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sga_flashfic-title- Quarks: Truth and Beauty
-author- Sophonisba (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saphanibaal)
-warnings- Some foul language, unreliable narrator, tense changes, cultural references.
-timeframe- During second season, before "Critical Mass." Spoilers through "Trinity."
-characters- Katie Brown, Laura Cadman, Rodney McKay, "Chuck," his Chinese counterpart, cameos from Sheppard, Simpson, and Heightmeyer, various OCs
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. Neither are any of the other shows or books or songs referenced. Nor are the two cringeworthy SW prequel reactions, although I did overhear the second one in the checkout line at Wal-Mart.
-word count- 6611
-summary- Katie and Laura, in and out of men.
Quarks: Truth and Beauty
When Katie Brown first boarded the Daedalus, she was excited. A real, live, intergalactic spaceship was one of the most awesome things ever and one that could be appreciated by more than just the specialists in such fields.
Then she gained proof that Skeen's Search was correct; space travel was essentially a long time in a small box with nothing much to look at.
She was desultorily arguing with some of the other scientists over what relationships ought to develop in Harry Potter (and nobly refraining from throwing something at the idiot geologist who kept trying to bring up what the author seemed inclined to actually DO, rather than what, given the personalities as described and intuited, might be best for the characters) when an American military woman with a cascade of red-gold hair wandered into the room set aside as a lounge and said "Look, if you want to talk about what you think's going to HAPPEN, there are a couple of Marines debating it five doors down THAT way."
The geologist sniffed and stalked out. Somebody murmured "Asshole."
"So," Anna Loran said, "I was thinking Lee -- "
The military woman left. Katie got up and followed her.
"Um, I... " she began.
"Look, no offense," the strawberry blonde said, "but much as I like Harry Potter if I had to sit through one more sentence of meta I was going to run outside screaming, and given that we're on a big honking spaceship flying through hyperspace, that probably wouldn't end too well. Laura Cadman."
"Katie Brown, same, and I wanted to thank you, actually."
"Oh, hey, no charge. They don't give you your commission if you can't head these things off at the pass when you see them -- I'm in the Marines. What is it that you do?"
"I'm a pteridologist," Katie explained. "Apparently offworld planets have plenty of ferns, and they want someone to come and see whether they're different from the Earth ones or not. I also have some background in conifers."
"I do explosives," Ms. Cadman -- if something on her jacket had her rank on it, Katie didn't know enough to recognize it -- shrugged. "So, this is your first time seeing strange new worlds, meeting new life and new civilizations?"
Oh. Of course they'd pick military personnel who did know Star Trek for something like this. "Pretty much, yeah, although I have seen aliens coming through for visits and I still think the guy I was seeing back in undergrad might have secretly been one."
Ms. Cadman tilted her head. "Oh?"
"We went to see Phantom Menace together," Katie explained, "and I made a few comments afterwards, and he said 'That sweet little kid grows up to be Darth Vader?! You're shittin' me!'"
The Marine threw her head back and laughed, a resounding, joyous sound.
"He turned out to be serious, too."
Laura Cadman laughed harder. "The sad thing is," she finally managed to say, "I can top that."
"How?"
"A couple years back, I was in the checkout line at Wally-world, and these women behind me were talking? So one of them said that, when she was coming out of the third one, somebody behind her was saying 'I bet there's going to be a fourth one, they left it wide open for a sequel.'"
Katie stopped dead in the Daedalus hallway and made strangled noises.
*
Things Katie Brown likes:
ferns
cedars
the original Star Wars trilogy, not the prequels, not the latest round of remakes (although Dr. McKay said once in the mess that the version her mother'd taped off TV and Katie'd watched till the tape wore out was itself retouched and recut)
chocolate cherry cordials
Atlantis
her aunt Pat's The Professionals and Starsky and Hutch zine collection
Susan Lovett's artwork (see above)
tuttle root mousse
Star Trek, original and Next Gen, although not as much as Star Wars
Dr. Rodney McKay
cooking with fresh herbs
chicken lamb curry coconut pepperoni soup made with cilantro and mint grown on the mainland and bits of bacon
being told what to do in just the right voice
ladies' poker nights
Harry Potter (although not so much Harry himself)
CSI (also the original; the casts of the spinoffs just didn't grab her)
tennis
spool knitting
Laura Cadman (sometimes)
Katie was on her way to the physics-engineering-ancienttech labs, cradling the Ancient automatic mister that had inexplicably stopped working that morning, when she realized that Lt. Colonel Sheppard was giving a number of the new military personnel a lecture right outside their door.
"Don't mind us," the lieutenant colonel shrugged at her before continuing with what appeared to be a lecture on being careful around the sort of technology that you could turn on with your ass.
Laura Cadman grimaced expressively at her. Katie waved with three fingers of the hand less needed to support the mister.
Dr. McKay, waiting on the outcome of three experiments, handled it personally. It only needed to be taken apart and cleaned properly, as he told her vociferously, lengthily, and with many illustrative hand gestures. Katie let the words flow over and around her as she watched him, the power and the stamina and the surprising delicacy of his hands as they moved over the mister's innards, deft and sure.
He had handed it back to her, repaired and in working condition, and was detailing added instructions on how to do as much herself so that she wouldn't waste other people's valuable time (presumably, in case they were all busy with the final parts of experiments the next time it clogged; Katie felt it must be much like cooking Thanksgiving dinner, where long times of waiting suddenly culminated in everything needing to be done at once) when Sheppard and Laura came in.
"Was there something you needed, Lieutenant?" Sheppard sat on the end of an unused lab table in the corner.
"Nah, I just came in to see if Dr. Brown needed rescuing." Laura shrugged. "Are you done? I had some thoughts about the thing we were discussing."
"Yeah," Katie told her, picking the mister up. "Did you see the one Annemarie has to that like-the-wind song from, uh, I think it was one of the Castlevania games?"
"What, 'I Am The Wind'? No, I haven't."
Katie waited for the lab doors to close behind them before changing the subject, given her lead-in. "Laura? Do you have any idea what Sheppard's doing in Dr. McKay's labs? I didn't think he had an engineering degree... "
"I don't know what his degree's in, but apparently that corner is his office," Laura shrugged. "He said he'd have talked to us in there, but McKay would have objected to all of us cluttering up the place."
"But," Katie began, stopped, and then found something resembling a point. "Why doesn't he have his own office? The city is full of rooms."
"I think there was some reason for it back when they first came here," Laura shrugged, "and now he keeps up shop in there because that's the way it's always been done. I'd just as soon keep out of McKay's orbit when I didn't have to, but hey."
"Oh." They walked on for a moment before she managed to get out the next part. "So. You seem to hear more of the gossip than I do... "
"Seriously, Katie, you need to get out more. Parrish is, like, one of the major hubs of gossip, and he's a botanist."
"He's a mycologist," Katie pointed out. "Fungi aren't plants, after all. Never mind him; I was going to ask," she waved a hand back to the labs, "does he, you know, have a girlfriend?"
"The LTC?" Laura blinked. "The rumor mill's paired him up with just about everyone at one time or another, half of the people I've talked to think he's the man-slut of Atlantis, and the other half say he isn't at all but that any one of the oldtimers would be willing to give it up for him if it looked like he needed it. Even the straight guys."
"Not him," Katie shook her head. "Dr. McKay."
"Doctor -- you're kidding. Why would anyone put up with, well, that?"
"Laura, have you seen him?" Katie threw one of her own hands wide before hastily returning it to mister-holding duty. "Those hands, and his shoulders -- he could probably throw me over one of those shoulders if someone put it in his head to do so -- and his tongue, and he's so scarily, brilliantly smart..."
Laura shot her a piercing glance. "Is this an academic question, or personal?"
"Uh..." Oh my God. Personal. She hadn't even thought that -- but she could, Atlantis was a closed society, it's not as if it'd be too scarily stalkerish...
"Katie, you're absolutely whacked, you know that? But no, I haven't heard his name linked with any woman's in particular -- even Dr. Weir and Teyla have only gotten the mild sort of 'y'think?' that they have with every man in Atlantis. And each other."
*
Days go by, life changes, Katie realizes that Dr. McKay doesn't do subtle in general personal interaction. She's never been the sort to prance naked into someone's workspace, or to throw herself across a table and demand sexual attentions (being thrown, now, that's a different matter), and so she stops by when he's having lunch with his gate team and asks him out.
"Oh my God, Katie, I can't believe you did that!" Laura laughs with her like a couple of schoolgirls, grasps her upper arms fiercely for a moment before thrusting her away with enough force that Katie has to take a step or two backwards to keep her balance.
"I was so, so nervous," Katie confesses. "It took me all morning to work up the nerve."
"Whatever." Laura dismisses this easily. "The point is, you actually did it. You just... went up and asked him."
"I tried to think of what you might do. You are so confident; if you liked someone, you would tell them what you wanted of them and expect them to respond."
"Uh." Laura looks at her feet very fixedly. She heels one forward, toes back, a slow-motion version of something that would have drummed and tapped had it been faster.
"Oh my God. There is someone."
Laura throws her head up defiantly. "I could tell him what I want in bed. It's the getting there that's the problem." She puts one hand on Katie's shoulder. "You're braver than I am."
"I'm not brave at all," Katie points out.
*
One of her exes used to say that Katie was such a shameless fangirl because of her desperate desire to belong to someone or something. This was, of course, untrue.
