pretty much never a good excuse to use that phrase, but especially not the morning after standing him up. Especially, especially not the morning after standing him up to snuggle with someone else.
"Well, someone wasn't there to see what side of the bed I got up on. In fact, someone wasn't there to see what side of the bed I went to sleep on, or what side of the couch I watched the movie on," Chad said. He was making an effort to keep his voice down, but something in his tone must have betrayed his anger, because the people at the table next to them were staring.
Ryan froze. "The movie? I forgot about the movie. Crap, I'm sorry." He gave Chad a hopeful smile, "Let me make it up to you?"
"I don't know. Can you pry yourself away from Kelsi long enough to make it up to me?" Chad asked bitterly. Ryan scrunched his face in confusion, and Chad said, "I went looking for you guys last night, and I saw you out on the balcony."
Ryan's eyes went wide. "No, no," he said, putting a hand on Chad's arm. "I was just -"he looked around the mess shiftily and lowered his voice to a whisper, "I was just helping her out. She's got a crush on Lieutenant Cadman. I've been helping her figure out how to ask her out."
Chad felt a trickle of relief at the assurance, but it didn't do much to quell the frustrated hurt in his belly. "That's not the point," Chad said. "I mean, yeah, I'm glad you weren't sneaking off with Kelsi to have hot, straight sex, but you were still sneaking off with Kelsi."
"What do you want me to do?" Ryan asked sharply, sitting back and releasing Chad's arm. "Stop hanging out with her? Because that's not going to happen."
Chad would have loved to be mature enough to take a deep breath and talk things out with Ryan. That would have been great. But the fact was, he wasn't that mature, and if he had to look at the defiant set of Ryan's chin for one more minute, he was likely to throw a muffin at it. Glaring, Chad picked up his tray and left. When he turned in his tray, he got more satisfaction than he would admit to out of slamming it down so hard it shook the counter.
Chad was in a foul mood all day at work. Fortunately, the people in his lab were used to working with Dr. McKay and Dr. Kavanaugh (and even Dr. Zelenka could get pretty darned snippy), so no one got in his way. There was a data burst from Earth just after lunch, and Chad had a batch of emails from his parents. It was nice to hear about how they were doing, what was going in a place where no one ever turned into a blue bug-hybrid and the main topic of interest was who Chad's cousin DeShawna was dating, rather than how much of a solar system Dr. McKay really blew up.
By the time dinner rolled around, Chad thought maybe he'd calmed down enough to act like a grownup. He went to Ryan's room and stood uncomfortably at the door while he waited for it to open. When it did, Ryan stood there, red-eyed and pale. Chad frowned.
"Are you all right?" he asked. He hoped Ryan didn't look like this because of his argument with Chad, because Chad was certain this wouldn't be their last argument.
"I'm fine," Ryan said. He stepped back and waved Chad in. The blankets on the bed were twisted around into something that looked like a nest, with Ryan's laptop perched at one end. Chad peeked at the screen and saw that it was open to an email.
"Letters from home?" he asked lightly, sitting down far enough from the laptop that he couldn't read it. He was willing to snoop, but only so far.
"Sharpay," Ryan said, picking up the laptop and moving it to the desk. Chad nodded. Ryan had mentioned his sister a few times, usually as part of stories about crazy things he'd done in school.
"She doing okay?"
"Yeah, she's fine. She's good. She's dating a new guy, and he sounds nice," Ryan said. His words were cheerful, but he was wringing his hands together like he was washing them, the knuckled going white and pink every time he squeezed.
"Ryan. Ryan, hey," Chad said, standing up and going to him. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just … We're twins, you know?" Chad hadn't known. Ryan had never mentioned it. "I'm used to talking to her every day on the phone, getting text messages about her shoes or her dog. And now she's dating a guy that I never even met, that I never heard about before. How did that happen?"
"I think it probably happened when you moved to another galaxy," Chad said softly. He wrapped his arms loosely around Ryan's waist and drew him close enough that he could tip their foreheads together.
"Probably," Ryan agreed. He closed his eyes and just stood there, letting Chad comfort him. When he opened his eyes again, he said, "Are we okay now?"
Chad kept his hold on Ryan light and said, "No. Not really. It's not cool for you to just blow me off like I don't matter."
"You matter," Ryan protested.
"Then act like it. Act like I matter as much as who Kelsi has a crush on. Let me know when you guys have plans, and don't bail on me." His voice went tight as he talked. He was being a mature, rational grownup, but that didn't mean his feelings weren't hurt.
"Okay," Ryan said. He was quiet for a moment, looping his own arms just as loosely around Chad's neck. "But it goes both ways. When we have plans, you don't get to change them to suit whatever Troy suggests." Chad opened his mouth to protest that he always included Ryan, but Ryan shook his head."Bringing me along to a basketball game doesn't count as us doing something together."
Huh.
"Okay." Chad bent his head and pressed a kiss to Ryan's cheek. "Then we're good." He'd work on not feeling mad about Ryan and Kelsi taking off on him, but it wasn't something to dwell on now.
Ryan gave him a sad, serious look. "If we're good," he said. "Then why aren't you comforting me out of my homesickness?"
Chad laughed, but he pulled Ryan toward the bed and its nest of blankets. "I can do that," he said.
***
The tough thing about Atlantis - other than the terror of life-sucking aliens and the probability of dying in an accident caused by misunderstood technology - was that the people from the first wave didn't really accept the new people. Chad had been on Atlantis for more than three months, and he still felt like the new guy.
