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sga_flashficTitle : Not Quite Witchcraft
Fandom : Stargate Atlantis
Disclaimer : I wish. :(
Rating : PG, I guess. Or maybe PG-13. I don't know. Sheppard doesn't get a blowjob.
Pairing : McKay/Sheppard.
Summary : McKay gets flower(s)!
Notes : Harlequin Challenge fic. I've never read one myself, so when I saw this book lying around I grabbed it, read the back, and declared, 'Ah hah!' It turned out 100% different and the impending comparison between John's SOOPERATA-gene and magic never happened.
Beta : With love to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sdrana, who won't fix my plots for me, but will make sure I don't sound like an illiterate when sounding like an idiot.
When McKay awoke, he rolled over to find a blood red flower on his pillow, a glimmering needle stuck through its heart. Its fragrance was heady, rich – and allergen ridden.
McKay’s sinuses immediately clogged up, and he sneezed several times in a row before he could scramble away. His eyes watered as he fumbled for a tissue. Blowing his nose, he glared wetly at the innocent flower. It lay on his pillow, looking like nothing so much as a mutant, possibly murderous, rose.
If someone felt like playing romantic, they could at least try not to kill him.
Just as he was trying to figure out what to do with it, his door chimed. “What?” he snapped irritably.
“Okay,” came the slow drawl from outside. “I can just come back later.”
McKay thought the door open, and when that didn’t work, thought it open harder. It slid aside to reveal Sheppard leaning against the doorframe, looking slightly rumpled and very unmilitary.
“What?” McKay repeated, a little less sharp this time as he eyed Sheppard with a mental litany of, Good, oh good. He shook his head slightly.
“Thought you might need some help with something.”
“Really? How’d you know, because actually—”
“Actually, no,” Sheppard said. McKay deflated slightly, theories about the city itself realizing his importance in maintaining its well-being and therefore alerting Sheppard to his predicament promptly punctured. “You’re late for the meeting and you didn’t answer your radio,” Sheppard continued.
McKay noticed the gun at Sheppard’s side, that ol’ P-90 so ubiquitous that he tended to take it for granted. He felt vaguely reassured. The comfort he drew from a big bad gun didn’t disturb him as much as it probably should have, were he a proper Canadian. If he was ever late for meetings and slept through someone’s attempt to contact him, the military would suit up and trot after him. It was almost as good as having Atlantis herself look out for him; he had Atlantis’s prodigal son.
How nice.
“Yes, well, you can help me anyway. Make that flower go away and find out who sent it, would you? I think they may have been trying to kill me. Allergies. I’d do it, but I might react badly to touching it. I’m very sensitive to these sorts of things, after all.”
“Yes.” McKay thought Sheppard agreed rather too readily and eyed him narrowly. “Very sensitive. Real, in-touch-with-his-feelings, sensitive and modern guy,” Sheppard continued, earning the glare McKay leveled at him.
When he arched his eyebrows, McKay reluctantly stepped aside and let him into the room, but not without a sharp, “Very funny. Chop, chop. We’re late.”
Sheppard picked up the flower, eyed the pin thoughtfully, and pocketed it before tossing the flower in the waste disposal.
The meeting went well enough, although as it progressed McKay grew increasingly distracted and increasingly less likely to make sarcastic asides, a combination that was worrisome. Sheppard, with Weir’s backing, sent him into Beckett’s clutches – “Great! He’ll bleed me to death. You’ll see. He’d be using leeches if he could. You better figure this out and come tell me.” – and then went out to do as he was told.
Sheppard thought about turning the chore over to Bates, but considering his lingering antipathy regarding Teyla, he didn’t want to give Bates any chance to go after Ronon. Teyla and Ronon were supposed to be going off world tomorrow, and given half a chance, Sheppard thought Bates would gladly shove both of them in a holding cell.
That might have been a trifle unfair of him, but Sheppard ignored the inner voice suggesting that and shouldered the burden of Rodney’s pet investigation. He figured it no less than his due for wanting the mission’s biggest hypochondriac on his team.
“So, uh, why are you sending McKay flowers?” Sheppard set his tray down next to Ronon, who looked at him blankly.
When the silence continued for a good five count after his question, Sheppard cleared his throat and withdrew the pin from his pocket, a pin marked by the same design tattooed on Ronon’s neck. “Huh,” was all Ronon said, however. Sheppard was mildly disappointed.
