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.fic: Sketch for Cate - McKay/Sheppard (PG) 1.1
Title: Sketch for Cate
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating/Warnings: PGish.
Disclaimers: Not mine.
Advertisements: Domestic happiness. Follows from this scraplet.
Notes: Back-in-the-saddle ficlet the second, written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sheafrotherdon, who wanted McKay/Sheppard, quiet, peace, stillness, and ineptness. Hope you like it!
No title, because I honestly couldn't think of one.
SKETCH FOR CATE
The cabin – the hut, Rodney thinks, the hut – looks worse in real life than in the real estate photo. Ivy has swallowed the south wall, worked its tendrils in through the window, and inside is a confusion of more ivy, dust that makes Rodney’s lungs seize up, rust and protruding nails and tetanus, a derelict icebox. The floorboards are warped underfoot and more dust rises in clouds with each step, illuminated by dirty light that comes through the doorway.
“It’s kind of like the prison on MX1-459.” Rodney nudges a pile of newspapers out of the way.
“It’s great,” John says emphatically, face bright and eager and unexpectedly young.
“That’s pushing it.” 1989. The newspapers are from 1989. Ronald Reagan had had better days more recently than that. “Actually, that’s just pushing it right the hell over.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.” A rat-squirrel-thing darts through the door and out into the woods.
“Right. Do you want to fight the rattlesnakes for the bed, or do you want the floor?”
“There aren’t any rattlesnakes here, Rodney.” John’s not really paying attention, already too busy investigating the cabin. On the drive from Boston he’d been all anxious energy, very nearly obnoxious with it in the manner of a five-year-old, and only five minutes in he moves more loosely, interested and alert in a way Rodney hasn’t seen him be in a long time as he runs thoughtful fingers over the wood, the stone mantel, ignoring Rodney’s warnings about tetanus and how their cabin is pretty much a deathtrap.
Their cabin. Both their names on the mortgage, both of them committed to an insane amount of debt for a falling-down hut on five acres of land with a view of the sea. Rodney doesn’t know whether to be happy or be sick.
“We’ve got a fireplace,” John says from behind him, breath sliding like sunlight over Rodney’s skin.
“With bats.”
John mutters something that sounds like details, but most of it’s lost in the curve of Rodney’s neck. Dark hair, still ill-disciplined and unfairly thick, tickles his cheek.
“You realize I’m very bad at building things that aren’t bombs,” he says as John’s fingers slip under his shirt, exploring. “Very bad. But I’m sure I could make a bomb out of bat droppings and rusty nails.”
“We can use it on the rattlesnakes.” John’s body is loose against his, relaxed, and that makes Rodney a bit happier, assuming he doesn’t think about the bats in the fireplace and the rattlesnakes in the bedroom.
* * *
He’d meant what he said – he really is bad at things that require hammers and heavy lifting and a lot of sweat. He can see the pitch of the roof isn’t steep enough, which means that over the winter the snow will build up and strain the roof joists, and he can produce the calculations to prove it. But John isn’t Norm Abrams, just a guy with a belt sander and a pocketful of nails.
Mostly he hands things up to John, who’s working on patching a roof that most rational people would have considered a lost cause. But John’s not most people, and he’s not rational, only has the kind of madness that passes for rational, and so he’s astride the spine of the roof, t-shirt sticking to his back, and trying to do the impossible.
And he loves it, which amazes Rodney, though he supposes he shouldn’t be. Three days of work so far, from unnecessarily early hours until late, but even in the stiffness that Rodney tries to erase from John’s muscles at night, smoothing out contour lines gone tight with work, he can feel contentment.
When he’s not being the assistant – which he’s not used to at all – Rodney wanders around the clearing, avoiding the pile of ivy they’d scraped off the house a few days ago and the other pile of random crap they’d shoveled out of the living room and kitchen. He stays close, because man’s history of unassisted flight isn’t good, and trust John to try to buck the trend out in the middle of fucking nowhere, with no Stargate or Carson or anyone within screaming distance.