It's not like they went out of their way to exclude him, or anything. They just had a connection he didn't have. They spoke about past events in a shorthand he couldn't penetrate, and they laughed at odd remarks that didn't seem funny to anyone who hadn't been part of the first expedition. Often Chad could forget about it, but sometimes it smacked him in the face, and he felt like an outsider.
Like today. Today Dr. McKay had been grumbling about Ryan being in the lab again, muttering that this was a place for science, not flirting. It had been totally normal, and familiar enough that Chad was really feeling like part of things.
Then Dr. Kusanagi, who was usually quiet and meek, said, "It is very inappropriate. Don't they know that the shooting range is the place for such things?" And all of the scientists from the first wave had laughed while Dr. McKay went red.
Chad didn't get it.
He asked at lunch, but Ryan and Kelsi didn't understand, either. Troy looked knowing, but he just shrugged. "We went through a lot before you guys got here," he said. "And some things just aren't ours to tell."
Screw that. Chad got that they'd been through a lot, but it didn't mean he was oaky with feeling left out of half the jokes and more than half of the references people made. That night after dinner, he grabbed Ryan and said, "Come on. We're checking out the shooting range."
Ryan waggled his eyebrows and swung his hips a little more as he walked. "Oh? You plan on testing out whether it's the ‘place for such things'?"
"Maybe I do," Chad replied with a grin.
When they got to the shooting range, it was occupied, with the red warning light above the door lit to let them know that there was live fire. Chad was about to sigh and suggest they go back to his room (or Ryan's room, because Ryan's bed was mysteriously about twice the size of Chad's), when Ryan nudged him toward the next door down.
"Observation room," he said, pushing Chad toward the door. "They use it when they're doing evaluations." At Chad's surprised look, he said, "Kelsi's been talking to Lieutenant Cadman a lot. If there's one thing that woman will talk about, it's guns and explosives."
Chad followed Ryan into the observation room, which had one transparent wall, giving them a clear view of Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard firing at targets. After a moment, Colonel Sheppard lowered his sidearm and moved around behind Dr. McKay. When Dr. McKay ran out of ammo and lowered his weapon, Colonel Sheppard darted closer. Chad couldn't see what he did, but he heard Dr. McKay protest.
"That's not fair," he shouted.
"Your enemies aren't going to play fair, Rodney," Colonel Sheppard said in a reasonable voice.
"My enemies are hardly going to wait until I reload, and the rush up and tickle me," Dr. McKay said acerbically. Chad grinned.
"That's not the point. The point is, you didn't defend against it.
Dr. McKay rolled his eyes. "John," he said patiently, "Did it occur to you that I don't want to defend against you?"
Colonel Sheppard smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "It may have occurred to me, yes."
"Then maybe you should shut up."
"That occurred to me, too," Colonel Sheppard said. Apparently, his preferred method of shutting up was to stop his own mouth by nibbling on Dr. McKay's. Chad stared. When he looked over at Ryan, his eyes were just as large. Chad took one more glance through at the shooting range, where Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard were busy trying to devour each other's faces, and then he pointed Ryan toward the door.
Once outside, Ryan blinked several times and said, "Well."
Chad nodded, "Uh huh."
They didn't mention it to anyone, but the next time someone in the lab mentioned target practice, Chad snickered along with everyone else while Dr. McKay's face changed colors.
It was only one piece of mockery, but it made him feel like he belonged. He thought about these brilliant, taunting scientists, and the thrumming city they worked in. He thought about Ryan and Troy, and even Kelsi, and Chad thought, yeah. This could be home.
Author:allyndra
Fandom: High School Musical/Stargate: Atlantis (if you're unfamiliar with either fandom, I made a super short guide to who's who)
Pairing: Chad/Ryan (McKay/Sheppard, Kelsi/Laura Cadman)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 7, 396 words
Disclaimer: I don't own either of these ‘verses. Nor these galaxies, for that matter.
Summary: Atlantis was dangerous and far away, but Chad couldn't wait to go. He expected to love it, but he didn't expect it to become home.
Note: This is sally_simpson76's Secret Santa fic. It is absurdly late, and I'll spare you the dramatic retelling of why it took so long. I'm sorry for the delay, dear, and I hope you like it.
As it's now February, I'm also posting this to 14valentines. Today's topic is transgender issues, and you can read the essay here.
Chad never expected to make it to Atlantis. He was a good scientist, but when people thought of ‘the best and the brightest,' Chad wasn't the guy that came to mind. But the fact was, the best and the brightest weren't usually interested in signing on for a mission that reported the kind of mortality rates that Atlantis dealt with.
Chad was interested.
When he was a kid, Chad had dreamt of being a hero. An astronaut, a basketball star, the president. He hadn't dreamt of spending his days hunched over a lab table. So when he heard that Atlantis was recruiting, he wanted in. Sure he'd still spend his days hunched over a lab table, but it would be a lab table on another planet. It just didn't get cooler than that.
Chad put in his application. He signed even more confidentiality forms than he'd had to sign when he first came to Area 51, he gave his CV a makeover, and he tied his hair back so he'd look respectable for his interview. He probably needn't have bothered about the hair. Dr. McKay showed up in an old plaid shirt, with what looked like a smear of peanut butter on his chin, and he barely looked at Chad. He did, however, grill him for twenty minutes about the B minus he'd gotten in his undergrad.
It was a nerve-wracking interview. Dr. McKay didn't seem impressed by any of Chad's qualifications or research, but Chad couldn't read him very well; he couldn't tell if the slant of Dr. McKay's mouth was a smile or a frown. When it was over, Chad flew back to Nevada feeling weighed down by more than just his carry-on luggage.