“Huh?” Sheppard echoed, attempting to draw him out.
“Didn’t send anything.”
“But your—” Sheppard gestured to Ronon’s neck.
“My pin, yes. Lost it a while back. Still have the matching one. Big city. Who knows who found it?”
Ronon regarded Sheppard levelly over the meatish surprise and Sheppard’s questions suddenly dried up. He had no reason to lie, and if he were lying, Atlantis would tell him. “Well, alright then. You’ll have it back in a few days,” he said, trying very hard to summon up the confidence to sound as if he had some notion of what he was doing. Ronon’s narrow look was less than reassuring regarding his success on that count.
They finished eating in mutual silence, and Sheppard went off to practice his witchcraft on the city sensors. Atlantis always told him what he wanted to know.
Four hours later, Sheppard felt snubbed. Atlantis was behaving like a sulky woman, refusing to tell him what was wrong and brushing aside his inquiries. While it was rather more forthcoming than Ronon, it forthcame with all the wrong things: old flood damage, places in need of repair, low stores, broken windows. He ended up snarling, “Well, fine then!” to the console and stalking off, which earned him a few knowing looks from the regular staff in the control room.
What good was his nigh-mystical super-ATA gene when it didn’t even work? He didn’t expect to have to wine and dine a computer to get answers out of it. He headed down to the science labs; the computers there had always seemed much more sensible.
“So, have you figured out who is trying to kill me yet?”
Ah, yes. Pro: a more straightforward, less close your eyes and intuit, interface. Con: McKay, when not sleeping, and sometimes even when he was sleeping, usually skulked about the physics lab.
“No. Having trouble getting the city to let me tap into the sensor logs. So did Beckett release you?”
McKay looked up sharply. “Really?” He turned from startled to smug. “And here I thought the city just rolled over whenever you batted your eyes at it.”
Sheppard not-smiled at him and took the console next to him. “Funny. Beckett?” he asked again. McKay seemed better, less prone to drifting off and focused on what he was saying.
“Oh, he let me go,” McKay said evasively. “He said I had elevated neurotransmitter levels but nothing dangerous and there was a great deal of phenylethylamine in my blood, which is odd, since it’s been a long time since anyone’s fed me chocolate dipped strawberries.”
McKay’s eyes went momentarily fuzzy. “Mmm. Chocolate and strawberries.”
“Strawberries? Aren’t you allerg—”
“Hah hah. No. And yes, I know they have a histamine compound. Shut up and save me.”
Sheppard rolled his eyes and dropped his drawl for a bad accent: “Work with me if you want to live.”
“Oh, how very cliché of you.”
A half-hour later, McKay and Sheppard both stared at the screen in disbelief.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Not possible.”
“Apparently, possible.”
Sheppard slowly began to smirk. He leaned against the desk, hip resting on the warm alloy, invading McKay’s personal space. Sheppard leaned over him, smirking widely at the tiny image on the screen. “Somebody liiikes you.”
McKay shifted irritably, his shoulder brushing against Sheppard. “What are you, twelve? It happens. But this—”
‘This’ was a tall, hairy Marine of the sort who put Ronon to shame for weight, width, and body hair.
“Uh huh.” The sensor logs had been tampered with, it turned out, but only in the most rudimentary fashion. McKay considered breaking a “grunt code” barely worth his notice, and siccing the Ancient computers on retrieving the partial files took no more than a few minutes.
In silence, they watched the video record from the past week’s exploratory teams. One had gone out to investigate one of the newly discovered xenobotany labs in more detail. ‘This’ detached from the team to pluck one of the flowers, which, Sheppard had to admit, was sort of pretty.
McKay didn’t seem to care if it was pretty. “Oh, very smart. No way that could come back to liquefy his brain.”
They dug through the logs, tracking his movements. The previous night, after a bit of solitary time – “Oh my god. I … oh god. Do not need to see that. Skip it. Skip faster!” – he pulled a pin from his pocket and stuck it through the flower. “What the hell is that? Seriously? Why the pin?”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to ask him,” Sheppard said.
So they asked him:
The Marine, Erics, admitted to having picked the flower because he wanted to give it to McKay. That didn’t seem sinister, but it turned out that Erics had a bit of a green thumb and had remembered seeing it in an Ancient database when he had been researching native plant life.