Certainly she wanted -- yearned -- to belong to someone; it had always seemed like such a warm and comforting thing to be; but if anything, her quiet searching for someone she'd want to belong to had reinforced the differences between playing and reality.
After all, she had never really expected this Thing-with-Rodney to last, although she hadn't quite thought it would end the way it had. The first date had been -- well, aside from the rocky start, which she'd sort of expected, and the bringing-the-best-friend-along, which she hadn't, and the running out, which she'd been afraid of, it had been... wonderful. The stuff of fantasies.
The second time... Laura had been dating Dr. Beckett, and everyone knew the two men were friends, so she had suggested that they double-date and received in return a look of appalled shock. Rodney didn't seem to have quarrelled with Dr. Beckett -- well, there had been that day when things seemed a little strained, but Parrish had told her that there'd been some tension getting Laura out of the transporter matrix she'd been stuck in.
So it had to be Laura he had the problem with, although that didn't make much sense either. At least, for a moment Katie thought it did when Laura started teasing him, but then she remembered that she'd suggested the double date before Laura started commenting to him. At him.
It didn't seem fair -- Laura liked Rodney; not the way she liked Dr. Beckett, of course, but still -- but Katie had sighed and gone out with Rodney by herself, and the evening dissolved into more and more awkwardness before they'd both sort of realized it wasn't working, and that Laura was probably a large part of it. Despite the fact that to the best of Katie's knowledge, Rodney didn't know any of the things he might have justly taken against her for: not her minor in psychology --
-- not her inability to watch a buddy-guys movie or television show without mentally pairing them up --
-- nor her bizarre preference for the prequel trilogy over the original Star Wars, a preference rooted entirely, as far as Katie can tell, in slashable-hot-guy factor.
She'd repeated that last to Rodney, squashing guilt for appearing to disparage her friend for a man, and been rewarded with a strangled laugh and the knowledge that they were back, not dating, but on track in a close-knit village that happened to live in a city.
But still -- she'd have thought Laura and Dr. Beckett would last, guided by Laura's sure and certain hand.
"Was it... Rodney?" Katie had asked at the last poker night. "I know the discord between you two..."
"What discord? McKay grows on you. Like a fungus. Or the annoying-but-lovable cousin your father wouldn't let you shoot when you were fourteen. I get along fine with McKay."
"I... I don't think he 'gets along fine' with you."
"Did Carson think you got along too well with him?" Annemarie Szujewska had said at the same time.
"No. I... ew. No offense, Katie. Like I said, cousin. No, it's... you know I like to be in control, and Carson doesn't -- he doesn't even want to switch off, he expects us to be, I don't know, covalent or something. And it isn't exactly control, but he never lets go -- I don't think he knows how."
"What you need," Mary Simpson'd told her firmly, "is hooch. And possibly chocolate. I raise my bid by one soda bottle of green death."
"I fold," Dr. Lakshmaniyah'd promptly announced.
"It's not the end of the world." Laura'd turned up her cards. "I am a beautiful and desirable woman and there are plenty of people out there eager to lick my boots."
*
Dr. Weir's been careful never to write an official policy on what can or cannot be copied into the Atlantis Free Library, which had apparently been moved onto the Ancient servers sometime back in the first year.
Currently, it contains public-domain works, copyrighted works, copylefted works, fanworks (Katie's flashdrive-worth of Aunt Pat's zines had been a big hit, according to the tracking counters), and things produced by members of the expedition in their mythical spare time; Katie isn't sure she believes Elsa Wagner that someone has written RPF about herself and Rodney McKay, but given some of the people on the newsgroups she's not surprised.
The RPF itself is hidden behind passwords and firewalls and possibly genetic scans; it is for this reason (well, not to read stories about herself; that'd just be vaguely creepy) that she is in this corridor at half-past-three in the morning, having just been interviewed by the Dutchwoman who is currently the sysadmin for Atlantis, in more depth than anyone has done since her SGC job interview, and told that she will be contacted the next day.
There is noise and laughter from down the hall, and she turns her head to see a furious Laura stalking towards her, wearing high-cut panties with a strawberries print and a lace waistband, arms crossed in front of her breasts.
"What happened?" Katie gasps, stripping off her jacket, some small part of her mind noting that Laura has gorgeous skin all over, it's really not fair.
"I'm not drunk enough to talk about it," Laura huffs.
By the time they're three levels down and on Laura's doorstep, she is talking about it. "I mean, my God, Ronon, who's going to turn that down? And the sex was great. I mean fantastic, as in I actually passed out for three hours afterwards -- "
Katie flaps her hands against the oversharing -- fantasies are one thing, but actually talking about it? -- although Laura's voice drops low and wicked toward the end and she thinks she'd listen anyway, letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would."
"And then I get woken up by having my underwear pulled on, and he looks at me for a moment before throwing my ass out in the hallway. Loudly. Asshole. I mean, the hell? What did I ever do to him?"
"Jerk," Katie agrees, and then an unpleasant thought hits her. "... maybe he doesn't like the way you never do anything but tease Rodney McKay when you see him? He does have a different background, after all..."
Laura flops down on her bed and starts unzipping the borrowed jacket. "Oh, come on! It's friendly teasing. You know -- I poke you because I care. The way all his friends do."
"Yes, but -- " But I've seen the way he looks when he's answering them and the way he looks when he's returning your fire, and the latter is less comfortable, the air between spikier. "But you're not his friend, and you never stop, and other people are laughing too when you do, and maybe on Sateda people from different divisions didn't or something." She should -- she should have said something to Laura before, but she hadn't realized the not-fun was severe enough that this would be appropriate. Or maybe it isn't and Sateda just had different boiling points, or maybe it isn't even anything to do with that at all but she should still have said something, Laura's her friend -- "Maybe it's something they're allowed to do and you're not; even if you had a hookup with him you wouldn't have told me about, you still wouldn't be as close to him as the people from first year." Because she's noticed this -- Atlantis, for all its research opportunities (and she still hasn't gotten to go offworld, there's so much to study and do right here, up to and including tending the potted basil and rosemary that Botany keeps hold of so that certain persons don't monopolize it all), isn't so much science camp or research lab as it is a lengthy visit with people you sort of know and their scariest extended family ever, who will detail Cousin Stevie's failings as a human being right back to first grade and then bite your head off if you're so foolish as to agree with any of the criticism.
"Ronon wasn't here first year either." Laura tosses the jacket at her and settles on her stomach, propping her shoulders up on folded arms.
"Maybe you're doing it wrong." Katie shrugs and pulls her jacket back on, nice and warm from the other woman's body heat. "Maybe they're throwing out insults where he can rally them back, and you're lobbing them through the holes in his armor right into his woobie interior."
"Woobie?!" Laura sits upright.
"It's a slang term," Katie explains, "with implications of -- "
"I don't need a definition." Laura tosses her hair, and Katie tries to find a safe place for her eyes. "Seriously, Katie. McKay? Woobie?"
"He is! Just underneath all the blood and vinegar..."
"You're obviously far too tired to be up talking," Laura decides. "Katie, get to your own bed before you fall over." She slides off the bed and pushes Katie out the door, patting her on the arm before disappearing back into her own room.
Katie blinks for a moment and finds herself meeting the eyes of Sergeant Alvarez from the room across the hall. The older woman looks at Katie for a long moment before nodding and turning into her own room.
Katie kind of thinks maybe something important was going on there, but she really is too tired to make sense of it.
*
Two days later, Katie was eating dinner, or possibly tea, at a table with Parrish (as he prefers to be known) and Radek Zelenka when Laura limped in, strands of hair plastered to the sides of her face.
"What happened?" Katie gasped. "Are you all right?"
"Overdid it in training, 'sall," Laura sighed.
"If... if you would sit here, I could bring you your food...?"
Parrish rolled his eyes and looked at Katie the way one of her undergraduate professors had whenever she might as well have phoned in her
work.
"Thank you." Laura gingerly settled herself into a chair next to Katie. Parrish and Zelenka slid their chairs and food as far away as they could get without actually leaving the table.
"You were right, by the way," the Marine added.
Katie blinked at her.
"I was unjustly presuming on supposed intimacy, and I was getting away with it because everyone was mad at him, and I should probably apologize to McKay. I don't suppose you know where he is?"
"He is busy," Dr. Zelenka said.
"Oh." Laura swept her hair off her face. "Is it something I can interrupt, or should I wait for tomorrow?"
"I think it would be best to wait until tomorrow, yes."
Laura nodded thoughtfully. "Speaking of which -- you weren't angry at him, Katie."
"Now and then people screw up. It comes with the humanity. Some of them have spectacular screwups because they're standing on the shoulders of giants." Katie frowned. "I think that's from something."
"Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold," Dr. Zelenka promptly replied, eyes firmly on his plate. "Or possibly Borders of Infinity, but I am sure that it was Miles Vorkosigan thinking."
"I, on the other hand, managed to get myself up the creek without a paddle all on my own. Katie, if you could get bird chunks in honey mustard sauce on riceish and some salad?"
When Katie came back with Laura's tray, Dr. Zelenka and Parrish were talking about Maigret novels over their coffee.
Laura shot them a glance to make sure they were busy with their conversation and then asked "So, you like McKay because you think there's a giant woobie beneath his prickly exterior?"
