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Christmas fic, ish.
This is entirely the fault of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
out_there, who failed to tell me that this was a really dumb idea.
Ok, fine, no.
“Colonel Sheppard!”
John’s heading down the hallway, heading towards the gateroom, back to Atlantis after his two weeks mandated leave. When he hears his name, though, he stops, looks back, and then leans up against the wall to wait for her to catch up to him. It’s Colonel Carter, blonde and professional, and she’s carrying a box as she hurries up to him.
John thinks about things: about this leave, and how quiet it’s been, how relaxing, how godawful-stupid-boring, how much he wishes he’d had a good excuse to stay back on Atlantis, where everything is right and logical and easy. John’s a pretty easy-going sort of guy, always has been, and he wasn’t surprised when he did just fine in Atlantis. He’s always been the sort of person for whom one place is pretty much the same as the next, provided he has food and a place to sleep and something to think about.
Things didn’t start getting weird until he stepped through the gate, still snickering at Rodney’s offer to infect him with something “non-lethal, but itchy enough to keep you here—remember those strawberry-monkey things? There’s one in bio-3; the cage is locked, of course, but that’s hardly…” Here, in Colorado, he realized that not only was Atlantis easy, fine, good—it was easier, more than fine, the best place for him. In some crazy fucked-up way, Atlantis was home, now, in a way no other place had ever managed. And Earth? Earth, he’d realized, was really not all it was cracked up to be, and that didn’t particularly bother him.
John thinks about these things, and about Carter, the look on her face, devious and brilliant and more than a little scary. He notices the box in her hands, the spring in her step. He thinks about life on this second-rate runner-up planet, and about McKay, and about the way the sun looks from the catwalks over the jumper bay, late in the afternoon.
This is going nowhere good, he thinks, but he doesn’t mind nearly as much as he knows he should.
“What can I do for you, Colonel Carter?” He smiles at her, and then smiles again as she completely fails to notice it—or, no, it’s better: she notices his smile, catalogues it, considers the situation, and dismisses it, all while checking the hallway and leaning in toward him. She’s good.
“Well, it’s like this. You know Rodney McKay?”
Do I ever, he thinks, and walks with her as she outlines her plan. For a second-string planet, it’s still got some neat people.
More to follow--I just had to stop there, because sleep is one of those things I really, really ought to do more often, especially since I'll probably stop altogether when I go back to school in (ohshit) a week.
out_there, who failed to tell me that this was a really dumb idea.Ok, fine, no.
“Colonel Sheppard!”
John’s heading down the hallway, heading towards the gateroom, back to Atlantis after his two weeks mandated leave. When he hears his name, though, he stops, looks back, and then leans up against the wall to wait for her to catch up to him. It’s Colonel Carter, blonde and professional, and she’s carrying a box as she hurries up to him.
John thinks about things: about this leave, and how quiet it’s been, how relaxing, how godawful-stupid-boring, how much he wishes he’d had a good excuse to stay back on Atlantis, where everything is right and logical and easy. John’s a pretty easy-going sort of guy, always has been, and he wasn’t surprised when he did just fine in Atlantis. He’s always been the sort of person for whom one place is pretty much the same as the next, provided he has food and a place to sleep and something to think about.
Things didn’t start getting weird until he stepped through the gate, still snickering at Rodney’s offer to infect him with something “non-lethal, but itchy enough to keep you here—remember those strawberry-monkey things? There’s one in bio-3; the cage is locked, of course, but that’s hardly…” Here, in Colorado, he realized that not only was Atlantis easy, fine, good—it was easier, more than fine, the best place for him. In some crazy fucked-up way, Atlantis was home, now, in a way no other place had ever managed. And Earth? Earth, he’d realized, was really not all it was cracked up to be, and that didn’t particularly bother him.
John thinks about these things, and about Carter, the look on her face, devious and brilliant and more than a little scary. He notices the box in her hands, the spring in her step. He thinks about life on this second-rate runner-up planet, and about McKay, and about the way the sun looks from the catwalks over the jumper bay, late in the afternoon.
This is going nowhere good, he thinks, but he doesn’t mind nearly as much as he knows he should.
“What can I do for you, Colonel Carter?” He smiles at her, and then smiles again as she completely fails to notice it—or, no, it’s better: she notices his smile, catalogues it, considers the situation, and dismisses it, all while checking the hallway and leaning in toward him. She’s good.
“Well, it’s like this. You know Rodney McKay?”
Do I ever, he thinks, and walks with her as she outlines her plan. For a second-string planet, it’s still got some neat people.
More to follow--I just had to stop there, because sleep is one of those things I really, really ought to do more often, especially since I'll probably stop altogether when I go back to school in (ohshit) a week.