The pollen of the flower, on first exposure to air, induced a rush of endorphins and phenylethylamine which lead to the raised monoamine levels: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. “Wow. Ultimate aphrodisiac,” Sheppard had said.
McKay thought it two steps from rather a twisted rape drug, but didn’t care to say so. Either way, Erics had not counted on Sheppard arriving first, post-flower. Now cooling his heels in the holding cell, he glared, a lot, at Sheppard who smirked brightly back. McKay stood near the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, and avoiding Erics’ longing looks. Sheppard finally finished making his report to the Marine on duty and left, a hand under McKay’s elbow to prod him out the door.
“That was surreal.”
“Yes. Bizarre,” McKay agreed, allowing Sheppard to bully him toward the med lab. He and Sheppard made the last turn and Beckett stood waiting, a big, long needle in hand. As McKay stared at it, horrified, Beckett dropped Sheppard a wink. McKay scrabbled for and clung to Sheppard’s arm, only reluctantly allowing himself to be separated from Sheppard for examination.
It turned out no needles were actually required, making the handholding unnecessary. Sheppard revised his estimate of Beckett’s innate sadism. McKay still didn’t let go, however, until Beckett pulled them apart and set to work. Weir joined Sheppard outside a moment later, right in time to hear Beckett say, “Hmm.”
That rarely heralded good news. Sheppard and Weir exchanged a look then stepped closer, both peeking around the privacy screen. “What?”
“Well, the lingering chemical traces from the flower appeared to have been stimulating the production of oxytocin and vasopressin but the levels have begun to fade—Oh! Back up.” Beckett stared down at the screen of the Ancient scanner. The medical device was one of the few items that Beckett liked. It almost made his ATA gene worthwhile: the scanner was practical, useful, and it didn’t shoot people.
“Is that dangerous?” Weir asked.
“No, not really. They appear to be leveling off again.” Beckett frowned for a moment longer before his lips suddenly twitched. “Oh.”
He looked up and looked at McKay more seriously, smirk fading as whatever thought that had struck him slowly developed into a reasoned hypothesis. “Oh.”
“What? What? Oh my god, I’m going to die, aren’t I? I knew it. What is it? Is it a tumo—?”
As McKay babbled in a half-panic, Beckett turned to regard Weir and Sheppard. “A moment.”
Sheppard held up his hands in surrender as Weir folded hers behind her back, but they both stepped back. Just before leaving, Sheppard saw McKay reach out for him, his look imploring, voice a whine. “Colonel Shep—” And then the door closed. Barely seconds later, the sound of McKay’s shouted, “What?!” penetrated even that thick door.
Beckett stuck his head out. “I’ll need to keep him here a day or two. It’d be best if there were no visitors.”
The next morning, a voice sounded in Sheppard’s ear. “You have to get me out of here.” He started, earning an odd look from the airman he was reviewing stores with. McKay continued, “Seriously. I’m fine.”
Sheppard very calmly said, “No,” a reply to both the sergeant and the voice in his ear, and got on with his work.
Mid-afternoon, McKay contacted him again. “I know I said I usually like hospital food, but somehow Carson managed to ruin it. Can you bring me something? Please?”
“No. No visitors.”
At nightfall, McKay contacted him to curse him roundly and broke off with what sounded suspiciously like a sob. Sheppard settled down to sleep and tried very hard not to think about it.
The second day, McKay whined about the food at lunch and complained about vampiric doctors in the evening. He no longer seemed to expect any reply. Sheppard seriously considered leaving off his radio or asking that Beckett keep McKay away from all radios, but he rather imagined the instant one or the other took place, some drastic emergency would make such a thing foolish. He’d suffered worse than McKay’s nagging.
The third day, Sheppard went around subtly on edge, at every moment expecting McKay to interrupt him over the radio. As the day wore on, he began to relax only to have McKay radio him at nightfall with, “We are so over.” Sheppard stared in the direction of the infirmary, bewildered, and had very weird dreams that night.
The fourth day after the incident with Erics, Beckett opened the morning meeting by saying, “I think McKay ought to be better now. I’d like you to come down later,” with a nod at Weir and Sheppard. Sheppard, antsy to have him back with an off-world mission coming up, barely managed to sit through the rest of the meeting. Afterward, he led the way, breezing through the halls on the way to the medical lab.
