sga_flashfic | Business As Usual, by siegeofangels (This is Not Happening Challenge)

siegeofangels.livejournal.com posting in

Business As Usual
Author:

siegeofangels
Pairing/Rating: R. Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Weir
Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis belongs to people who are not me. No copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Thanks to

2am_optimism,

melannen, and

jettdelirium for thoughts and beta.

DVD Commentary

raisintorte's excellent remix, Standard Operating Procedure (Behind the Scenes Remix)

Summary: 1800 words. This story has no beginning. We may assume that on a long, uncertain mission, Aliens Make Them Do It.

Rodney shuts his eyes, because he's seen the look on Sheppard's face before, and he can't look at it, never wants to associate Sheppard's dead eyes with this parody of an act of love.

It's over quickly, and as Rodney feels Sheppard get up, feels his warm body, hot mouth leave him cold, Rodney tells himself that the only other thing Sheppard could have done would have been to kill a huge number of innocent people.

And that would have been the easy way out.

On the way back, in the jumper when they're cleaned up and proper again, Rodney wants to say something, wants to try to make Sheppard crack the facade, just a little, make him outwardly angry or pissed off or any reaction at all.

But Sheppard's empty eyes never meet his, and Rodney thinks that maybe once they're back, maybe on Atlantis with her cool calm lights and familiar halls, they'll be able to talk about it. Or talk not about it.

For now, he just stares at the orbital gate surrounded by space: dark and empty and cold, and all he wants is for it to carry him home.

***

Elizabeth's been awake for twenty-three hours when the gate activates and the team is back. She breaks into a huge grin as they finally emerge from the wormhole, one two three four, all present and accounted for and standing under their own power.

They all look exhausted too: shaken, almost, and if she wasn't so tired she'd probably think about that a little more.

But she doesn't, she just agrees to put the debriefing off until the morning and stumbles back to her quarters, showering and falling into bed without even bothering to put on pajamas, sheets cool against her skin.

A summons awakens her not long after she falls asleep: she's briefly very confused and tries to key on her radio, and then she realizes what the sound is, and wraps the sheet around her and goes to open the door.

She sees the silhouette of his hair before she sees his face, and even though she'd given up the girlish crush long ago, somehow it doesn't surprise her: John is lounging against the frame of her door, and as the door slides open he lifts his head and looks sidelong at her, eyes dark and lids heavy. Inevitable.

His pose is unmistakable, and she steps aside and lets him in.

***

The problem with the handheld scanners is that they only work in two dimensions. Rodney stops when he's right where the little blinking dot says Sheppard is. Up or down?

Down is one of the anthro workspaces, where Sheppard wouldn't be in a million years; up is . . . personal living quarters, and Rodney wants to throw the scanner as he realizes whose quarters they are.

Rodney's halfway to the armory when he realizes that target practice is the Sheppard way of dealing with things, not the McKay way, and for just a split second he hates John Sheppard for getting so completely inside him.

Rodney stops and takes a deep breath, making a good, solid plan, and he turns on his heel deliberately.

The new plan goes like this: get horribly, systematically drunk.

***

There's heat and firm touch and wordless sound; grasping and pressure and the smell of clean sweat, a thousand sensations all at once, but what Elizabeth will remember most about that night is that neither of them, even once, whispers one word into the darkness.

***

It's going to be a beautiful day on Atlantis.

Dawn breaks over the city, sunshine pouring into Rodney's quarters and shining through the bottle still half-full on his table.

Light goes ping through Elizabeth's window and illuminates the two faces still sleeping in her bed.

***

By some miracle, Rodney makes it to the commode in time, and the retching feels like a penance. He rests his forehead on one arm, and tries to take deep breaths.

***

"Oh, my god," Elizabeth says, sitting bolt upright and pushing her hands through her hair. "Oh, my god." Shit fuck dammit oh my god, fuck, Elizabeth Weir doesn't make bad decisions but John Sheppard's waking up next to her and oh my god.

"Ah, fuck," comes the indistinct reply from the bed beside her: John takes his hands off his face and rolls upright, sitting with his back to her. They're each attempting to cover themselves with the one sheet while not actually touching. It's not working.

His voice is muffled; he's probably covering his face again. "Do we talk about this?"

"Um." She's made her living talking about things, and there's nothing she wants to discuss less. "How about never? Does never sound good?"

"Never works for me," he agrees, reaching for his pants, and then there's an undignified hopping around, dressing and checking of watches--"Shit," he says, "0900."--"Going to be late to my own debriefing, wonderful," she says--and smoothing of hair and non-meeting of eyes, and then he's out of the room, finally, and oh, my god.

***

During the debriefing, Rodney keeps his eyes on his computer screen except when he's snapping off answers, terse and annoyed, meeting Elizabeth's eyes hard and resolutely not looking at Sheppard. Which doesn't matter, because Sheppard doesn't look his way once, not even when Elizabeth asks what happened on the planet, how they rescued Teyla and Ronon.