He’s doing that now, wandering, chafing against enforced idleness. No data tablet, no Internet God help him, no TV, his books are still in boxes, no Wraith or Genii or replicators attacking. He’s gotten so used to that, weirdly enough, that “terror” has more or less become his baseline. Even before Atlantis he’d never been good at relaxing, because his brain, to be honest, while otherwise a sleek and perfect machine, has a faulty off-switch.
So if he has nothing to do, his brain kicks into overdrive. Hyperdrive, even, thoughts tumbling over themselves like he can’t think them fast enough.
While John bangs away at the roof his mind invents terrors. Yeti lurking in the New England woods, freak mid-summer blizzards, the Wraith asking directions to the Milky Way and showing up on their doorstep, oh God that’s exactly what will happen, yeah, John will finally finish the cabin and they’ll evict the rattlesnakes and right when they’re about to have sex in front of the fireplace to inaugurate their new home, the Wraith will show up.
The hell of it is, he really wants to not think this stuff, but the more he doesn’t want to, the more thoughts crowd in on him.
The day doesn’t help, surreally beautiful, the scent of the forest heavy but salt-scent laces through it, and the omnipresent sigh of the sea, its slow, rocking pace – that too has a weight, tugging Rodney down and back, calm calm calm and its whispers smell of ozone. Its voice is deeper than Lantea’s, a growl where the breakers, driven by a storm out in the Atlantic, shatter against the rocks. Down the hill and through the trees Rodney can see it, a drop of twenty feet or so down rugged, ancient boulders to where the water spreads out wide and wild and blue.
It’s a postcard. A goddamn postcard, the kind people write Wish you were here on. They could send one to the Wraith, and that thought sends his thoughts circling off into anxiety again.
He sincerely wishes he could be like John, who is either very relaxed or much better at sublimating terror. And thinking of that, of John, Rodney looks back at the house.
No John on the roof.
“Oh God.” He hadn’t heard anything, no cry, no heavy, mortal sound of John’s body landing, shattered, stilled forever, on the ground. The leaves. Lots of leaves – they could have muffled the sound, or broken John’s fall so he only had a few cracked vertebrae instead of a shattered spine.
Rodney’s moving before he knows it, breath tied up in a throat too filled with terror to let it through, no John on this side of the house, maybe around the other side. Why hadn’t he heard anything? Oh, of course, right, too busy freaking out about monsters in another galaxy to pay attention to John tumbling to his death thirty feet away.
He rounds the side of the cabin, almost tripping over the tentacled carcass of the ivy, hand on the corner to support himself, wood rough against his palm.
No John there either.
Oh God, the Wraith had gotten him. Shwip, zapped him up in their transport beam, and oh fuck fuck fuck that was so much worse than falling off a roof and Rodney couldn’t save him this time.
Back around to the front, too late to save John, just in time – just in time to see him stepping out of the cabin, water bottle in one hand, hair dripping wet, disheveled and spiky, and water tracing his cheekbones.
“You okay?” John’s looking at him very intently, which should be ridiculous considering he’s wet to the shoulders and his t-shirt is sticking indecently to his chest.
“You’re not – ” Rodney waves one hand, the other gets in the game, because words can’t contain his relief, you’re not dead, you’re not gone, and I was fucking terrified you were. “The rattlesnakes didn’t devour you, I see.”
“Not this time.” John takes a drink, and Rodney traces the flex and give of his throat as he swallows.
John, of course, catches him watching and grins, the full-on mad smirk that knows everything and isn’t afraid to say it, the one that drives Rodney crazy.
And, especially considering he’s not lying dead in a pile of leaves, he looks great, relaxed and a bit sloppy, all loose lines and happiness. Paint flecks his forearms, specks of white against the tan of his skin, and there’s a tear in his jeans. A drop of water slips free from his hair and slides down his neck, along the curve of tendon before vanishing under his shirt.
He likes it here, Rodney realizes. Loves it, the woods and the rhythmic sea and the bats in the fireplace and things to fix.
“You okay?” John asks, eyebrow raised significantly. He takes another drink.
“I know how we can reinforce the roof so it doesn’t collapse under all the snow and kill us both.”
“Cool.” John’s still looking at him, his I’m going to figure you out, McKay look.