“Oh thank god!” McKay launched himself at Sheppard and clung to his arm. He murmured something, low and soft, that sounded an awful lot like, “My hero.”
“Er.” Sheppard looked down at McKay, who looked up at him adoringly, then over at Beckett. “Doctor…?”
“Ah, one moment.” Beckett had the grace to look slightly sheepish as he went to fetch a needle. “Just testing a theory. Here we go, now.”
McKay clung to Sheppard’s hand; Sheppard clung to his sanity. McKay was making little breathy noises against the skin of his throat.
“That’s it.” Beckett nodded encouragingly, plainly expecting Sheppard to keep McKay distracted. Rather, McKay kept Sheppard distracted, plying his lips with light kisses. Distantly, Sheppard heard Weir choke off a laugh. He’d deal with her later. Something unpleasant in her cereal, perhaps.
Neither of them noticed when Beckett injected McKay – McKay was too busy groping Sheppard and Sheppard was too busy keeping McKay from dropping to his knees, given that they were standing in front of Weir and Beckett – but both noticed when the drug went into effect.
Sheppard noticed as McKay’s cheeks lost their flush and his pupils slowly shifted back to a proper dilation. McKay noticed that he suddenly realized pinning Sheppard to the bed was, perhaps, a bad idea.
He also stopped kissing him.
“Eh heh,” Sheppard said.
“Uhm,” McKay said.
They disentangled. McKay pointed a finger at Weir, barely containing a smirk, and Beckett, who did not bother to hide his smile. “We’re never mentioning this again.”
“Of course not,” Beckett said, his voice soothing.
“Didn’t see a thing,” Weir said, her eyes laughing.
“And your experimental methods suck.”
“Hey!” Beckett protested.
“He has a point,” Sheppard countered, looking thoroughly molested. His hair was so rumpled it almost looked orderly.
“I hate you all,” McKay said, straightening with care. He stabbed a glare at Sheppard. “And you never visited!”
“I—er. What?”
“After taking advantage of my drugged state—”
“What?!”
“—and letting me waste away—”
“What?!”
“—you never even visited, just abandoned me to—”
“Beckett, are you sure he’s fine?
“Uhm, he should be, Colonel.”
“—this man’s cruel clutches without a thought of what it did to me—”
“The neurotransmitter levels are normal, and the PEA levels are down.”
“Of course they are, you idiot,” McKay said, breaking of on his rant to interrupt Beckett. “Just because I no longer have the overwhelming urge to swoon, flutter, faint—”
“Don’t you mean pass out?”
“Hah hah. Not talking to you, Sheppard. As I was saying – and generally crawl all over Sheppard here doesn’t mean I don’t have a perfectly legitimate reason to be aggravated by the callous way he treated my affections.”
“This is going to be one of those reports, isn’t?” Weir asked Beckett, as Sheppard and McKay promptly descended into petty squabbling. She wasn’t sure how to respond to the fact that a prolonged round of flower-induced public tonsil-tonguing seemed unable to disturb their equilibrium. When they continued bickering off and on through the last of Beckett’s exam and walked rather too closely on their way out the door, she mentally tucked it under ‘More Pegasus Weirdness’ and wrote her report on the incident in the simplest terms:
Fandom : Stargate Atlantis
Disclaimer : I wish. :(
Rating : PG, I guess. Or maybe PG-13. I don't know. Sheppard doesn't get a blowjob.
Pairing : McKay/Sheppard.
Summary : McKay gets flower(s)!
Notes : Harlequin Challenge fic. I've never read one myself, so when I saw this book lying around I grabbed it, read the back, and declared, 'Ah hah!' It turned out 100% different and the impending comparison between John's SOOPERATA-gene and magic never happened.
Beta : With love to
sdrana, who won't fix my plots for me, but will make sure I don't sound like an illiterate when sounding like an idiot.When McKay awoke, he rolled over to find a blood red flower on his pillow, a glimmering needle stuck through its heart. Its fragrance was heady, rich – and allergen ridden.
McKay’s sinuses immediately clogged up, and he sneezed several times in a row before he could scramble away. His eyes watered as he fumbled for a tissue. Blowing his nose, he glared wetly at the innocent flower. It lay on his pillow, looking like nothing so much as a mutant, possibly murderous, rose.