So when he got the call two days later telling he had gotten the job, Chad was so surprised he nearly dropped the phone. He managed to recover enough to hang onto it and stammer his acceptance. As soon as the voice on the other end hung up, Chad jumped on the couch for five minutes straight.
He was going to Atlantis. He was so the man.
***
There wasn't time for much. The Daedalus was scheduled to leave in a week, and Chad couldn't exactly ask that an intergalactic spaceship wait because he didn't know what to pack. Once he knew he was going, it took Chad a remarkably short time to get everything in order. He broke the lease on his apartment and put most of his stuff in storage. Since he was going to Atlantis, he didn't have any trouble putting in his notice at work.
Chad spent a day packing, sorting through his clothes and personal belongings, trying to decide what was important enough to take, considering the strict limit on how much he could bring. He'd been told he would be issued uniforms, so he only needed to bring clothes for when he was off-duty. He also brought along his iPod, some books and movies, and a carefully deflated basketball. He was sure that all of the brain power in Atlantis could find a way to inflate it, even if they didn't have a pump.
For his last few days on Earth, Chad went to New Mexico to visit his parents. He spent the whole time dodging their questions about where his new contract with the military was taking him, and what he'd be doing there. He also tried to hide the way he was watching them, storing up memories for when he was far from home. Earth had resumed contact with Atlantis, but Chad knew that nothing was certain. He knew he might never come back.
He didn't start to get nervous until he got to Colorado. Cheyenne Mountain was imposing on a whole different level than Area 51, and Chad felt dwarfed by it, tiny in the maze of stark corridors and crowds of bustling people. He swallowed down his nerves, though, and followed the directions he'd been given to assemble with the other new members of the Atlantis expedition.
They were all gathered together in a large room that was probably used for storage most of the time. There was no good place for the Daedalus to land without letting the populace know way more about aliens and space travel than the government wanted them to know. So they had to stand here like sheep, waiting for the ship to transport them up. As he took his place with the others, Chad's stomach started to twist. He'd watched Star Trek. He knew what could happen when transporter beams went wrong.
An announcement came over the PA, telling them that they had five minutes before departure. The guy standing next to him swallowed audibly and said, "Well, at least I packed plenty of clean underwear."
Chad wanted to chuckle at the man's fear, but instead his mind started to race. He hadn't packed all that much clean underwear. He'd been so concerned with which witty t-shirts he should bring that he hadn't even considered how much underwear he would need. Would he have to get military issue underwear along with his uniforms? What was military underwear even like?
The man next to him spoke again, jarring Chad out of his ridiculous panic. "Hey, if I faint, will you pretend you knocked me out? Give me a little dignity?" he asked.
Chad snorted, grateful for the distraction. "I don't even know you," he said. "What would I use as an excuse for knocking you out?"
"I can be really annoying," the guy said earnestly.
Chad smiled. His stomach settled into something approximating its usual shape. "Sorry, man. You'll just have to take the shame of fainting. I can't get a rep as a bully on the first day."
"You're no fun," the man accused. He was pouting a bit, but it was clearly just for show. Chad thought maybe the silliness of their exchange had been as good for the other guy as it had been for him.
He was still smiling and looking at the man when world disappeared in a beam of light.
***
Space travel sounded amazing, but in practice it was really boring. The Daedalus, as cool as it was, felt a whole lot like a giant traveling hotel. With no room service. Chad thought that if they'd been traveling through regular space, he could have amused himself by watching the stars and planets pass by. Since they were in hyperspace, though, there wasn't even anything to see.
He spent as much time as he could loitering in engineering, trying to learn as much as he could about how the ship worked. Even after working in Area 51, the technology was impressive. Plus, they had an alien. Even if traveling on the ship was boring, aliens could never be less than cool.
When they kicked him out of engineering, he wandered the corridors of the ship. It was better than being cooped up in his room, staring at the walls and counting the days until they got to the Pegasus galaxy. He liked finding the parts of the ship where other people weren't working, the sections where he could pretend he was exploring instead of just getting in people's way.
He was in one of those deserted sections when a body careened into him, knocking him against the bulkhead. Chad's hands came up automatically to clutch at the person's shoulders as he tried to get his breath back. Once he felt stable, he shoved himself free and looked at who had knocked him down.
It was the guy he'd talked to in Cheyenne Mountain. "Sorry," the man said. "Sorry. I didn't expect anyone to be here."
"Which is why you were doing your best cannonball impression?"
The man rolled his eyes. "No, it's why I was dancing," he said sharply. He ran a hand through his hair, and then he started and scanned the floor around them until he spotted a flat brown cap lying a few feet away. He must have dropped it when he was attacking Chad through dance. Stooping, he grabbed it and popped it onto his head.
"Oh, of course. Dancing. How silly of me," Chad said.
"I like to dance," the man said. He shuffled through a quick jazz square. "It's relaxing. Don't you have any hobbies?"
Chad wrinkled his nose. "I play basketball," he said. "But there's nowhere to play on board."
"The hoop isn't really that portable, huh? Hey, it could be worse. You could bowl." The man smiled at him, and Chad was relieved to see that he had a completely dorky smile. It was reassuring, somehow. "I'm Ryan Evans. Botany."
"Chad Danforth. Physics and Engineering." It was just like college, when people had introduced themselves by major.
"You can't play basketball," Ryan said unnecessarily. "So what do you do for fun around here?"
Chad shrugged. "I've just been rambling around the ship," he said.
Ryan grinned. "Can I ramble with you? We can see how many ways we can find from the command deck to engineering before someone tells us to go away."
"Yeah, all right," Chad said. He was trying not to grin too widely, because he didn't need Ryan thinking about how dorky Chad's smile was.