“You look really good.” You look not dead. You look wonderful. Oh my God.
“Thank you,” John says, his funny little thank you that says satisfaction not only with the compliment, but with the knowledge that Rodney’s bright enough to give it.
“Don’t thank me,” Rodney snaps, stepping closer. John smells like salt and work and sunlight, huff of water-cool breath against Rodney’s mouth. His mouth is warm underneath, and that’s salty too, familiar and confident, and John’s fingers splay across Rodney’s cheekbone, lightest pressure of gun-callused fingers against his face. Thunk goes the water bottle and John’s other hand traces Rodney’s hip, pulling him closer, and John’s chest is firm and hot under his t-shirt, contented pace to his heart that has Rodney’s thoughts slowing to match it and the slow summer day around them.
He leans back to look up at John, whose face is bright and eager and young, and grins.
Hey, McKay, John says, and John wears his smile like silk.
-end-
Next up: John Winchester!
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating/Warnings: PGish.
Disclaimers: Not mine.
Advertisements: Domestic happiness. Follows from this scraplet.
Notes: Back-in-the-saddle ficlet the second, written for
sheafrotherdon, who wanted McKay/Sheppard, quiet, peace, stillness, and ineptness. Hope you like it!No title, because I honestly couldn't think of one.
SKETCH FOR CATE
The cabin – the hut, Rodney thinks, the hut – looks worse in real life than in the real estate photo. Ivy has swallowed the south wall, worked its tendrils in through the window, and inside is a confusion of more ivy, dust that makes Rodney’s lungs seize up, rust and protruding nails and tetanus, a derelict icebox. The floorboards are warped underfoot and more dust rises in clouds with each step, illuminated by dirty light that comes through the doorway.
“It’s kind of like the prison on MX1-459.” Rodney nudges a pile of newspapers out of the way.
“It’s great,” John says emphatically, face bright and eager and unexpectedly young.
“That’s pushing it.” 1989. The newspapers are from 1989. Ronald Reagan had had better days more recently than that. “Actually, that’s just pushing it right the hell over.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.” A rat-squirrel-thing darts through the door and out into the woods.
“Right. Do you want to fight the rattlesnakes for the bed, or do you want the floor?”
“There aren’t any rattlesnakes here, Rodney.” John’s not really paying attention, already too busy investigating the cabin. On the drive from Boston he’d been all anxious energy, very nearly obnoxious with it in the manner of a five-year-old, and only five minutes in he moves more loosely, interested and alert in a way Rodney hasn’t seen him be in a long time as he runs thoughtful fingers over the wood, the stone mantel, ignoring Rodney’s warnings about tetanus and how their cabin is pretty much a deathtrap.
Their cabin. Both their names on the mortgage, both of them committed to an insane amount of debt for a falling-down hut on five acres of land with a view of the sea. Rodney doesn’t know whether to be happy or be sick.
“We’ve got a fireplace,” John says from behind him, breath sliding like sunlight over Rodney’s skin.
“With bats.”
John mutters something that sounds like details, but most of it’s lost in the curve of Rodney’s neck. Dark hair, still ill-disciplined and unfairly thick, tickles his cheek.
“You realize I’m very bad at building things that aren’t bombs,” he says as John’s fingers slip under his shirt, exploring. “Very bad. But I’m sure I could make a bomb out of bat droppings and rusty nails.”
“We can use it on the rattlesnakes.” John’s body is loose against his, relaxed, and that makes Rodney a bit happier, assuming he doesn’t think about the bats in the fireplace and the rattlesnakes in the bedroom.
He’d meant what he said – he really is bad at things that require hammers and heavy lifting and a lot of sweat. He can see the pitch of the roof isn’t steep enough, which means that over the winter the snow will build up and strain the roof joists, and he can produce the calculations to prove it. But John isn’t Norm Abrams, just a guy with a belt sander and a pocketful of nails.
Mostly he hands things up to John, who’s working on patching a roof that most rational people would have considered a lost cause. But John’s not most people, and he’s not rational, only has the kind of madness that passes for rational, and so he’s astride the spine of the roof, t-shirt sticking to his back, and trying to do the impossible.