Rodney refrains from saying the word ritual, because he knows that all that ever gets him is a meeting with the anthropologists, going over every last detail. Instead, he fiddles with his touchpad stylus and says, "At their request, we were able to sufficiently demonstrate our dedication," and has the pleasure of seeing all of the blood drain from Elizabeth's face as realization dawns.

She's good, though: that's the only outward sign of what she feels. Rodney wonders if she knows that he knows where Sheppard spent last night. Probably.

There's absolutely no outward sign of what Sheppard feels, not even when he says, "Recommend this mission report be closed and P3X-978 be removed from consideration for trade," and they all assent.

Rodney doesn't remember much of the meeting after that; he still feels like crap and smells like he's sweating liquor and he just wants it to be over so he can go throw up again.

***

Elizabeth escapes to her office and throws herself into work all day, finishing all the odds and ends of things that need to be done, crossing a lot of things off of her to-do list and managing to think very little about anything that isn't business.

She eats lunch with Ronon and chats pleasantly with him for a while about Satedan culture. He's working with one of the anthropologists on recording oral history, and he tells her about the little round cookies they ate on fast days, and she nods and says thoughtful and polite things back.

Rodney comes by her office the next afternoon with Radek to explain their new brilliant plans for rerouting ZPM power consumption. She wonders if Radek only came so Rodney didn't have to come alone.

They hand her a laptop and then sketch the entire thing out again with dry-erase markers right on her glass wall, darting around each other, markers squeaking.

They finish and Elizabeth says, "All right, gentlemen, sounds good. How long will it take?"

Rodney and Radek look at each other.

"Five days," Rodney says.

"Eight, really, because of the--"

"Well, yes, but we can do that in, call it a week and we're good."

Elizabeth nods and looks at her watch. It's almost fifteen hundred, time for their senior staff meeting, ten minutes until she gets to sit up straight and talk at John like they've only ever been colleagues. "I'd say as long as Colonel Sheppard doesn't have any objections to losing you for a week, you're good to go."

Rodney looks at her steadily. "I don't foresee any problems with that."

***

Rodney's eating dinner a couple of nights later with Ronon and Sheppard and Lorne. He sits as far away from Sheppard as he can and still be part of the group. The last thing Rodney needs is for people to start gossiping about he and Sheppard fighting.

The major's talking about the offworld mission earlier that day, how the team had gotten to participate in a naming ceremony for a new baby. Apparently offworld visitors on such a day were good luck.

"They dress you up?" Sheppard says. "I hate it when they do that."

"Yup," Lorne says cheerfully. "Complete with face paint. It's always new clothes, you know? No one ever offers you a blowjob for the sake of interplanetary relations."

Rodney's fairly sure no one sees him flinch.

There's a rush of hot blood to his ears, and he coughs loudly, sounding like a gunshot in the mess. He tries to cover by stabbing at his food blindly while he hears Sheppard say dryly, "New clothes is all you'd better be accepting, Major."

Rodney's still working on the power conversions that evening when Sheppard runs him to ground in the otherwise deserted lab and doesn't hitch his hip up onto the table next to Rodney's laptop, just stands there several feet away.

"We have a problem?" Sheppard says. It's the first time they've directly spoken since P3X-978.

"Working," Rodney says, continuing to type, eyes on the screen. "I'm only processing the equations for calibrating tomorrow's conversion so the whole system doesn't blow up and sink the city to the bottom of the ocean, but sure, I'd love to talk about this now."

Out of the corner of Rodney's eye, he sees Sheppard cross his arms patiently.

"Do we have a problem that's going to get someone killed offworld?" Sheppard says again. "Because I'd just as soon find that out now."

Rodney sighs and stops typing but doesn't face Sheppard, just keeps staring at the numbers. "No, Colonel. I'm sorry that now I owe Kavanagh a pound of chocolate-covered coffee beans, and I'm having an extremely fun string of sessions with Heightmeyer as, I suspect, are you, but no. We do not have that kind of a problem."

Sheppard sinks down into Zelenka's chair and briefly rests his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, and he sits like that in the silence for a minute. "I am sorry," he says, and it's almost painful to hear sincerity from him.

"I know," Rodney says quietly, and then, "but hey, you're repressing, I'm repressing, we're all repressing, it didn't happen and we're all fine, right?" He tries to smile.

"Right," Sheppard says. He looks like he'd say more, but Rodney goes back to typing, so he just gets up and goes, leaving Rodney alone in the lab, the only sound the familiar click of laptop keys, tickticktickticktick.

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From:

shoemaster.livejournal.com

OUCH. Every sentence was like a little stab in the gut but it was really well done. Niiiiiice job.

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