At the table behind her, Lt. Colonel Sheppard choked on his drink.
"No, no, that doesn't really have anything to do with it." Katie thought for a moment. "Except maybe for why we wouldn't work out as, you know, a long-term thing, but... how long were you with the SGC before you came here?"
"I wasn't." Laura shrugged. "They sent me my marching orders along with my shiny new rank insignia and said 'Here, we're sending you to an extremely secret base where "out of contact" has a whole new meaning, be sure to pack entertainment for the long ride there.' Possibly they think it's a good way for us to get experience in a hurry before pulling us back to Earth and the fast track."
"Then you wouldn't know... Rodney McKay is famous. People know of him. People squee over him. I watched the films cut together from the security tapes at Area 51 I don't know how many times. You have no idea how excited I was the first time I heard an actual McKay Rant in person.
"But that's... you know, it's like having a thing for Grissom from CSI, or Professor Snape. You love them to bits and would be happy to date them, even when they're not your type or your type's gender, even when you know perfectly well that no matter how much you like them they'd be hell to live with and you probably don't have the kind of -- of -- of what it would take to live with that, and even if you did they probably wouldn't want to make the compromises to live with you.
"But if they were real -- which Rodney is -- and they wanted to spend time with you -- which he actually did -- you'd make up your mind to enjoy every bit of it -- and I have."
"Well," Laura said dubiously, swallowing her first mouthful of chicken-and-rice. "As long as you're happy." She tapped on her plate with her fork. "And anyway, Snape is a dick. Just because he had a horrendous childhood doesn't give him a license to take it out on everyone else."
"Snape is a dick," Katie agreed. "That's why we like him."
*
There really aren't enough botanists in Atlantis. (If you asked Rodney, there really isn't enough of anything in Atlantis, with the exception of incompetent idiots, where so much as one is enough and to spare.)
Even with military personnel willing and able to serve the function of graduate students under the name of cross-training, everyone tends to wind up working on everyone else's projects.
It is for this reason that Katie is helping Parrish and Corporal Talldeer prepare slides of fungi (for really thin, even slices, there really is nothing like a vegetable peeler) when a green frond pokes its way in through the door.
"Katie! I've brought you a giant fern!" Laura calls cheerfully.
Katie hands the fungi paring to Talldeer and walks closer as Laura and the Chinese gate technician manhandle the plant in, its root structure wrapped in what appears to be a wet piece of military-issue tent.
"That's not a fern," Katie reveals gently. "That's a cycad. See the seeds?" She taps the large cone growing out of the plant's crown.
"Oh." Even Laura's hair seems to droop. "And today was going so well, too."
"It's still a lovely plant. So you went to a tropical forest today, then?"
"No, it had the same sort of climate as just about every other address in the database," Laura shrugs. "Sort of like Michigan in the fall, only greener."
Katie blinked. "This is a temperate-zone cycad?"
"Leomontov's going to be over the moon," Parrish agreed with the sentiment if not the words. "Here, we'd better get it transplanted sooner rather than later."
"Over which one?" the Chinese guy wonders as he and Laura bring the cycad over to the urn Katie'd won from an anthropologist the only time the latter'd come to ladies' poker night. She knew it would come in handy someday.
"All of them," Talldeer says cheerfully. "And bitching all the way down every time."
"Leomontov's not that bad," Parrish argues, putting more dirt in the pot.
Eventually the task is done, and the five of them survey it proudly before Laura says "Thanks, Dee!"
"No problem," the Chinese guy tells her, and heads back to the gateroom.
"His name is Dee, then?" Katie wonders.
"Damned if I know," Laura shrugs. "Everyone calls them Chuck and Dee, so..."
"Well, we had to call them something," Parrish shrugs, "and it stuck."
"This is a good day," Talldeer proclaims.
"I'll say." Laura throws herself down on the settee-thing whose purpose in the lab nobody is entirely sure of. "I made it with Ronon properly this time, we had a mission where nothing much happened and we liked it that way, I discovered a new variety of a known kind of plant..."
"You slept with Ronon again?" Katie demands.
"Yup. Awesome sex, compounded by being able to take a shower in the morning and run back to my room in yesterday's clothes."
"So you're dating him now?"
"Nah, this was just to clear the air. Besides, I wouldn't want to go in for that sort of power struggle on a regular basis, although now and again battlesex is always nice..."
"TMI, ma'am!" Talldeer says hastily.
"Oh, sorry. Although, speaking of... Katie, do you want to date McKay again?"
"Well, not if it'd make him uncomfortable," Katie tries to explain, the back of her head warring between "yes, please!" and "but I want to be swept off my feet, not to have to do all the sweeping!"
"Besides," Parrish says, "I hear our resident Sikh guardswoman is interested in him, for what it's worth."
"You do?" Laura blinks. "That could... well, I think it might last until he realized he was essentially dating a Canadian Teyla."
"But he might like dating someone like Teyla," Katie points out. Certainly, she has thought now and again that it might be good for Rodney to date Teyla herself, although the supersecret directory of AR-1 RPF is surprisingly devoid of assenting tales. (It can't be because they're afraid of Teyla Emmagan's wrath, as there are plenty of lurid fantasies about Teyla and Ronon.)
"...maybe... I think he's the one that could really use a fling with Ronon. No offense, Katie."
"The whole team should just have orgies every week," Katie shrugs. "I think Simpson and Alvarez would invent a way to make the walls sprout cameras if they did."
"They should," Parrish agrees.
"Uh," Laura says. "I mean, yes to the orgies -- oh, my, the pretty -- but no to the cameras. I mean, not cameras in general, but... "
"Of course, the rules about fraternization would be a problem," Talldeer ponders, "but given that they're so married anyway -- "
Parrish stifles a snicker.
" -- they're probably in violation as is, although it doesn't seem to have gotten in the way, so they probably wouldn't be any more in violation if they had a smokingly hot kinky foursome but they might be more relaxed." Talldeer blushes when he realizes that all three other pairs of eyes are on him.
Katie picks up the vegetable peeler again. Really, when it comes to Rodney, what she really wants is for him to be happy, whether it's with one of his team, or all of his team, or, or, or Carson Beckett (she hasn't heard of him seeing anyone since Laura broke it off), or none of the above.
And while she's at it, she wants Laura to be happy, both for the sake of their friendship and because Laura's smile seems to spark her own. (Which might also count as friendship, albeit the selfish side.)
*
Every third Trewsday (letting a flock of linguists who were also SF/fantasy geeks loose on the naming-things front had had some interesting side effects) the Canadian members of the Atlantis Expedition all tried to have lunch together.
Well, most of them, unless duty called, or Ancient technology went pear-shaped, or something.
Katie was still surprised to see Rodney McKay among them, sitting next to the military woman in the dark blue turban.
"Hello, Rodney!" she said quite normally, nevertheless.
"Hi, Katie! ...oh. Hello, Cadman."
"Nice to see you too, McKay," Laura said from behind Katie. "Sergeant."
"Lieutenant," the turbaned woman answered.
"And hey, Grey, didn't realize the Daedalus crew's leave had started yet."
"I put in for the first batch," the redheaded Master Seaman answered. "I wanted to get down here, actually see people..." She darted a glance at Rodney under her lashes that instantly warmed Katie towards a fellow Rodney McKay fan.
"Yeah, I wanted to catch up with my baby sister," Chuck said, ruffling her hair.
"Fee's your sister?" Cadman wondered.
"Half-sister," Fee explained. "I'm from Mom's second marriage."
"You didn't tell us you had a sister, Chuck," one of the other Canadians said.
"Chuck?!" Fee started laughing. "They call you Chuck?"
"Hey, it's an improvement, Feenie."
Fee hit him with her balled-up napkin.
"Uh, what is your name?" Katie asked.
"John Calvin," Chuck -- John -- answered.
Katie and the entire tableful of Canadians winced.
"Huh?" Laura hissed into Katie's ear.
"Famous religious guy," Katie whispered back.
"Yeah, and it was Mom that did it," Fee answered something Katie hadn't caught.
"And it was Mom who named Fee -- "
"Johnny!" Fee yelped.
" -- after Great-Aunt Jeanie -- "
This time it was Laura, Rodney, and Corporal Talldeer who started snorting.
" -- which really was a bit much, especially given that she was Susan Sheppard before her first marriage."
"The opera singer?" the turbaned sergeant asked as Rodney lost his battle with outright guffaws.
"Huh?" Laura whispered again.
"I don't get it either," Katie murmured as Chuckjohn verified the sergeant's assumption.
"No respect for the classics," Rodney groused at them, mostly containing the end of his laughter as somebody else asked "Any relation to...?" and Fee answered "Not by blood, no."
"Grey," Laura said. "Not to interrupt, much, but you're going to be full up this trip back, right?"
"Yeah," Fee Grey shrugged. "Nobody has to take emergency leave, do they?"
"No," Laura said. "I was going to put in for transfer back to Earth -- they're really stepping it up -- so if I send the paperwork back in the next burst they should have orders cut by the time you get back."
"Planning to clean me out again?" Fee asked as Katie froze.
Transfer. Back.
"Well," Rodney said. He snapped his fingers. "Recommendations! It'd be good if Sheppard wrote you a recommendation, right? I'll tell him..."
"It doesn't quite work that way," Laura told him, deliberate swagger overlying fondness.