It wasn't like he had anything better to do, anyway.
***
The very first thing the new scientists did on Atlantis, right after they'd stowed their gear in their assigned quarters, was have a security briefing. It was hosted Dr. Zelenka, and it primarily consisted of "Don't touch anything," repeated in different phrasing and intonations. Chad nodded and looked serious, but after the fourth repetition, he started imagining what the people around him would look like in drag.
He thought Dr. Zelenka would look pretty cool in platform heels and a sequined dress.
When the briefing was finally over, Ryan appeared at Chad's elbow, and Chad had to struggle not to snigger at the image of Ryan in a Carmen Miranda hat. When he was sure he could speak without laughing, Chad said, "Hey," and bumped his shoulder against Ryan's.
"Hey," Ryan said. He kept a straight face for a minute as a group of their fellow scientists streamed past them, but once they were alone he flashed Chad a bright smile. "We're on Atlantis," he said. "How cool is that?"
"Pretty damned cool," Chad agreed. He nudged Ryan with his shoulder again. "You wanna come with me to check out this Ancient lost city?"
"I could do that," Ryan said.
"Excellent," Chad said, running his hands together. "What are the chances that we could spontaneously discover the mess?"
"Let's find out. Oh, but can we stop by my room first?"
"Sure," Chad said with a shrug. "How come?" But he was already following Ryan down the hallway.
"I just need to grab my hat," Ryan said. A hat wasn't a bad idea. Ryan’s hair was kind of wild, like he'd been running his hands through it during the briefing. Either that, or Dr. Zelenka's hair had the power to influence the hair of everyone he spoke to, encouraging it to rebel. Chad hoped not; his own hair was rambunctious enough without bad influences.
"What's up with the hats?" Chad asked, dismissing thoughts of Dr. Zelenka's hair. In their time wandering around the Daedalus, he'd rarely seen Ryan without one. He'd actually been surprised to see Ryan bareheaded today, but he figured hats didn't really go with the uniform.
"I just …" Ryan shrugged and stopped in front of a door, swiping his hand over the crystals beside it. The door slid open. "I just like them." He ducked inside and came right back out, now wearing a soft blue hat. "I only had room to bring two," he said. He sounded sad. Not just a little bummed by how little room they'd had in their luggage, but really sad about his lack of hats. "I put the rest in storage."
Chad wanted to laugh at the idea of having enough hats to make storing them an issue, but he looked at Ryan's face and didn't. "Next time we're on Earth," he said. "You can get all your hats out and give me a fashion show."
Ryan's face lit up, and Chad to remind himself twice that it looked dorky. "Which way?" Chad asked.
Ryan closed his eyes and spun around in a circle. It wasn't quite a pirouette, but it definitely had flair. When he came to a halt, he lifted a hand and pointed in the direction he was facing. He opened his eyes and said, "That way."
***
They didn't manage to spontaneously find the mess on the first day, but they did find the armory, the ‘gate room, and three different training rooms. Finally, stomachs grumbling, they asked someone the way to the mess.
Three days later, Chad thought he could probably find his way to the mess blindfolded. There were still literally miles of corridors that he hadn't been down, but he'd been to the mess three times a day, every day, and he knew his way there from his room, his lab, and Ryan's lab.
At dinner on the third day, Chad eyed the food disapprovingly. "It's too normal," he told Ryan, who was standing behind him with a tray. "I thought there would be a bunch of weird, alien food." Instead, there was spaghetti, salad, and Jell-o cups. It was like being in his high school cafeteria all over again, only with fewer spirit banners.
"Poor Chad," Ryan said mockingly. "Forced to eat Earth food." He leaned forward and snagged a fruit out of a basket. It looked like an apple, but it was cylindrical, like it had been grown in a Pepsi can. He deposited it on Chad's tray with a smirk. "There. Extraterrestrial fruit. Enjoy."
Chad gave Ryan a mocking glare and led the way out to the tables. The cliquish groups of scientists and soldiers sitting in clumps around the room made it feel even more like high school. He spotted an empty table near a window, with a great view of the ocean. He was just sitting down when he heard a familiar laugh. It threw him, because he didn't know anyone here well enough for their laughs to be familiar. No one but Ryan, anyway, and he was sitting right next to him. Chad craned his next in the direction of the laugh and saw a back of someone's head, just as familiar as the laugh.
It couldn't be.
Chad stood up from the table and stepped around Ryan, walking toward the laugh and the head and Troy Bolton sitting in the middle of the mess in Atlantis. "Troy?" Chad said disbelievingly.
Troy's head snapped around, and he stared at Chad. "Chad? Oh my God, what are you doing here?"
"I just got in on the Daedalus," Chad said. He laughed. He had to laugh, it was too crazy. “What are you doing here? Last I heard, you joined the army or something, and then no one heard from you again. It was like you dropped off the face of the Earth. Literally, I guess."
Troy laughed to, standing up to grab Chad in a rough hug. "It was the Marines, but otherwise, yeah. That's pretty much how it happened. This is crazy."
Chad nodded frantically. "No kidding. I ran into Jason once in a hotel in Iowa, and I thought that was a hell of a coincidence."
Troy shook his head. "Man, I can't believe you're here." One of the men he'd been sitting with nudged him in the side, and Troy looked at his watch. "I have to go," he said. "My shift starts in five. But we've got to get together. Hey, we should play some time."
"I brought a ball," Chad said.
"Of course you did." Troy grinned at him, and his friend nudged him again. "I'll see you later."