If someone felt like playing romantic, they could at least try not to kill him.
Just as he was trying to figure out what to do with it, his door chimed. “What?” he snapped irritably.
“Okay,” came the slow drawl from outside. “I can just come back later.”
McKay thought the door open, and when that didn’t work, thought it open harder. It slid aside to reveal Sheppard leaning against the doorframe, looking slightly rumpled and very unmilitary.
“What?” McKay repeated, a little less sharp this time as he eyed Sheppard with a mental litany of, Good, oh good. He shook his head slightly.
“Thought you might need some help with something.”
“Really? How’d you know, because actually—”
“Actually, no,” Sheppard said. McKay deflated slightly, theories about the city itself realizing his importance in maintaining its well-being and therefore alerting Sheppard to his predicament promptly punctured. “You’re late for the meeting and you didn’t answer your radio,” Sheppard continued.
McKay noticed the gun at Sheppard’s side, that ol’ P-90 so ubiquitous that he tended to take it for granted. He felt vaguely reassured. The comfort he drew from a big bad gun didn’t disturb him as much as it probably should have, were he a proper Canadian. If he was ever late for meetings and slept through someone’s attempt to contact him, the military would suit up and trot after him. It was almost as good as having Atlantis herself look out for him; he had Atlantis’s prodigal son.
How nice.
“Yes, well, you can help me anyway. Make that flower go away and find out who sent it, would you? I think they may have been trying to kill me. Allergies. I’d do it, but I might react badly to touching it. I’m very sensitive to these sorts of things, after all.”
“Yes.” McKay thought Sheppard agreed rather too readily and eyed him narrowly. “Very sensitive. Real, in-touch-with-his-feelings, sensitive and modern guy,” Sheppard continued, earning the glare McKay leveled at him.
When he arched his eyebrows, McKay reluctantly stepped aside and let him into the room, but not without a sharp, “Very funny. Chop, chop. We’re late.”
Sheppard picked up the flower, eyed the pin thoughtfully, and pocketed it before tossing the flower in the waste disposal.
The meeting went well enough, although as it progressed McKay grew increasingly distracted and increasingly less likely to make sarcastic asides, a combination that was worrisome. Sheppard, with Weir’s backing, sent him into Beckett’s clutches – “Great! He’ll bleed me to death. You’ll see. He’d be using leeches if he could. You better figure this out and come tell me.” – and then went out to do as he was told.
Sheppard thought about turning the chore over to Bates, but considering his lingering antipathy regarding Teyla, he didn’t want to give Bates any chance to go after Ronon. Teyla and Ronon were supposed to be going off world tomorrow, and given half a chance, Sheppard thought Bates would gladly shove both of them in a holding cell.
That might have been a trifle unfair of him, but Sheppard ignored the inner voice suggesting that and shouldered the burden of Rodney’s pet investigation. He figured it no less than his due for wanting the mission’s biggest hypochondriac on his team.
“So, uh, why are you sending McKay flowers?” Sheppard set his tray down next to Ronon, who looked at him blankly.
When the silence continued for a good five count after his question, Sheppard cleared his throat and withdrew the pin from his pocket, a pin marked by the same design tattooed on Ronon’s neck. “Huh,” was all Ronon said, however. Sheppard was mildly disappointed.
“Huh?” Sheppard echoed, attempting to draw him out.
“Didn’t send anything.”
“But your—” Sheppard gestured to Ronon’s neck.
“My pin, yes. Lost it a while back. Still have the matching one. Big city. Who knows who found it?”
Ronon regarded Sheppard levelly over the meatish surprise and Sheppard’s questions suddenly dried up. He had no reason to lie, and if he were lying, Atlantis would tell him. “Well, alright then. You’ll have it back in a few days,” he said, trying very hard to summon up the confidence to sound as if he had some notion of what he was doing. Ronon’s narrow look was less than reassuring regarding his success on that count.
They finished eating in mutual silence, and Sheppard went off to practice his witchcraft on the city sensors. Atlantis always told him what he wanted to know.