Katie, eyes darting about, remembered that she was still holding the remnants of her lunch. Numbly, she carried them over to their proper place, and walked out of the mess hall, firmly, determinedly.
"Katie!" Laura's footsteps were running after her. "Is something wrong? Why'd you take off like that?"
Katie turned and looked at her friend. Possibly the best friend she had on Atlantis.
"You didn't tell me you were going to transfer," she said, her voice small and childish in her own ears.
"Katie... I screwed up here. Not with lives hanging on it, but socially, I screwed up but good. I don't have the shared experience to encourage them to forgive me, so far from being an appanage of the guy everybody likes I'm the bitch who told him it wasn't working and then had a very public affair within the week, and if lives are going to hang on the line people don't need to have the matter clogged up by lingering mistrust."
"People like you here!" Katie protested. "I like you. Chuck and Dee like you. Ronon likes you now, he's very Law-of-the-Jungle-ish that way. Carson still thinks fondly of you, and I don't think Lorne dislikes you..."
"But not enough. Isn't that right?"
"Laura," Katie said, very quietly. "I'd miss you. Please don't transfer."
Laura looked at her for a moment. Then Major Lorne's voice came tinnily from Laura's radio, summoning her to central control.
"I've got to. You know. Go."
Katie nodded.
Laura spun on one heel and hurried away.
Katie went back into her lab, to the spare biostasis unit, and pulled out the bar of Lindt dark chocolate she'd won from Mary Simpson who'd won it from Maria Alvarez who'd won it from Laura who'd been given it by Carson. At a time like this, she deserved it.
*
Another day, another duty, and this time she'd actually gotten to go offworld. To an uninhabited (by sentient beings) moon which had been visited several times before, there to look at ferns in their own biosphere, dig up a few to take back with them, and point out to Leomontov that no, their military guards could not carry the plants back to the gate for them, unless he really wanted the samples to be tossed away and almost certainly killed in the event of an unexpected Wraith attack.
The guards appreciated it enough that once they were back in the city and run through decontamination, Andrews and Stanislaski offered to carry her biosealed ferns back to the lab for her.
"Our pleasure, ma'am," Andrews said when she thanked him.
Really, she was too young to be feeling this old.
The lab was mostly empty at this time of day, except for Parrish running something on his computer and Laura sitting on the settee-thing.
Katie hastily rescued the blue-striped fern as Andrews tried to salute.
"At ease, gentlemen," Laura hastily said. She got up herself and helped Katie take the ferns from her friendly bearers and "pot" them in the hydroponics racks.
"Thank you so much," Katie told the two Marines.
"Now shoo," their Lieutenant said.
"Yes, ma'am, shooing, ma'am!" Andrews said, saluted, and did not quite march out.
Stanislaski shot the women a longsuffering look before following him.
"So," Laura said. "I'm not going to take the transfer."
"Oh, thank God." Katie blushed, she was sure, right up to the roots of her hair. "Um, I meant, um, I'm really happy. Really."
Laura nodded. "Well, you know, what sort of Marine would I be if I passed up the chance to live in a gorgeous giant floating deathtrap?"
"An old one, maybe," Katie said, opening her own computer and busying herself with it as she tried for normality, "but I'm selfish enough to say that here is where things are happening."
"Yeah. Um. So, are you going to be busy now?"
"Well, I have to catalogue these new ferns and label them properly, but after that the rest of the day's pretty flexible."
"Good. I was wondering... "
Katie looked up after Laura trailed off. The other woman stared at the window for a moment before straightening up.
"Katie," she said firmly. "The mess is having kebabs for lunch. When you've finished writing up your ferns, go there, collect your food, and meet me for lunch on the sixth-level south balcony."
"Yes, ma'am!" Katie said, and then blushed again, realizing what the snap of Laura's voice had brought out in response.
Laura didn't actually look upset about it, though. She smiled, nodded, and strode out of the labs, a swing in her step.
Katie called up the biocatalogue, humming a little. Then she looked up suddenly.
"Parrish. I know I'm happy that my best friend isn't leaving; why are you happy?"
Parrish looked up, a smile still on his lips.
"I just found out I won a few bets."
Oh.
Well, she supposed Laura's potential transfer might have been a subject for speculation, but as for anything else...
He must have found out by intranet, of course.
Her hum didn't exactly become "I Can See Clearly Now," but it made a vague effort in that direction.
-author- Sophonisba (
saphanibaal)-warnings- Some foul language, unreliable narrator, tense changes, cultural references.
-timeframe- During second season, before "Critical Mass." Spoilers through "Trinity."
-characters- Katie Brown, Laura Cadman, Rodney McKay, "Chuck," his Chinese counterpart, cameos from Sheppard, Simpson, and Heightmeyer, various OCs
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. Neither are any of the other shows or books or songs referenced. Nor are the two cringeworthy SW prequel reactions, although I did overhear the second one in the checkout line at Wal-Mart.
-word count- 6611
-summary- Katie and Laura, in and out of men.
Quarks: Truth and Beauty
When Katie Brown first boarded the Daedalus, she was excited. A real, live, intergalactic spaceship was one of the most awesome things ever and one that could be appreciated by more than just the specialists in such fields.
Then she gained proof that Skeen's Search was correct; space travel was essentially a long time in a small box with nothing much to look at.
She was desultorily arguing with some of the other scientists over what relationships ought to develop in Harry Potter (and nobly refraining from throwing something at the idiot geologist who kept trying to bring up what the author seemed inclined to actually DO, rather than what, given the personalities as described and intuited, might be best for the characters) when an American military woman with a cascade of red-gold hair wandered into the room set aside as a lounge and said "Look, if you want to talk about what you think's going to HAPPEN, there are a couple of Marines debating it five doors down THAT way."
The geologist sniffed and stalked out. Somebody murmured "Asshole."
"So," Anna Loran said, "I was thinking Lee -- "
The military woman left. Katie got up and followed her.
"Um, I... " she began.
"Look, no offense," the strawberry blonde said, "but much as I like Harry Potter if I had to sit through one more sentence of meta I was going to run outside screaming, and given that we're on a big honking spaceship flying through hyperspace, that probably wouldn't end too well. Laura Cadman."
"Katie Brown, same, and I wanted to thank you, actually."
"Oh, hey, no charge. They don't give you your commission if you can't head these things off at the pass when you see them -- I'm in the Marines. What is it that you do?"
"I'm a pteridologist," Katie explained. "Apparently offworld planets have plenty of ferns, and they want someone to come and see whether they're different from the Earth ones or not. I also have some background in conifers."
"I do explosives," Ms. Cadman -- if something on her jacket had her rank on it, Katie didn't know enough to recognize it -- shrugged. "So, this is your first time seeing strange new worlds, meeting new life and new civilizations?"
Oh. Of course they'd pick military personnel who did know Star Trek for something like this. "Pretty much, yeah, although I have seen aliens coming through for visits and I still think the guy I was seeing back in undergrad might have secretly been one."
Ms. Cadman tilted her head. "Oh?"
"We went to see Phantom Menace together," Katie explained, "and I made a few comments afterwards, and he said 'That sweet little kid grows up to be Darth Vader?! You're shittin' me!'"
The Marine threw her head back and laughed, a resounding, joyous sound.
"He turned out to be serious, too."
Laura Cadman laughed harder. "The sad thing is," she finally managed to say, "I can top that."
"How?"
"A couple years back, I was in the checkout line at Wally-world, and these women behind me were talking? So one of them said that, when she was coming out of the third one, somebody behind her was saying 'I bet there's going to be a fourth one, they left it wide open for a sequel.'"
Katie stopped dead in the Daedalus hallway and made strangled noises.
*
Things Katie Brown likes:
ferns
cedars
the original Star Wars trilogy, not the prequels, not the latest round of remakes (although Dr. McKay said once in the mess that the version her mother'd taped off TV and Katie'd watched till the tape wore out was itself retouched and recut)
chocolate cherry cordials
Atlantis
her aunt Pat's The Professionals and Starsky and Hutch zine collection
Susan Lovett's artwork (see above)
tuttle root mousse
Star Trek, original and Next Gen, although not as much as Star Wars
Dr. Rodney McKay
cooking with fresh herbs
chicken lamb curry coconut pepperoni soup made with cilantro and mint grown on the mainland and bits of bacon
being told what to do in just the right voice
ladies' poker nights
Harry Potter (although not so much Harry himself)
CSI (also the original; the casts of the spinoffs just didn't grab her)
tennis
spool knitting
Laura Cadman (sometimes)
Katie was on her way to the physics-engineering-ancienttech labs, cradling the Ancient automatic mister that had inexplicably stopped working that morning, when she realized that Lt. Colonel Sheppard was giving a number of the new military personnel a lecture right outside their door.
"Don't mind us," the lieutenant colonel shrugged at her before continuing with what appeared to be a lecture on being careful around the sort of technology that you could turn on with your ass.
Laura Cadman grimaced expressively at her. Katie waved with three fingers of the hand less needed to support the mister.
Dr. McKay, waiting on the outcome of three experiments, handled it personally. It only needed to be taken apart and cleaned properly, as he told her vociferously, lengthily, and with many illustrative hand gestures. Katie let the words flow over and around her as she watched him, the power and the stamina and the surprising delicacy of his hands as they moved over the mister's innards, deft and sure.
