sga_flashfic | Fic - Exotic Particles - Crossing Challenge - PG

facetofcathy.livejournal.com posting in

1,000 words
A woman named Parker meets a man in a coffee shop. I trust you'll recognize him.

This is a crossover with Leverage. If you want to know what that is, the

newbieguide can answer all your questions here.

Exotic Particles

The crowd was perfect, bubbling with people, people in a hurry, their hands full and jostling each other, bouncing off one another like agitated molecules. Parker had spotted two others working the crowds—sliding through the schools of blind fish, snatching, plucking, picking them clean. She wasn't supposed to be working the crowd, but she'd amused herself for a while playing wallet dominoes—snatch one, then another, replacing it with the first one, and on down an endless line, leaving confusion in her wake. Chaos theory in action. She'd read all about it in a magazine once, and the idea had bloomed in her mind, crystal clear and perfect for a moment. Inevitably, the moment faded and took the clarity with it. She remembered the name though, and thought it applied.

The scent of coffee snagged her attention and she slipped into the line, stealing someones place as easily as she could have stolen their jewelery. She ordered a cappuccino, and it was good, frothy milk sprinkled with cinnamon, but it wasn't as good as Hardison would make for her. It wasn't his job or anything; he just did it because he wanted to. She thought she understood that too, now. She thought that might be a kind of love.

There were no empty tables left, so she scanned the half-empty ones looking for someplace she could just slip into without notice. A man sat alone, the table completely covered in his sprawl of technology. There was a laptop, a phone, some other gizmo that looked like the game that Eliot kept stealing from Hardison, so that Hardison would have to steal it back, and some other things she couldn't identify. He was battering the keys on the laptop with his big hands and frowning at the screen. She saw his lips move, he was talking to the machines. She had asked Hardison once if it helped and he had laughed a little but he hadn't answered her. She hadn't been joking.

She crossed the small space and pulled out the unoccupied chair opposite the frowning man. "You're taking up all the table," she said.

"I didn't say you could sit there," the man said without looking away from the screen. His fingers worked independent of his mouth it seemed. Hers did too.

"I didn't ask," she said.

The man looked up at that, transferring his frown to her.

Her smile slipped away. "I'm supposed to ask, aren't I? That's a polite thing. I never get that right."

"Politeness is..." he waved his hand in a complicated spiral that she decided meant not worthy of my time.

She laughed happily. She would remember that sign.

"Are you a—no, too young, a student then? What kind of science?"

Parker frowned. Did she look like a student, or a scientist? "I'm not a student."

"Oh, no—sorry, it's just—you act like a scientist."

"I do?" The idea pleased her and her smile brightened up again.

"Yes, you know, rude, awkward, bad with people. I can't say about petty and arrogant, I don't know you well enough, not that I ever intend to—know you any better. It's just—yes, you do—act like a scientist."

"So it's okay to be like that if you're a scientist?" Why hadn't anybody ever explained this to her before? She could get a white coat and a pair of fake glasses like Eliot had, although this man didn't have either of those things.

The man looked like his face hurt, and he said, "Well, not okay exactly, but you can get away with it. Most of the time, anyway. Some people—girlfriend type people—can be, hmm—less forgiving."

"I like getting away with things."

"Yes, well, don't we all."

"So you're a scientist then."

"Yes, a very busy, incredibly important one, who has ga–, er, world-class work to do, so..." The man renewed his assault on the keyboard.

Parker watched for a while, but she couldn't really see how what he was doing was work. It looked like he was deleting emails without reading them. "I thought scientists worked in laboratories, not airport coffee shops."

The man made the toothache face again. "Yes, well, unfortunately I have to wait for a ridiculously long time to catch my plane to Vancouver."

"Your laboratory is in Vancouver?"

"No, my sister."

"You don't sound very happy about that," Parker said. Sisters, of the foster variety anyway, could be dangerous creatures and very unforgiving.

"I'm not—it's—she's married, has a kid–"

"Oh, she's a citizen," Parker said and nodded in understanding.

"What?" The man frowned, and then his face cleared, and he said, "Huh, yeah, I guess she is."

"Bet she tries to fix you." The man glared at her, it wasn't a bad glare as those things went. She smiled really big, that always got people flustered when they were busy being angry. Angry people expected you to play along. "You know, make you a citizen too, but I bet you resist."

The man muttered, "Resistance is futile." He said it really quietly, but Parker had spent one entire year in a new foster home pretending to be deaf so she didn't have to talk to anyone; they'd sent her to a school to learn to read lips.

"So if you're not a student, what are you?" the man asked.

Parker grinned and decided to tell him the truth. People never believed you when you told the truth. "I'm a secret agent. I work with a team of special people and we do fun and scary and dangerous things and help people."

The man looked at her for a long time, just stared, which she'd always heard was rude, but she didn't care. He didn't look like he thought she was lying. That was weird.

"Do you have a good team?" the man asked.

"The best."

"Beats the hell out of being a citizen, doesn't it?" he said and moved one of his gizmos so she could set down her coffee.

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Oh Parker and Rodney. Perfect!

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