Chad was almost dizzy with the weirdness of it when he walked back over to his table. He was excited to tell Ryan all about it, but when he got to the table by the window, Ryan was gone. Chad would think he had the wrong table, but there was still a tray sitting there, covered in spaghetti and bearing one cylindrical fruit. Chad frowned and picked up the tray. He put it away, still full of food, and bit into the fruit on his way out the door.
It tasted like celery.
***
Chad swiped his hand over the crystals by Ryan's door and listened to the chime. When the door slid open, Ryan was standing there, looking rumpled. He'd changed into a worn t-shirt and soft yoga pants. His head was bare, and his hair was tousled. For a heart stopping moment, Chad thought there must be someone in the room with Ryan, someone who had made him look that way. Then Ryan shifted to lean against the doorframe, and Chad saw the empty room behind him, the empty bed with mussed sheets.
He tried to tell himself he wasn't relieved. He wasn't very convincing.
"Hey," Ryan said, crossing his arms over his chest. "What's up?"
"No, what's up with you? I turned around, and you were gone, man." Chad was trying not to lose his temper, but really. What was up with that?
"I thought you were busy," Ryan said. He didn't sound upset, but his face had a strange, closed off look.
"I was just talking to someone," Chad said. He couldn't help feeling happy and excited about seeing Troy, even with Ryan acting weird. "My best friend from when we were kids is here. How trippin' is that?"
"Trippin'," Ryan agreed.
"Okay, you don't get to say that word anymore," Chad told him. "But seriously, what's up?"
Ryan tightened his arms so it looked almost like he was hugging himself. "I just thought you'd be busy for a while. With your friend."
"So you decided to go to bed?" Chad asked incredulously. "It's not even nine o'clock yet. You're a freak. And I didn't get to eat my dinner because I was hunting your freaky ass down."
Ryan's mouth curved in a reluctant smile. "Sorry. You think the cooks would let us go through the line a second time?"
"They better," Chad said. He gave Ryan a pointed look. "Now hurry up. I'm not waiting here for you all night."
Ryan hurried, which was a good thing. Because Chad didn't need Ryan knowing that he would have waited for him all night.
***
Dr. McKay didn't remember anyone's names. Like, if your name was ‘Royce,' chances were good you'd be called ‘Reese,' ‘Ross,' or ‘Renfield.' It was just the way he was. Most of the other scientists knew how much it bothered the new people to be forgotten by the man in charge, so after someone had their names especially mangled, there would be a brief period when everyone else in the lab called them by their proper name, in loud, clear voices.
It didn't happen that way for Chad. He didn't even get a mangled version of his name from Dr. McKay; he got called ‘The One with the Hair.' It probably wouldn't have bothered him too much, but then other people started referring to him the same way. Before long, everyone he worked with called him The One with the Hair, unless they were speaking directly to him. Chad even heard Dr. Weir call him that, once.
The only people who consistently referred to him by his actual name were Ryan, Troy, and Teyla. Ryan and Troy didn't count, and Teyla called everyone by their proper names and titles. Chad wasn't surprised in the least when he found out she'd been the leader of her people before she'd thrown in with the Lanteans. He'd put her up against the President any day of the week.
After a shift in which he'd heard himself called The One with the Hair seven times (he'd counted), Chad lay on his bed with his head hanging over the edge, so he could stare at his curls. Stupid curls. He usually liked his hair - otherwise he wouldn't go through all the trouble to take care of it - but that didn't mean he wanted to be defined by it.
When door chimed, Chad shouted, "Come in," without moving.
"Your head is going to explode from all the blood rushing to it," Ryan told him.
Chad rolled his eyes, even though it was probably less effective when he was upside down. "It's a good thing you're a botanist," he said, wriggling so his head was up on the bed. "You have a lousy grasp of how human bodies work."
Ryan grinned at him. "Oh, I have a fabulous knowledge of how human bodies work," he said. It sounded like a promise. Chad's face went hot. It was probably a delayed reaction from hanging upside down. Ryan sat down on the edge of the bed, and the stiff mattress shifted, making Chad roll toward him. "What's the matter?" Ryan asked.
"I think I need to shave my head," Chad said. "Everyone calls me The One with the Hair, and it sucks." He didn't care that he sounded like a sulky child.
"If you shave your head, everyone will call you The Bald Guy," Ryan said logically. He leaned across Chad, so he was looking down at him with his weight propped on one hand. "Besides, I like your hair." Ryan lifted the hand his free hand and touched Chad's hair. He didn't try to run his fingers through it, just lifted one long curl and slid his fingers down it, tugging gently until it bounced back. Chad shivered and instantly regretted it. There was no way Ryan could miss it when he was this close.
"You do?" Chad asked breathlessly. Which was as big a giveaway as the shivering. He could hit himself.
"I do," Ryan said solemnly. He dropped his hand to the bed so his weight was on both arms and slowly, slowly lowered himself until his face was inches away from Chad's. This close, his eyes should have looked really blue, but they were dark. Chad held himself still and waited, but Ryan wasn't moving.
It ought to have been easy to lift his head and close the tiny distance between himself and Ryan, but it was hard. He'd been keeping himself from kissing Ryan since the day they met; it was hard to decide that now it was okay, now he should do this, should risk this. Chad took a deep breath, knowing Ryan could feel it across his lips, and raised his head.
Chad thought - inasmuch as he was thinking anything - that since Ryan had waited for him to make the move, maybe Ryan was going to make him work for this. Maybe Ryan didn't want this as much as Chad did, and so he was fine with holding back. When Ryan melted down against Chad, pressing him to the mattress and meeting him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, Chad knew he wasn't holding anything back.
And when Ryan said his name in a long, low moan, Chad decided he didn't mind what the rest of Atlantis called him. Then he set about making Ryan say it again and again.