He had handed it back to her, repaired and in working condition, and was detailing added instructions on how to do as much herself so that she wouldn't waste other people's valuable time (presumably, in case they were all busy with the final parts of experiments the next time it clogged; Katie felt it must be much like cooking Thanksgiving dinner, where long times of waiting suddenly culminated in everything needing to be done at once) when Sheppard and Laura came in.
"Was there something you needed, Lieutenant?" Sheppard sat on the end of an unused lab table in the corner.
"Nah, I just came in to see if Dr. Brown needed rescuing." Laura shrugged. "Are you done? I had some thoughts about the thing we were discussing."
"Yeah," Katie told her, picking the mister up. "Did you see the one Annemarie has to that like-the-wind song from, uh, I think it was one of the Castlevania games?"
"What, 'I Am The Wind'? No, I haven't."
Katie waited for the lab doors to close behind them before changing the subject, given her lead-in. "Laura? Do you have any idea what Sheppard's doing in Dr. McKay's labs? I didn't think he had an engineering degree... "
"I don't know what his degree's in, but apparently that corner is his office," Laura shrugged. "He said he'd have talked to us in there, but McKay would have objected to all of us cluttering up the place."
"But," Katie began, stopped, and then found something resembling a point. "Why doesn't he have his own office? The city is full of rooms."
"I think there was some reason for it back when they first came here," Laura shrugged, "and now he keeps up shop in there because that's the way it's always been done. I'd just as soon keep out of McKay's orbit when I didn't have to, but hey."
"Oh." They walked on for a moment before she managed to get out the next part. "So. You seem to hear more of the gossip than I do... "
"Seriously, Katie, you need to get out more. Parrish is, like, one of the major hubs of gossip, and he's a botanist."
"He's a mycologist," Katie pointed out. "Fungi aren't plants, after all. Never mind him; I was going to ask," she waved a hand back to the labs, "does he, you know, have a girlfriend?"
"The LTC?" Laura blinked. "The rumor mill's paired him up with just about everyone at one time or another, half of the people I've talked to think he's the man-slut of Atlantis, and the other half say he isn't at all but that any one of the oldtimers would be willing to give it up for him if it looked like he needed it. Even the straight guys."
"Not him," Katie shook her head. "Dr. McKay."
"Doctor -- you're kidding. Why would anyone put up with, well, that?"
"Laura, have you seen him?" Katie threw one of her own hands wide before hastily returning it to mister-holding duty. "Those hands, and his shoulders -- he could probably throw me over one of those shoulders if someone put it in his head to do so -- and his tongue, and he's so scarily, brilliantly smart..."
Laura shot her a piercing glance. "Is this an academic question, or personal?"
"Uh..." Oh my God. Personal. She hadn't even thought that -- but she could, Atlantis was a closed society, it's not as if it'd be too scarily stalkerish...
"Katie, you're absolutely whacked, you know that? But no, I haven't heard his name linked with any woman's in particular -- even Dr. Weir and Teyla have only gotten the mild sort of 'y'think?' that they have with every man in Atlantis. And each other."
*
Days go by, life changes, Katie realizes that Dr. McKay doesn't do subtle in general personal interaction. She's never been the sort to prance naked into someone's workspace, or to throw herself across a table and demand sexual attentions (being thrown, now, that's a different matter), and so she stops by when he's having lunch with his gate team and asks him out.
"Oh my God, Katie, I can't believe you did that!" Laura laughs with her like a couple of schoolgirls, grasps her upper arms fiercely for a moment before thrusting her away with enough force that Katie has to take a step or two backwards to keep her balance.
"I was so, so nervous," Katie confesses. "It took me all morning to work up the nerve."
"Whatever." Laura dismisses this easily. "The point is, you actually did it. You just... went up and asked him."
"I tried to think of what you might do. You are so confident; if you liked someone, you would tell them what you wanted of them and expect them to respond."
"Uh." Laura looks at her feet very fixedly. She heels one forward, toes back, a slow-motion version of something that would have drummed and tapped had it been faster.
"Oh my God. There is someone."
Laura throws her head up defiantly. "I could tell him what I want in bed. It's the getting there that's the problem." She puts one hand on Katie's shoulder. "You're braver than I am."
"I'm not brave at all," Katie points out.
*
One of her exes used to say that Katie was such a shameless fangirl because of her desperate desire to belong to someone or something. This was, of course, untrue.
Certainly she wanted -- yearned -- to belong to someone; it had always seemed like such a warm and comforting thing to be; but if anything, her quiet searching for someone she'd want to belong to had reinforced the differences between playing and reality.
After all, she had never really expected this Thing-with-Rodney to last, although she hadn't quite thought it would end the way it had. The first date had been -- well, aside from the rocky start, which she'd sort of expected, and the bringing-the-best-friend-along, which she hadn't, and the running out, which she'd been afraid of, it had been... wonderful. The stuff of fantasies.
The second time... Laura had been dating Dr. Beckett, and everyone knew the two men were friends, so she had suggested that they double-date and received in return a look of appalled shock. Rodney didn't seem to have quarrelled with Dr. Beckett -- well, there had been that day when things seemed a little strained, but Parrish had told her that there'd been some tension getting Laura out of the transporter matrix she'd been stuck in.
So it had to be Laura he had the problem with, although that didn't make much sense either. At least, for a moment Katie thought it did when Laura started teasing him, but then she remembered that she'd suggested the double date before Laura started commenting to him. At him.
It didn't seem fair -- Laura liked Rodney; not the way she liked Dr. Beckett, of course, but still -- but Katie had sighed and gone out with Rodney by herself, and the evening dissolved into more and more awkwardness before they'd both sort of realized it wasn't working, and that Laura was probably a large part of it. Despite the fact that to the best of Katie's knowledge, Rodney didn't know any of the things he might have justly taken against her for: not her minor in psychology --
("We make the worst patients," Laura said at the poker night after she'd been reconstituted, in the middle of getting too drunk to keep playing.
Kate Heightmeyer rolled her eyes and threw one of the socks she'd won at her.)
-- not her inability to watch a buddy-guys movie or television show without mentally pairing them up --
("Seriously, Laura, don't you ever want to enjoy a relationship that isn't based in eroticism?"
"That's what real life is for." Pause. "And pot, kettle much? You're the one who brought a flash drive full of old-school zines and likes original Star Trek."
"Yes, but I don't personally see the slash in Trek, for example. Unless you count that Nurse Chapel should forget about Spock and go for Uhura."
"Well, duh. Still doesn't count, though.")
-- nor her bizarre preference for the prequel trilogy over the original Star Wars, a preference rooted entirely, as far as Katie can tell, in slashable-hot-guy factor.
("They were so doing it."
"Laura. Teacher."
"Katie. Hot. Besides, I thought you liked powerplay."
"Yes, but not involving teachers -- I've noticed you don't go for the military-themed porn yourself."
Laura stopped, shrugging finally. "Hadn't realized you taught."
"It's not the teaching per se, it's my life in academia. And then the SGC. And then here."
"Right, but -- teacher or no, you have to admit that Obi-Wan and Anakin had more chemistry than Anakin and Padme."
"Oh, come on. Your commanding officer has more chemistry with inanimate objects than Anakin had with Padme.")
She'd repeated that last to Rodney, squashing guilt for appearing to disparage her friend for a man, and been rewarded with a strangled laugh and the knowledge that they were back, not dating, but on track in a close-knit village that happened to live in a city.
But still -- she'd have thought Laura and Dr. Beckett would last, guided by Laura's sure and certain hand.
"Was it... Rodney?" Katie had asked at the last poker night. "I know the discord between you two..."
"What discord? McKay grows on you. Like a fungus. Or the annoying-but-lovable cousin your father wouldn't let you shoot when you were fourteen. I get along fine with McKay."
"I... I don't think he 'gets along fine' with you."
"Did Carson think you got along too well with him?" Annemarie Szujewska had said at the same time.
"No. I... ew. No offense, Katie. Like I said, cousin. No, it's... you know I like to be in control, and Carson doesn't -- he doesn't even want to switch off, he expects us to be, I don't know, covalent or something. And it isn't exactly control, but he never lets go -- I don't think he knows how."
"What you need," Mary Simpson'd told her firmly, "is hooch. And possibly chocolate. I raise my bid by one soda bottle of green death."
"I fold," Dr. Lakshmaniyah'd promptly announced.
"It's not the end of the world." Laura'd turned up her cards. "I am a beautiful and desirable woman and there are plenty of people out there eager to lick my boots."
*
Dr. Weir's been careful never to write an official policy on what can or cannot be copied into the Atlantis Free Library, which had apparently been moved onto the Ancient servers sometime back in the first year.
Currently, it contains public-domain works, copyrighted works, copylefted works, fanworks (Katie's flashdrive-worth of Aunt Pat's zines had been a big hit, according to the tracking counters), and things produced by members of the expedition in their mythical spare time; Katie isn't sure she believes Elsa Wagner that someone has written RPF about herself and Rodney McKay, but given some of the people on the newsgroups she's not surprised.
The RPF itself is hidden behind passwords and firewalls and possibly genetic scans; it is for this reason (well, not to read stories about herself; that'd just be vaguely creepy) that she is in this corridor at half-past-three in the morning, having just been interviewed by the Dutchwoman who is currently the sysadmin for Atlantis, in more depth than anyone has done since her SGC job interview, and told that she will be contacted the next day.