Four hours later, Sheppard felt snubbed. Atlantis was behaving like a sulky woman, refusing to tell him what was wrong and brushing aside his inquiries. While it was rather more forthcoming than Ronon, it forthcame with all the wrong things: old flood damage, places in need of repair, low stores, broken windows. He ended up snarling, “Well, fine then!” to the console and stalking off, which earned him a few knowing looks from the regular staff in the control room.
What good was his nigh-mystical super-ATA gene when it didn’t even work? He didn’t expect to have to wine and dine a computer to get answers out of it. He headed down to the science labs; the computers there had always seemed much more sensible.
“So, have you figured out who is trying to kill me yet?”
Ah, yes. Pro: a more straightforward, less close your eyes and intuit, interface. Con: McKay, when not sleeping, and sometimes even when he was sleeping, usually skulked about the physics lab.
“No. Having trouble getting the city to let me tap into the sensor logs. So did Beckett release you?”
McKay looked up sharply. “Really?” He turned from startled to smug. “And here I thought the city just rolled over whenever you batted your eyes at it.”
Sheppard not-smiled at him and took the console next to him. “Funny. Beckett?” he asked again. McKay seemed better, less prone to drifting off and focused on what he was saying.
“Oh, he let me go,” McKay said evasively. “He said I had elevated neurotransmitter levels but nothing dangerous and there was a great deal of phenylethylamine in my blood, which is odd, since it’s been a long time since anyone’s fed me chocolate dipped strawberries.”
McKay’s eyes went momentarily fuzzy. “Mmm. Chocolate and strawberries.”
“Strawberries? Aren’t you allerg—”
“Hah hah. No. And yes, I know they have a histamine compound. Shut up and save me.”
Sheppard rolled his eyes and dropped his drawl for a bad accent: “Work with me if you want to live.”
“Oh, how very cliché of you.”
A half-hour later, McKay and Sheppard both stared at the screen in disbelief.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Not possible.”
“Apparently, possible.”
Sheppard slowly began to smirk. He leaned against the desk, hip resting on the warm alloy, invading McKay’s personal space. Sheppard leaned over him, smirking widely at the tiny image on the screen. “Somebody liiikes you.”
McKay shifted irritably, his shoulder brushing against Sheppard. “What are you, twelve? It happens. But this—”
‘This’ was a tall, hairy Marine of the sort who put Ronon to shame for weight, width, and body hair.
“Uh huh.” The sensor logs had been tampered with, it turned out, but only in the most rudimentary fashion. McKay considered breaking a “grunt code” barely worth his notice, and siccing the Ancient computers on retrieving the partial files took no more than a few minutes.
In silence, they watched the video record from the past week’s exploratory teams. One had gone out to investigate one of the newly discovered xenobotany labs in more detail. ‘This’ detached from the team to pluck one of the flowers, which, Sheppard had to admit, was sort of pretty.
McKay didn’t seem to care if it was pretty. “Oh, very smart. No way that could come back to liquefy his brain.”
They dug through the logs, tracking his movements. The previous night, after a bit of solitary time – “Oh my god. I … oh god. Do not need to see that. Skip it. Skip faster!” – he pulled a pin from his pocket and stuck it through the flower. “What the hell is that? Seriously? Why the pin?”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to ask him,” Sheppard said.
So they asked him:
The Marine, Erics, admitted to having picked the flower because he wanted to give it to McKay. That didn’t seem sinister, but it turned out that Erics had a bit of a green thumb and had remembered seeing it in an Ancient database when he had been researching native plant life.
The pollen of the flower, on first exposure to air, induced a rush of endorphins and phenylethylamine which lead to the raised monoamine levels: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. “Wow. Ultimate aphrodisiac,” Sheppard had said.
McKay thought it two steps from rather a twisted rape drug, but didn’t care to say so. Either way, Erics had not counted on Sheppard arriving first, post-flower. Now cooling his heels in the holding cell, he glared, a lot, at Sheppard who smirked brightly back. McKay stood near the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, and avoiding Erics’ longing looks. Sheppard finally finished making his report to the Marine on duty and left, a hand under McKay’s elbow to prod him out the door.
“That was surreal.”
“Yes. Bizarre,” McKay agreed, allowing Sheppard to bully him toward the med lab. He and Sheppard made the last turn and Beckett stood waiting, a big, long needle in hand. As McKay stared at it, horrified, Beckett dropped Sheppard a wink. McKay scrabbled for and clung to Sheppard’s arm, only reluctantly allowing himself to be separated from Sheppard for examination.