Chad's newfound Zen about his name worked for him for another week and a half, and then he didn't need it anymore. Colonel Sheppard's team brought Ronon Dex home from a mission. Most of the expedition seemed divided between fearing Ronon and admiring him, but Chad just smiled whenever he saw him.
With Ronon Dex around, Chad could never be The One with the Hair again.
***
Chad's parents had raised him to be respectful, so he felt a little guilty about the joy he got from antagonizing Dr. McKay, but Dr. McKay made it so easy. He could be driven to shouting and ranting by anything, from his chair being moved to differences of opinion on major theories.
It was fantastic.
There was an unofficial contest on Atlantis to see who could irritate Dr. McKay the most. Not because people hated him; for a man with an ego the size of Jupiter, Dr. McKay was surprisingly well liked. But they were stranded in a galaxy that had no Netflix. People had to make their own fun.
The current record holder was Dr. Kavanaugh, but no one really counted him. He could get anyone - anyone at all - to yell and shake their fists. The trick was to drive Dr. McKay nuts without irritating everyone else.
Chad had an unfair advantage. He had Ryan.
Ryan was a botanist, and as such, his very existence was generally good for several minutes of aggravated grumbling. If all Ryan did was sit quietly in the lab while Chad worked, it would have bothered Dr. McKay. But Ryan was Ryan, and that meant he never sat quietly. Ryan danced. Not constantly; he was capable of standing still. But that almost made it worse. You never knew when he was going to frown seriously and talk about the life cycles of the flora on the mainland, and when he was going to break into a jazz square.
Sometimes it would be a quick step-ball-change, and then he'd go back to acting like a normal person. But sometimes it was a dance, sweeping around the lab in complex patterns, picking up random objects to use as props, possibly grabbing a scientist to partner him for a verse or two.
Dr. McKay hated it. He glared suspiciously at Ryan every time he came into the lab. If Ryan's feet started tapping, or even twitching, Dr. McKay would pull his coffee, his laptop, and his research notes closer to him, as though to protect them from becoming accessories to Ryan's next performance. And when Ryan did start to dance, Dr. McKay would start to yell.
"Did you see a sign on the door proclaiming this an Arthur Miller Dance Studio?" he would shout. "No, because it's a physics lab. Where the physics happens."
On days when he really wanted to irritate Dr. McKay, Chad would pipe up with an argument about how dance was all about physics, really. It was usually good for another twenty minutes of disgruntled McKay.
It got to the point where Dr. McKay would rant about Ryan's dancing when Ryan wasn't even present. All Chad had to do was hum a little bit while he worked, and Dr. McKay would go off about discipline and respect and the scientific method. Chad didn't take him too seriously.
After all, Dr. McKay's friends were even worse. When Colonel Sheppard came into the lab, he had to be watched like a hawk to be sure he didn't walk off with an unclassified piece of Ancient tech. He didn't even mean to; he just picked the stuff up and wandered away with it the way most people did with ballpoint pens. (Although, since office supplies were harder to replenish on Atlantis, most people got pretty tetchy if you walked off with their pens, too.) Or sometimes Colonel Sheppard would start playing video games on one of the laptops they were using to run simulations.
Compared to that, Chad didn't think a little dancing was a big deal. And he liked the way Ryan looked when he launched into a soft shoe routine next to Chad's workstation. He looked … happy. Like he couldn't think of anywhere he'd rather be than the physics lab on Atlantis, talking to Chad and dancing to music no one else heard. Once in a while, it was enough to get Chad up and dancing with him, just to see Ryan's face light up in his stupid, glowing smile.
It didn't hurt that the only thing Dr. McKay hated worse than Ryan dancing in the lab was Ryan and Chad dancing in the lab.
***
Chad wasn't completely idiotic. He did eventually realize that Ryan was insecure about Chad's friendship with Troy. He was a little embarrassed that it took him three months to realize it, but whatever. He wasn't psychic.
Once he figured out that Ryan had issues with Troy, he made a point to include Ryan in more of his guys' nights. Ryan didn't like to play basketball, but Chad invited him to watch. When they got a baseball game together in the big, open courtyard near the center of the city, Ryan shocked the hell out of everyone by kicking their collective asses, and Chad felt kind of proud that he'd been the one to bring Ryan into the group.
He didn't really notice that Ryan, while accepted, wasn't friends with Troy or any of Troy's buddy's. It didn't seem important. Until Ryan made a friend of his own.
Kelsi was a little slip of an anthropologist. Chad didn't know how she and Ryan met, because anthro and botany didn't usually work together, but suddenly she and Ryan were joined at the hip. When he went to the greenhouse to talk to Ryan (or tempt him into a storage closet for illicit sex), Kelsi was there, perched on a crate and talking about how planting tobacco was important in old Crow ceremonies. When he went to meet Ryan for lunch, Kelsi was there, joining Ryan in an impromptu show tune duet in the middle of the mess.
At first, Chad smiled when he saw them together. He hadn't thought about it much, but Ryan hadn't made any close friends other than Chad. It was good that Ryan was finally settling in. He kept on smiling right up until Ryan and Kelsi started whispering and giggling and disappearing for hours at a time.
Walking to dinner after the third time they‘d disappeared together, Chad casually asked Ryan what he and Kelsi were up to. Ryan said, "Nothing." But he blushed, and for all that he looked innocent, Ryan didn't blush easily.
Chad would have asked more questions, but Ryan slid a hand up Chad's chest and stroked it along his collarbone. "You're not that hungry, are you?" Ryan asked.