There is noise and laughter from down the hall, and she turns her head to see a furious Laura stalking towards her, wearing high-cut panties with a strawberries print and a lace waistband, arms crossed in front of her breasts.
"What happened?" Katie gasps, stripping off her jacket, some small part of her mind noting that Laura has gorgeous skin all over, it's really not fair.
"I'm not drunk enough to talk about it," Laura huffs.
By the time they're three levels down and on Laura's doorstep, she is talking about it. "I mean, my God, Ronon, who's going to turn that down? And the sex was great. I mean fantastic, as in I actually passed out for three hours afterwards -- "
Katie flaps her hands against the oversharing -- fantasies are one thing, but actually talking about it? -- although Laura's voice drops low and wicked toward the end and she thinks she'd listen anyway, letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would."
"And then I get woken up by having my underwear pulled on, and he looks at me for a moment before throwing my ass out in the hallway. Loudly. Asshole. I mean, the hell? What did I ever do to him?"
"Jerk," Katie agrees, and then an unpleasant thought hits her. "... maybe he doesn't like the way you never do anything but tease Rodney McKay when you see him? He does have a different background, after all..."
Laura flops down on her bed and starts unzipping the borrowed jacket. "Oh, come on! It's friendly teasing. You know -- I poke you because I care. The way all his friends do."
"Yes, but -- " But I've seen the way he looks when he's answering them and the way he looks when he's returning your fire, and the latter is less comfortable, the air between spikier. "But you're not his friend, and you never stop, and other people are laughing too when you do, and maybe on Sateda people from different divisions didn't or something." She should -- she should have said something to Laura before, but she hadn't realized the not-fun was severe enough that this would be appropriate. Or maybe it isn't and Sateda just had different boiling points, or maybe it isn't even anything to do with that at all but she should still have said something, Laura's her friend -- "Maybe it's something they're allowed to do and you're not; even if you had a hookup with him you wouldn't have told me about, you still wouldn't be as close to him as the people from first year." Because she's noticed this -- Atlantis, for all its research opportunities (and she still hasn't gotten to go offworld, there's so much to study and do right here, up to and including tending the potted basil and rosemary that Botany keeps hold of so that certain persons don't monopolize it all), isn't so much science camp or research lab as it is a lengthy visit with people you sort of know and their scariest extended family ever, who will detail Cousin Stevie's failings as a human being right back to first grade and then bite your head off if you're so foolish as to agree with any of the criticism.
"Ronon wasn't here first year either." Laura tosses the jacket at her and settles on her stomach, propping her shoulders up on folded arms.
"Maybe you're doing it wrong." Katie shrugs and pulls her jacket back on, nice and warm from the other woman's body heat. "Maybe they're throwing out insults where he can rally them back, and you're lobbing them through the holes in his armor right into his woobie interior."
"Woobie?!" Laura sits upright.
"It's a slang term," Katie explains, "with implications of -- "
"I don't need a definition." Laura tosses her hair, and Katie tries to find a safe place for her eyes. "Seriously, Katie. McKay? Woobie?"
"He is! Just underneath all the blood and vinegar..."
"You're obviously far too tired to be up talking," Laura decides. "Katie, get to your own bed before you fall over." She slides off the bed and pushes Katie out the door, patting her on the arm before disappearing back into her own room.
Katie blinks for a moment and finds herself meeting the eyes of Sergeant Alvarez from the room across the hall. The older woman looks at Katie for a long moment before nodding and turning into her own room.
Katie kind of thinks maybe something important was going on there, but she really is too tired to make sense of it.
*
Two days later, Katie was eating dinner, or possibly tea, at a table with Parrish (as he prefers to be known) and Radek Zelenka when Laura limped in, strands of hair plastered to the sides of her face.
"What happened?" Katie gasped. "Are you all right?"
"Overdid it in training, 'sall," Laura sighed.
"If... if you would sit here, I could bring you your food...?"
Parrish rolled his eyes and looked at Katie the way one of her undergraduate professors had whenever she might as well have phoned in her
work.
"Thank you." Laura gingerly settled herself into a chair next to Katie. Parrish and Zelenka slid their chairs and food as far away as they could get without actually leaving the table.
"You were right, by the way," the Marine added.
Katie blinked at her.
"I was unjustly presuming on supposed intimacy, and I was getting away with it because everyone was mad at him, and I should probably apologize to McKay. I don't suppose you know where he is?"
"He is busy," Dr. Zelenka said.
"Oh." Laura swept her hair off her face. "Is it something I can interrupt, or should I wait for tomorrow?"
"I think it would be best to wait until tomorrow, yes."
Laura nodded thoughtfully. "Speaking of which -- you weren't angry at him, Katie."
"Now and then people screw up. It comes with the humanity. Some of them have spectacular screwups because they're standing on the shoulders of giants." Katie frowned. "I think that's from something."
"Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold," Dr. Zelenka promptly replied, eyes firmly on his plate. "Or possibly Borders of Infinity, but I am sure that it was Miles Vorkosigan thinking."
"I, on the other hand, managed to get myself up the creek without a paddle all on my own. Katie, if you could get bird chunks in honey mustard sauce on riceish and some salad?"
When Katie came back with Laura's tray, Dr. Zelenka and Parrish were talking about Maigret novels over their coffee.
Laura shot them a glance to make sure they were busy with their conversation and then asked "So, you like McKay because you think there's a giant woobie beneath his prickly exterior?"
At the table behind her, Lt. Colonel Sheppard choked on his drink.
"No, no, that doesn't really have anything to do with it." Katie thought for a moment. "Except maybe for why we wouldn't work out as, you know, a long-term thing, but... how long were you with the SGC before you came here?"
"I wasn't." Laura shrugged. "They sent me my marching orders along with my shiny new rank insignia and said 'Here, we're sending you to an extremely secret base where "out of contact" has a whole new meaning, be sure to pack entertainment for the long ride there.' Possibly they think it's a good way for us to get experience in a hurry before pulling us back to Earth and the fast track."
"Then you wouldn't know... Rodney McKay is famous. People know of him. People squee over him. I watched the films cut together from the security tapes at Area 51 I don't know how many times. You have no idea how excited I was the first time I heard an actual McKay Rant in person.
"But that's... you know, it's like having a thing for Grissom from CSI, or Professor Snape. You love them to bits and would be happy to date them, even when they're not your type or your type's gender, even when you know perfectly well that no matter how much you like them they'd be hell to live with and you probably don't have the kind of -- of -- of what it would take to live with that, and even if you did they probably wouldn't want to make the compromises to live with you.
"But if they were real -- which Rodney is -- and they wanted to spend time with you -- which he actually did -- you'd make up your mind to enjoy every bit of it -- and I have."
"Well," Laura said dubiously, swallowing her first mouthful of chicken-and-rice. "As long as you're happy." She tapped on her plate with her fork. "And anyway, Snape is a dick. Just because he had a horrendous childhood doesn't give him a license to take it out on everyone else."
"Snape is a dick," Katie agreed. "That's why we like him."
*
There really aren't enough botanists in Atlantis. (If you asked Rodney, there really isn't enough of anything in Atlantis, with the exception of incompetent idiots, where so much as one is enough and to spare.)
Even with military personnel willing and able to serve the function of graduate students under the name of cross-training, everyone tends to wind up working on everyone else's projects.
It is for this reason that Katie is helping Parrish and Corporal Talldeer prepare slides of fungi (for really thin, even slices, there really is nothing like a vegetable peeler) when a green frond pokes its way in through the door.
"Katie! I've brought you a giant fern!" Laura calls cheerfully.
Katie hands the fungi paring to Talldeer and walks closer as Laura and the Chinese gate technician manhandle the plant in, its root structure wrapped in what appears to be a wet piece of military-issue tent.
"That's not a fern," Katie reveals gently. "That's a cycad. See the seeds?" She taps the large cone growing out of the plant's crown.
"Oh." Even Laura's hair seems to droop. "And today was going so well, too."
"It's still a lovely plant. So you went to a tropical forest today, then?"
"No, it had the same sort of climate as just about every other address in the database," Laura shrugs. "Sort of like Michigan in the fall, only greener."
Katie blinked. "This is a temperate-zone cycad?"
"Leomontov's going to be over the moon," Parrish agreed with the sentiment if not the words. "Here, we'd better get it transplanted sooner rather than later."
"Over which one?" the Chinese guy wonders as he and Laura bring the cycad over to the urn Katie'd won from an anthropologist the only time the latter'd come to ladies' poker night. She knew it would come in handy someday.
"All of them," Talldeer says cheerfully. "And bitching all the way down every time."
"Leomontov's not that bad," Parrish argues, putting more dirt in the pot.
Eventually the task is done, and the five of them survey it proudly before Laura says "Thanks, Dee!"
"No problem," the Chinese guy tells her, and heads back to the gateroom.
"His name is Dee, then?" Katie wonders.
"Damned if I know," Laura shrugs. "Everyone calls them Chuck and Dee, so..."
"Well, we had to call them something," Parrish shrugs, "and it stuck."
"This is a good day," Talldeer proclaims.
"I'll say." Laura throws herself down on the settee-thing whose purpose in the lab nobody is entirely sure of. "I made it with Ronon properly this time, we had a mission where nothing much happened and we liked it that way, I discovered a new variety of a known kind of plant..."
"You slept with Ronon again?" Katie demands.