It turned out no needles were actually required, making the handholding unnecessary. Sheppard revised his estimate of Beckett’s innate sadism. McKay still didn’t let go, however, until Beckett pulled them apart and set to work. Weir joined Sheppard outside a moment later, right in time to hear Beckett say, “Hmm.”
That rarely heralded good news. Sheppard and Weir exchanged a look then stepped closer, both peeking around the privacy screen. “What?”
“Well, the lingering chemical traces from the flower appeared to have been stimulating the production of oxytocin and vasopressin but the levels have begun to fade—Oh! Back up.” Beckett stared down at the screen of the Ancient scanner. The medical device was one of the few items that Beckett liked. It almost made his ATA gene worthwhile: the scanner was practical, useful, and it didn’t shoot people.
“Is that dangerous?” Weir asked.
“No, not really. They appear to be leveling off again.” Beckett frowned for a moment longer before his lips suddenly twitched. “Oh.”
He looked up and looked at McKay more seriously, smirk fading as whatever thought that had struck him slowly developed into a reasoned hypothesis. “Oh.”
“What? What? Oh my god, I’m going to die, aren’t I? I knew it. What is it? Is it a tumo—?”
As McKay babbled in a half-panic, Beckett turned to regard Weir and Sheppard. “A moment.”
Sheppard held up his hands in surrender as Weir folded hers behind her back, but they both stepped back. Just before leaving, Sheppard saw McKay reach out for him, his look imploring, voice a whine. “Colonel Shep—” And then the door closed. Barely seconds later, the sound of McKay’s shouted, “What?!” penetrated even that thick door.
Beckett stuck his head out. “I’ll need to keep him here a day or two. It’d be best if there were no visitors.”
The next morning, a voice sounded in Sheppard’s ear. “You have to get me out of here.” He started, earning an odd look from the airman he was reviewing stores with. McKay continued, “Seriously. I’m fine.”
Sheppard very calmly said, “No,” a reply to both the sergeant and the voice in his ear, and got on with his work.
Mid-afternoon, McKay contacted him again. “I know I said I usually like hospital food, but somehow Carson managed to ruin it. Can you bring me something? Please?”
“No. No visitors.”
At nightfall, McKay contacted him to curse him roundly and broke off with what sounded suspiciously like a sob. Sheppard settled down to sleep and tried very hard not to think about it.
The second day, McKay whined about the food at lunch and complained about vampiric doctors in the evening. He no longer seemed to expect any reply. Sheppard seriously considered leaving off his radio or asking that Beckett keep McKay away from all radios, but he rather imagined the instant one or the other took place, some drastic emergency would make such a thing foolish. He’d suffered worse than McKay’s nagging.
The third day, Sheppard went around subtly on edge, at every moment expecting McKay to interrupt him over the radio. As the day wore on, he began to relax only to have McKay radio him at nightfall with, “We are so over.” Sheppard stared in the direction of the infirmary, bewildered, and had very weird dreams that night.
The fourth day after the incident with Erics, Beckett opened the morning meeting by saying, “I think McKay ought to be better now. I’d like you to come down later,” with a nod at Weir and Sheppard. Sheppard, antsy to have him back with an off-world mission coming up, barely managed to sit through the rest of the meeting. Afterward, he led the way, breezing through the halls on the way to the medical lab.
“Oh thank god!” McKay launched himself at Sheppard and clung to his arm. He murmured something, low and soft, that sounded an awful lot like, “My hero.”
“Er.” Sheppard looked down at McKay, who looked up at him adoringly, then over at Beckett. “Doctor…?”
“Ah, one moment.” Beckett had the grace to look slightly sheepish as he went to fetch a needle. “Just testing a theory. Here we go, now.”
McKay clung to Sheppard’s hand; Sheppard clung to his sanity. McKay was making little breathy noises against the skin of his throat.
“That’s it.” Beckett nodded encouragingly, plainly expecting Sheppard to keep McKay distracted. Rather, McKay kept Sheppard distracted, plying his lips with light kisses. Distantly, Sheppard heard Weir choke off a laugh. He’d deal with her later. Something unpleasant in her cereal, perhaps.