Maybe Chad couldn't take Dr. McKay or Dr. Zelenka in an IQ death match, but he was smart enough to know how to respond to that.
Ryan was amazingly good at distraction, and Chad forgot about Ryan and Kelsi's secret until the next time they disappeared. They were supposed to meet Chad for a movie night, but he wound up sitting there along, watching the DVD menu screen for The Fast and the Furious over and over. Finally, Chad shut it off and went searching. He cursed the fact that off-duty personnel weren't required to wear their radios. It would have made tracking much easier if he could cave just radioed Ryan and demanded to know where he was.
There was no one in Ryan's room, and no one in Kelsi's, so Chad had to think hard about where else they might be. He checked the mess, Ryan's lab, and Kelsi's office. Since they also hadn't been in the lounge where they'd all planned to watch the movie, Chad was out of ideas. He started wandering idly, sticking his head around corners and into empty rooms. When he came to a fork in the hallway, he closed his eyes and spun around, feeling ridiculous. Apparently, the gods of spinning and guessing weren't with him, because he was pointing at a wall when he opened his eyes.
Chad was feeling downright grumpy when he headed back to his room. Halfway there, he heard a familiar giggle coming from one of the balconies. He stepped out the door to the balcony, and sure enough. There were Ryan and Kelsi, leaning against the railing and against each other, watching the waves surging around Atlantis.
"Really, Kelsi," Ryan was saying. "You're beautiful. And fun. I never met anyone like you before."
Kelsi rested her head on Ryan's shoulder. "You're pretty great, too," she said. Ryan wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and they stared out at the ocean together.
Chad left.
He felt ill. Confused and ill. Confused, ill, and angry. What the hell was that? Who thought it was fine to ditch their boyfriend and hang all over some girl?
Chad went back to his room. The DVD from the abortive movie night was sitting on the bed where he'd left it before beginning his search, and he threw it at the wall. The stupid thing didn't even break, just slid down the wall and hit the floor.
He went to bed.
He didn't get much sleep, and he wasn't in the mood to see Ryan sitting at their usually table in the mess at breakfast. Silently, Chad got his tray and sat down. Ryan reached over to steal part of his muffin, and Chad nearly snarled at him.
"Whoa. Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Ryan said. In Chad's opinion, there was pretty much never a good excuse to use that phrase, but especially not the morning after standing him up. Especially, especially not the morning after standing him up to snuggle with someone else.
"Well, someone wasn't there to see what side of the bed I got up on. In fact, someone wasn't there to see what side of the bed I went to sleep on, or what side of the couch I watched the movie on," Chad said. He was making an effort to keep his voice down, but something in his tone must have betrayed his anger, because the people at the table next to them were staring.
Ryan froze. "The movie? I forgot about the movie. Crap, I'm sorry." He gave Chad a hopeful smile, "Let me make it up to you?"
"I don't know. Can you pry yourself away from Kelsi long enough to make it up to me?" Chad asked bitterly. Ryan scrunched his face in confusion, and Chad said, "I went looking for you guys last night, and I saw you out on the balcony."
Ryan's eyes went wide. "No, no," he said, putting a hand on Chad's arm. "I was just -"he looked around the mess shiftily and lowered his voice to a whisper, "I was just helping her out. She's got a crush on Lieutenant Cadman. I've been helping her figure out how to ask her out."
Chad felt a trickle of relief at the assurance, but it didn't do much to quell the frustrated hurt in his belly. "That's not the point," Chad said. "I mean, yeah, I'm glad you weren't sneaking off with Kelsi to have hot, straight sex, but you were still sneaking off with Kelsi."
"What do you want me to do?" Ryan asked sharply, sitting back and releasing Chad's arm. "Stop hanging out with her? Because that's not going to happen."
Chad would have loved to be mature enough to take a deep breath and talk things out with Ryan. That would have been great. But the fact was, he wasn't that mature, and if he had to look at the defiant set of Ryan's chin for one more minute, he was likely to throw a muffin at it. Glaring, Chad picked up his tray and left. When he turned in his tray, he got more satisfaction than he would admit to out of slamming it down so hard it shook the counter.
Chad was in a foul mood all day at work. Fortunately, the people in his lab were used to working with Dr. McKay and Dr. Kavanaugh (and even Dr. Zelenka could get pretty darned snippy), so no one got in his way. There was a data burst from Earth just after lunch, and Chad had a batch of emails from his parents. It was nice to hear about how they were doing, what was going in a place where no one ever turned into a blue bug-hybrid and the main topic of interest was who Chad's cousin DeShawna was dating, rather than how much of a solar system Dr. McKay really blew up.
By the time dinner rolled around, Chad thought maybe he'd calmed down enough to act like a grownup. He went to Ryan's room and stood uncomfortably at the door while he waited for it to open. When it did, Ryan stood there, red-eyed and pale. Chad frowned.
"Are you all right?" he asked. He hoped Ryan didn't look like this because of his argument with Chad, because Chad was certain this wouldn't be their last argument.
"I'm fine," Ryan said. He stepped back and waved Chad in. The blankets on the bed were twisted around into something that looked like a nest, with Ryan's laptop perched at one end. Chad peeked at the screen and saw that it was open to an email.
"Letters from home?" he asked lightly, sitting down far enough from the laptop that he couldn't read it. He was willing to snoop, but only so far.
"Sharpay," Ryan said, picking up the laptop and moving it to the desk. Chad nodded. Ryan had mentioned his sister a few times, usually as part of stories about crazy things he'd done in school.
"She doing okay?"
"Yeah, she's fine. She's good. She's dating a new guy, and he sounds nice," Ryan said. His words were cheerful, but he was wringing his hands together like he was washing them, the knuckled going white and pink every time he squeezed.