"Yup. Awesome sex, compounded by being able to take a shower in the morning and run back to my room in yesterday's clothes."
"So you're dating him now?"
"Nah, this was just to clear the air. Besides, I wouldn't want to go in for that sort of power struggle on a regular basis, although now and again battlesex is always nice..."
"TMI, ma'am!" Talldeer says hastily.
"Oh, sorry. Although, speaking of... Katie, do you want to date McKay again?"
"Well, not if it'd make him uncomfortable," Katie tries to explain, the back of her head warring between "yes, please!" and "but I want to be swept off my feet, not to have to do all the sweeping!"
"Besides," Parrish says, "I hear our resident Sikh guardswoman is interested in him, for what it's worth."
"You do?" Laura blinks. "That could... well, I think it might last until he realized he was essentially dating a Canadian Teyla."
"But he might like dating someone like Teyla," Katie points out. Certainly, she has thought now and again that it might be good for Rodney to date Teyla herself, although the supersecret directory of AR-1 RPF is surprisingly devoid of assenting tales. (It can't be because they're afraid of Teyla Emmagan's wrath, as there are plenty of lurid fantasies about Teyla and Ronon.)
"...maybe... I think he's the one that could really use a fling with Ronon. No offense, Katie."
"The whole team should just have orgies every week," Katie shrugs. "I think Simpson and Alvarez would invent a way to make the walls sprout cameras if they did."
"They should," Parrish agrees.
"Uh," Laura says. "I mean, yes to the orgies -- oh, my, the pretty -- but no to the cameras. I mean, not cameras in general, but... "
"Of course, the rules about fraternization would be a problem," Talldeer ponders, "but given that they're so married anyway -- "
Parrish stifles a snicker.
" -- they're probably in violation as is, although it doesn't seem to have gotten in the way, so they probably wouldn't be any more in violation if they had a smokingly hot kinky foursome but they might be more relaxed." Talldeer blushes when he realizes that all three other pairs of eyes are on him.
Katie picks up the vegetable peeler again. Really, when it comes to Rodney, what she really wants is for him to be happy, whether it's with one of his team, or all of his team, or, or, or Carson Beckett (she hasn't heard of him seeing anyone since Laura broke it off), or none of the above.
And while she's at it, she wants Laura to be happy, both for the sake of their friendship and because Laura's smile seems to spark her own. (Which might also count as friendship, albeit the selfish side.)
*
Every third Trewsday (letting a flock of linguists who were also SF/fantasy geeks loose on the naming-things front had had some interesting side effects) the Canadian members of the Atlantis Expedition all tried to have lunch together.
Well, most of them, unless duty called, or Ancient technology went pear-shaped, or something.
Katie was still surprised to see Rodney McKay among them, sitting next to the military woman in the dark blue turban.
"Hello, Rodney!" she said quite normally, nevertheless.
"Hi, Katie! ...oh. Hello, Cadman."
"Nice to see you too, McKay," Laura said from behind Katie. "Sergeant."
"Lieutenant," the turbaned woman answered.
"And hey, Grey, didn't realize the Daedalus crew's leave had started yet."
"I put in for the first batch," the redheaded Master Seaman answered. "I wanted to get down here, actually see people..." She darted a glance at Rodney under her lashes that instantly warmed Katie towards a fellow Rodney McKay fan.
"Yeah, I wanted to catch up with my baby sister," Chuck said, ruffling her hair.
"Fee's your sister?" Cadman wondered.
"Half-sister," Fee explained. "I'm from Mom's second marriage."
"You didn't tell us you had a sister, Chuck," one of the other Canadians said.
"Chuck?!" Fee started laughing. "They call you Chuck?"
"Hey, it's an improvement, Feenie."
Fee hit him with her balled-up napkin.
"Uh, what is your name?" Katie asked.
"John Calvin," Chuck -- John -- answered.
Katie and the entire tableful of Canadians winced.
"Huh?" Laura hissed into Katie's ear.
"Famous religious guy," Katie whispered back.
"Yeah, and it was Mom that did it," Fee answered something Katie hadn't caught.
"And it was Mom who named Fee -- "
"Johnny!" Fee yelped.
" -- after Great-Aunt Jeanie -- "
This time it was Laura, Rodney, and Corporal Talldeer who started snorting.
" -- which really was a bit much, especially given that she was Susan Sheppard before her first marriage."
"The opera singer?" the turbaned sergeant asked as Rodney lost his battle with outright guffaws.
"Huh?" Laura whispered again.
"I don't get it either," Katie murmured as Chuckjohn verified the sergeant's assumption.
"No respect for the classics," Rodney groused at them, mostly containing the end of his laughter as somebody else asked "Any relation to...?" and Fee answered "Not by blood, no."
"Grey," Laura said. "Not to interrupt, much, but you're going to be full up this trip back, right?"
"Yeah," Fee Grey shrugged. "Nobody has to take emergency leave, do they?"
"No," Laura said. "I was going to put in for transfer back to Earth -- they're really stepping it up -- so if I send the paperwork back in the next burst they should have orders cut by the time you get back."
"Planning to clean me out again?" Fee asked as Katie froze.
Transfer. Back.
"Well," Rodney said. He snapped his fingers. "Recommendations! It'd be good if Sheppard wrote you a recommendation, right? I'll tell him..."
"It doesn't quite work that way," Laura told him, deliberate swagger overlying fondness.
Katie, eyes darting about, remembered that she was still holding the remnants of her lunch. Numbly, she carried them over to their proper place, and walked out of the mess hall, firmly, determinedly.
"Katie!" Laura's footsteps were running after her. "Is something wrong? Why'd you take off like that?"
Katie turned and looked at her friend. Possibly the best friend she had on Atlantis.
"You didn't tell me you were going to transfer," she said, her voice small and childish in her own ears.
"Katie... I screwed up here. Not with lives hanging on it, but socially, I screwed up but good. I don't have the shared experience to encourage them to forgive me, so far from being an appanage of the guy everybody likes I'm the bitch who told him it wasn't working and then had a very public affair within the week, and if lives are going to hang on the line people don't need to have the matter clogged up by lingering mistrust."
"People like you here!" Katie protested. "I like you. Chuck and Dee like you. Ronon likes you now, he's very Law-of-the-Jungle-ish that way. Carson still thinks fondly of you, and I don't think Lorne dislikes you..."
"But not enough. Isn't that right?"
"Laura," Katie said, very quietly. "I'd miss you. Please don't transfer."
Laura looked at her for a moment. Then Major Lorne's voice came tinnily from Laura's radio, summoning her to central control.
"I've got to. You know. Go."
Katie nodded.
Laura spun on one heel and hurried away.
Katie went back into her lab, to the spare biostasis unit, and pulled out the bar of Lindt dark chocolate she'd won from Mary Simpson who'd won it from Maria Alvarez who'd won it from Laura who'd been given it by Carson. At a time like this, she deserved it.
*
Another day, another duty, and this time she'd actually gotten to go offworld. To an uninhabited (by sentient beings) moon which had been visited several times before, there to look at ferns in their own biosphere, dig up a few to take back with them, and point out to Leomontov that no, their military guards could not carry the plants back to the gate for them, unless he really wanted the samples to be tossed away and almost certainly killed in the event of an unexpected Wraith attack.
The guards appreciated it enough that once they were back in the city and run through decontamination, Andrews and Stanislaski offered to carry her biosealed ferns back to the lab for her.
"Our pleasure, ma'am," Andrews said when she thanked him.
Really, she was too young to be feeling this old.
The lab was mostly empty at this time of day, except for Parrish running something on his computer and Laura sitting on the settee-thing.
Katie hastily rescued the blue-striped fern as Andrews tried to salute.
"At ease, gentlemen," Laura hastily said. She got up herself and helped Katie take the ferns from her friendly bearers and "pot" them in the hydroponics racks.
"Thank you so much," Katie told the two Marines.
"Now shoo," their Lieutenant said.
"Yes, ma'am, shooing, ma'am!" Andrews said, saluted, and did not quite march out.
Stanislaski shot the women a longsuffering look before following him.
"So," Laura said. "I'm not going to take the transfer."
"Oh, thank God." Katie blushed, she was sure, right up to the roots of her hair. "Um, I meant, um, I'm really happy. Really."
Laura nodded. "Well, you know, what sort of Marine would I be if I passed up the chance to live in a gorgeous giant floating deathtrap?"
"An old one, maybe," Katie said, opening her own computer and busying herself with it as she tried for normality, "but I'm selfish enough to say that here is where things are happening."
"Yeah. Um. So, are you going to be busy now?"
"Well, I have to catalogue these new ferns and label them properly, but after that the rest of the day's pretty flexible."
"Good. I was wondering... "
Katie looked up after Laura trailed off. The other woman stared at the window for a moment before straightening up.
"Katie," she said firmly. "The mess is having kebabs for lunch. When you've finished writing up your ferns, go there, collect your food, and meet me for lunch on the sixth-level south balcony."
"Yes, ma'am!" Katie said, and then blushed again, realizing what the snap of Laura's voice had brought out in response.
Laura didn't actually look upset about it, though. She smiled, nodded, and strode out of the labs, a swing in her step.
Katie called up the biocatalogue, humming a little. Then she looked up suddenly.
"Parrish. I know I'm happy that my best friend isn't leaving; why are you happy?"