Neither of them noticed when Beckett injected McKay – McKay was too busy groping Sheppard and Sheppard was too busy keeping McKay from dropping to his knees, given that they were standing in front of Weir and Beckett – but both noticed when the drug went into effect.
Sheppard noticed as McKay’s cheeks lost their flush and his pupils slowly shifted back to a proper dilation. McKay noticed that he suddenly realized pinning Sheppard to the bed was, perhaps, a bad idea.
He also stopped kissing him.
“Eh heh,” Sheppard said.
“Uhm,” McKay said.
They disentangled. McKay pointed a finger at Weir, barely containing a smirk, and Beckett, who did not bother to hide his smile. “We’re never mentioning this again.”
“Of course not,” Beckett said, his voice soothing.
“Didn’t see a thing,” Weir said, her eyes laughing.
“And your experimental methods suck.”
“Hey!” Beckett protested.
“He has a point,” Sheppard countered, looking thoroughly molested. His hair was so rumpled it almost looked orderly.
“I hate you all,” McKay said, straightening with care. He stabbed a glare at Sheppard. “And you never visited!”
“I—er. What?”
“After taking advantage of my drugged state—”
“What?!”
“—and letting me waste away—”
“What?!”
“—you never even visited, just abandoned me to—”
“Beckett, are you sure he’s fine?
“Uhm, he should be, Colonel.”
“—this man’s cruel clutches without a thought of what it did to me—”
“The neurotransmitter levels are normal, and the PEA levels are down.”
“Of course they are, you idiot,” McKay said, breaking of on his rant to interrupt Beckett. “Just because I no longer have the overwhelming urge to swoon, flutter, faint—”
“Don’t you mean pass out?”
“Hah hah. Not talking to you, Sheppard. As I was saying – and generally crawl all over Sheppard here doesn’t mean I don’t have a perfectly legitimate reason to be aggravated by the callous way he treated my affections.”
“This is going to be one of those reports, isn’t?” Weir asked Beckett, as Sheppard and McKay promptly descended into petty squabbling. She wasn’t sure how to respond to the fact that a prolonged round of flower-induced public tonsil-tonguing seemed unable to disturb their equilibrium. When they continued bickering off and on through the last of Beckett’s exam and walked rather too closely on their way out the door, she mentally tucked it under ‘More Pegasus Weirdness’ and wrote her report on the incident in the simplest terms:
Dr. McKay was exposed to a foreign chemical that altered his neurochemistry such that he had an altercation with Lt. Colonel Sheppard. After treatment, he was restored to normal, with no further problems.She filed it between ‘Alien Pharmaceutical Adventures’ and ‘Ancient Device Mishaps’. All things considered, weirder things had happened.
Cleared by Dr. Beckett.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 05:10 am (UTC)Hilarious! Loved it! Excited, declarative statements!!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 05:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 05:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 05:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 05:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 06:44 am (UTC)A sex pollen story with no sex. How did you manage that? And I can't even complain, because it was good.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 12:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 02:14 pm (UTC)I especially loved Rodney's reaction, even after Carson's "cure."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 02:57 pm (UTC)Cute.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 03:27 pm (UTC)M.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:39 pm (UTC)But I bet she keeps the unedited versions for her own amusement.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 04:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-04 10:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-05 12:29 am (UTC)I love this fic. Poor Rodney, has a stalker of a Marine after him, and Sheppard, not taking advantage of him. It's just not turning out to be his day, is it?.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-05 08:52 pm (UTC)They should do more experiments like that on show, with lots of Man!Groping. Lots more. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-05 08:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-05 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-05 08:56 pm (UTC)And then John doesn't even visit! And Carson messes up the hospital food! At least he got some Shep!Tongue-action out of it in the end, even if they didn't make with the smex. It's something.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-06 03:51 pm (UTC)(fic was great, btw)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-06 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-06 06:08 pm (UTC)There was an icon post somewhere I can't remember that
(his hair is such an international symbol.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-06 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-06 07:54 pm (UTC)You are mad genius.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-06 08:18 pm (UTC)You know you want to. You might even find a line to top that Quark/Odo classic, "Don't just stand there! Form a clitoris!"
(and what a line to be remembered for.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 11:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 11:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 02:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 02:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 10:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 03:00 pm (UTC)Glad liked. Thanks. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-07 10:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-20 02:21 am (UTC)