"Ryan. Ryan, hey," Chad said, standing up and going to him. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just … We're twins, you know?" Chad hadn't known. Ryan had never mentioned it. "I'm used to talking to her every day on the phone, getting text messages about her shoes or her dog. And now she's dating a guy that I never even met, that I never heard about before. How did that happen?"
"I think it probably happened when you moved to another galaxy," Chad said softly. He wrapped his arms loosely around Ryan's waist and drew him close enough that he could tip their foreheads together.
"Probably," Ryan agreed. He closed his eyes and just stood there, letting Chad comfort him. When he opened his eyes again, he said, "Are we okay now?"
Chad kept his hold on Ryan light and said, "No. Not really. It's not cool for you to just blow me off like I don't matter."
"You matter," Ryan protested.
"Then act like it. Act like I matter as much as who Kelsi has a crush on. Let me know when you guys have plans, and don't bail on me." His voice went tight as he talked. He was being a mature, rational grownup, but that didn't mean his feelings weren't hurt.
"Okay," Ryan said. He was quiet for a moment, looping his own arms just as loosely around Chad's neck. "But it goes both ways. When we have plans, you don't get to change them to suit whatever Troy suggests." Chad opened his mouth to protest that he always included Ryan, but Ryan shook his head."Bringing me along to a basketball game doesn't count as us doing something together."
Huh.
"Okay." Chad bent his head and pressed a kiss to Ryan's cheek. "Then we're good." He'd work on not feeling mad about Ryan and Kelsi taking off on him, but it wasn't something to dwell on now.
Ryan gave him a sad, serious look. "If we're good," he said. "Then why aren't you comforting me out of my homesickness?"
Chad laughed, but he pulled Ryan toward the bed and its nest of blankets. "I can do that," he said.
***
The tough thing about Atlantis - other than the terror of life-sucking aliens and the probability of dying in an accident caused by misunderstood technology - was that the people from the first wave didn't really accept the new people. Chad had been on Atlantis for more than three months, and he still felt like the new guy.
It's not like they went out of their way to exclude him, or anything. They just had a connection he didn't have. They spoke about past events in a shorthand he couldn't penetrate, and they laughed at odd remarks that didn't seem funny to anyone who hadn't been part of the first expedition. Often Chad could forget about it, but sometimes it smacked him in the face, and he felt like an outsider.
Like today. Today Dr. McKay had been grumbling about Ryan being in the lab again, muttering that this was a place for science, not flirting. It had been totally normal, and familiar enough that Chad was really feeling like part of things.
Then Dr. Kusanagi, who was usually quiet and meek, said, "It is very inappropriate. Don't they know that the shooting range is the place for such things?" And all of the scientists from the first wave had laughed while Dr. McKay went red.
Chad didn't get it.
He asked at lunch, but Ryan and Kelsi didn't understand, either. Troy looked knowing, but he just shrugged. "We went through a lot before you guys got here," he said. "And some things just aren't ours to tell."
Screw that. Chad got that they'd been through a lot, but it didn't mean he was oaky with feeling left out of half the jokes and more than half of the references people made. That night after dinner, he grabbed Ryan and said, "Come on. We're checking out the shooting range."
Ryan waggled his eyebrows and swung his hips a little more as he walked. "Oh? You plan on testing out whether it's the ‘place for such things'?"
"Maybe I do," Chad replied with a grin.
When they got to the shooting range, it was occupied, with the red warning light above the door lit to let them know that there was live fire. Chad was about to sigh and suggest they go back to his room (or Ryan's room, because Ryan's bed was mysteriously about twice the size of Chad's), when Ryan nudged him toward the next door down.
"Observation room," he said, pushing Chad toward the door. "They use it when they're doing evaluations." At Chad's surprised look, he said, "Kelsi's been talking to Lieutenant Cadman a lot. If there's one thing that woman will talk about, it's guns and explosives."
Chad followed Ryan into the observation room, which had one transparent wall, giving them a clear view of Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard firing at targets. After a moment, Colonel Sheppard lowered his sidearm and moved around behind Dr. McKay. When Dr. McKay ran out of ammo and lowered his weapon, Colonel Sheppard darted closer. Chad couldn't see what he did, but he heard Dr. McKay protest.
"That's not fair," he shouted.
"Your enemies aren't going to play fair, Rodney," Colonel Sheppard said in a reasonable voice.
"My enemies are hardly going to wait until I reload, and the rush up and tickle me," Dr. McKay said acerbically. Chad grinned.
"That's not the point. The point is, you didn't defend against it.
Dr. McKay rolled his eyes. "John," he said patiently, "Did it occur to you that I don't want to defend against you?"
Colonel Sheppard smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "It may have occurred to me, yes."
"Then maybe you should shut up."
"That occurred to me, too," Colonel Sheppard said. Apparently, his preferred method of shutting up was to stop his own mouth by nibbling on Dr. McKay's. Chad stared. When he looked over at Ryan, his eyes were just as large. Chad took one more glance through at the shooting range, where Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard were busy trying to devour each other's faces, and then he pointed Ryan toward the door.
Once outside, Ryan blinked several times and said, "Well."
Chad nodded, "Uh huh."
They didn't mention it to anyone, but the next time someone in the lab mentioned target practice, Chad snickered along with everyone else while Dr. McKay's face changed colors.
It was only one piece of mockery, but it made him feel like he belonged. He thought about these brilliant, taunting scientists, and the thrumming city they worked in. He thought about Ryan and Troy, and even Kelsi, and Chad thought, yeah. This could be home.