Parrish looked up, a smile still on his lips.
"I just found out I won a few bets."
Oh.
Well, she supposed Laura's potential transfer might have been a subject for speculation, but as for anything else...
He must have found out by intranet, of course.
Her hum didn't exactly become "I Can See Clearly Now," but it made a vague effort in that direction.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-22 06:37 am (UTC)//The fannishness!//
Half the fun of Atlantis, for me, is that it is a place where the day is saved by ginormous dorks. Therefore, Cadman and Katie should be secretly as dorky (or at least geeky) as everyone else, and fandom suggested both a way to do that and a way to explain some of Katie's character.
//RPF!//
I know the AR-1 directory is about 45% McKay/Sheppard, 15% Ronon/Teyla, 15% Sheppard/Weir, and the remaining quarter consists of Teyla Does Atlantis, all the other matchups including at least one of the team members, and gen stories where Rodney gets turned into something amusing and somebody else saves the day. I'm not quite sure what the rest of the RPF consists of, except for the big directory of Fantasies About People Back At The SGC, including stuff that was written back there (the ficcers and RPFiccers in Atlantis and the SGC send each other updates via a courier on the Daedalus, and of course there was a flash drive or two of the stuff people brought with them).
//Cadman/Ronon!//
My pet hot-of-extreme-hotness crackpairing.
I'm glad you like my take on the background people; you may have noted that I tend to reuse a bunch of my OCs from story to story.
re: scariest extended family ever -- They really are, aren't they? With the possible exception of marrying into the Soyokaze crew --
Oh. My. God. SGA is the bastard love child of Shin Kidousenki Gundam W and Musekinin Kanchou Tylor, and the fandom splices Urusei Yatsura in there by retrovirus. No wonder I fell in love.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 06:21 am (UTC)Lcuky Katie adn Cadman to have found each other like that. Aw, Katie wanted Rodney to be her dom... but I agree,he is a bit too woobie sometimes...
I seriously love how META this is - Katie is One Of Us!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-22 06:44 am (UTC)//I seriously love how META this is - Katie is One Of Us!//
This was sort of the result of the part where it's my first time writing her, and I wanted a hook to start with, and then I thought that she likes and is attracted to Rodney McKay and many of our fellow fans like Rodney and find him attractive, and most of the story sort of wrote itself from there.
I'm glad you liked it!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 11:47 am (UTC)(Ignore Jack. It's a new icon, so I'm breaking it in.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 04:54 am (UTC)It's my first time writing Katie, and since I really don't have that good a grasp of her canon self, my thought processes went something like "She's attracted to Rodney. What kinds of women would be attracted to -- oh." ^_^
And of course Atlantis is like living in a village x10, where no matter what you're going to have to live with each of these people until one of you dies or ships out; that sort of thing breeds rather familial attitudes, both for good and for ill.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 05:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 07:50 pm (UTC)Oh, and the bit about Sheppard - "The LTC?" Laura blinked. "The rumor mill's paired him up with just about everyone at one time or another, half of the people I've talked to think he's the man-slut of Atlantis, and the other half say he isn't at all but that any one of the oldtimers would be willing to give it up for him if it looked like he needed it. Even the straight guys." was brilliant!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 07:25 am (UTC)Thank you!
//And I liked Laura (who is a favorite)//
Oh, good.
(I'm... not exactly fond... of Cadman, so it's good to hear that I did her justice.)
//and how Katie described how Laura's teasing McKay wrong//
I'm really glad that that came through right; writing from Katie's point of view was fun but necessarily limited, and I was trying to... I'm not quite sure how to put this, but I'd worked out what was going wrong between Cadman and Rodney at this point in time in my SGA paracosm, so it had to go in, but Katie doesn't know anything like the whole story, so it had to be suggested but not filled in. Or something like that.
//and I like the idea of her and Katie together.//
Some things just work, y'know? ^_^
And thank you very much for your comments on the bit about Sheppard -- I like playing with fanon, and I really do think that it had to be kind of schizophrenic for the first people coming into Atlantis second year before a routine got stabilized, and by the end of the Siege it does seem that everyone but the resident curmudgeons would gladly suffer and/or die for Sheppard's sake despite -- or rather because of -- the fact that he 'knows' that it ought to be the other way around.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 10:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 07:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-20 10:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 08:55 am (UTC)//They're a little sueish sometimes but easily explained by their fannishselves.//
...they are? Where, specifically? I know it's my first time writing Katie and feeling my way into her character...
//and lovely to see female friendship fic with plenty of other characters included in the way that meets reality/practicality better than the show often manages.//
Well, I don't think they can really afford to have the actors around to give the impression of Atlantis being a busy place (and if they could, the extra scenes wouldn't fit in the timeslot).
But yes, I like reading stories about the women of SGA, and so often when they show up it is as appurtenances of some man or another -- even good het fics for pairings I like grow stale when that's about all I can find for the female character. Probably I'm looking in the wrong places, but still...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 11:42 am (UTC)I know they can't afford to have that many actors about - though Sunday was a nice taste for if they could - but more mentions of other people helping for example would be nice. More people than just Lorne, Radek you know? Nothing big, but just some small reminders every nw and then. I felt they did a good job of expressing the expedition's diversity in S1 - though not excellent as there's room for improvement in expressing the true scope of internationality there - and I knid of felt like they slipped up, abandoned that after s1. But I am picky. ;)
Thanks for the female character fic, there never is enough.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-21 08:28 pm (UTC)"Well, we had to call them something," Parrish shrugs, "and it stuck."
What hilarious little meta snippets planted throughout.
but I want to be swept off my feet, not to have to do all the sweeping!"
Hahah. I like that. I also liked the unresolvedness of all the m/f pairings.
Trewsday
*snorfles*
These women are so interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 07:50 am (UTC)The thing about Atlantis is that it's a city -- well, a village living in a city -- of people, and all of these people have their own stories that weave in and out of each other. Katie and Cadman and "Chuck" and the various OCs wander in and out of Sheppard's or Rodney's or Elizabeth's stories, so the main characters of the TV show should return the favor.
Some of the disorientation of the prose is partly due to the fact that I was trying to give the impression that these were specifically Katie-and-Cadman snippets pulled out of a sweeping, multistranded novel or something, and that while they're given in chronological order they're far from a coherent narrative.
//The dynamic between Laura and Katie: really nice.//
Oh, good. This is my first time writing them and I'm not that experienced with writing about this sort of dynamic, either.
//What hilarious little meta snippets planted throughout.//
Half the fun of writing in an established fandom is that you get to play with the fanon; use it, invert it, poke fun at it, deliberately NOT use it, decide to play something normally used for fun straight, &c., &c., &c.
//I also liked the unresolvedness of all the m/f pairings.//
Thank you! The one thing I regret is that I didn't do more with Cadman/Beckett; I sort of have ideas about that and why it didn't work, but they stubbornly refused to fit into this.
//~Trewsday~
*snorfles*//
*nods* Some of the diehard geeks down in Anthro and Linguistics will insist on calling the day "Orgaladh" or "Alduya," but most of the city was happy to adopt the given translation (and that of the rest of the six-day week: Sterday, Sunday, Monday, Trewsday, He'nsday, Highday).
//These women are so interesting.//
Thank you! I wanted to try writing about women who weren't Teyla, so...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-21 11:25 pm (UTC)And Chuck! Hee!
I loved how this was a city full of people who all bounce around and into one another.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 08:00 am (UTC)Thank you; I figured the minor characters ought to get their chance to show off their ginormous dorkitude too. ^_^
//And Chuck! Hee!//
I decided once that, for all those without evidence to the contrary, the canon members of the Atlantis Expedition were all named "John" or "Mary" or an equivalent in their native language. (It's tremendously timesaving, plus it provides an excuse for them to go by their surnames.)
//I loved how this was a city full of people who all bounce around and into one another.//
I tend to reuse OCs between stories, which might help with the impression of population.
Thank you so much for your comments!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-23 03:51 pm (UTC)I think my favorite part was the Lindt chocolate, and the whole trading history. I think it illustrates well a) the Atlantis black market of goods and services (which, ok, I have a deep love for) and b) how katie is, in this one small way, connected to laura and her other relationships more than she would probably admit to. Or possibly I'm reading way to much into that, but whatever. Really good :)
late response
Date: 2007-08-30 09:41 pm (UTC)Even if I eventually throw my hands up in disgust and declare a certain episode non-personal-canon, I try to at least see if I can make it make some sense somehow -- and Katie's personality isn't so thoroughly defined that I can't try writing her as someone I could see with Rodney for a time, if not forever.
//a real sense of how people act in small, mostly-closed communities like Atlantis certainly is.//
It's always nice when research pays off (even when said research mostly consisted of the complete works of Jane Austen). ^_^
//I think my favorite part was the Lindt chocolate, and the whole trading history.//
Oh, good -- that was one of those sniblets of ideas that come to you and are too perfect not to use, so I'm glad you liked it.
And it's -- this is a story about Katie and Cadman, and so everything kind of comes back to them in the end.
Thank you for all your kind comments!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-23 09:19 pm (UTC)Oh. My. God.
Date: 2009-04-08 09:40 pm (UTC)Can't believe it took me so long to catch this. In retrospect, the revised version of Ex Machina probably helped a lot.
(donahermurphy, too lazy to sign in and really supposed to be doing something else)