And he loves it, which amazes Rodney, though he supposes he shouldn’t be. Three days of work so far, from unnecessarily early hours until late, but even in the stiffness that Rodney tries to erase from John’s muscles at night, smoothing out contour lines gone tight with work, he can feel contentment.
When he’s not being the assistant – which he’s not used to at all – Rodney wanders around the clearing, avoiding the pile of ivy they’d scraped off the house a few days ago and the other pile of random crap they’d shoveled out of the living room and kitchen. He stays close, because man’s history of unassisted flight isn’t good, and trust John to try to buck the trend out in the middle of fucking nowhere, with no Stargate or Carson or anyone within screaming distance.
He’s doing that now, wandering, chafing against enforced idleness. No data tablet, no Internet God help him, no TV, his books are still in boxes, no Wraith or Genii or replicators attacking. He’s gotten so used to that, weirdly enough, that “terror” has more or less become his baseline. Even before Atlantis he’d never been good at relaxing, because his brain, to be honest, while otherwise a sleek and perfect machine, has a faulty off-switch.
So if he has nothing to do, his brain kicks into overdrive. Hyperdrive, even, thoughts tumbling over themselves like he can’t think them fast enough.
While John bangs away at the roof his mind invents terrors. Yeti lurking in the New England woods, freak mid-summer blizzards, the Wraith asking directions to the Milky Way and showing up on their doorstep, oh God that’s exactly what will happen, yeah, John will finally finish the cabin and they’ll evict the rattlesnakes and right when they’re about to have sex in front of the fireplace to inaugurate their new home, the Wraith will show up.
The hell of it is, he really wants to not think this stuff, but the more he doesn’t want to, the more thoughts crowd in on him.
The day doesn’t help, surreally beautiful, the scent of the forest heavy but salt-scent laces through it, and the omnipresent sigh of the sea, its slow, rocking pace – that too has a weight, tugging Rodney down and back, calm calm calm and its whispers smell of ozone. Its voice is deeper than Lantea’s, a growl where the breakers, driven by a storm out in the Atlantic, shatter against the rocks. Down the hill and through the trees Rodney can see it, a drop of twenty feet or so down rugged, ancient boulders to where the water spreads out wide and wild and blue.
It’s a postcard. A goddamn postcard, the kind people write Wish you were here on. They could send one to the Wraith, and that thought sends his thoughts circling off into anxiety again.
He sincerely wishes he could be like John, who is either very relaxed or much better at sublimating terror. And thinking of that, of John, Rodney looks back at the house.
No John on the roof.
“Oh God.” He hadn’t heard anything, no cry, no heavy, mortal sound of John’s body landing, shattered, stilled forever, on the ground. The leaves. Lots of leaves – they could have muffled the sound, or broken John’s fall so he only had a few cracked vertebrae instead of a shattered spine.
Rodney’s moving before he knows it, breath tied up in a throat too filled with terror to let it through, no John on this side of the house, maybe around the other side. Why hadn’t he heard anything? Oh, of course, right, too busy freaking out about monsters in another galaxy to pay attention to John tumbling to his death thirty feet away.
He rounds the side of the cabin, almost tripping over the tentacled carcass of the ivy, hand on the corner to support himself, wood rough against his palm.
No John there either.
Oh God, the Wraith had gotten him. Shwip, zapped him up in their transport beam, and oh fuck fuck fuck that was so much worse than falling off a roof and Rodney couldn’t save him this time.
Back around to the front, too late to save John, just in time – just in time to see him stepping out of the cabin, water bottle in one hand, hair dripping wet, disheveled and spiky, and water tracing his cheekbones.
“You okay?” John’s looking at him very intently, which should be ridiculous considering he’s wet to the shoulders and his t-shirt is sticking indecently to his chest.
“You’re not – ” Rodney waves one hand, the other gets in the game, because words can’t contain his relief, you’re not dead, you’re not gone, and I was fucking terrified you were. “The rattlesnakes didn’t devour you, I see.”
“Not this time.” John takes a drink, and Rodney traces the flex and give of his throat as he swallows.
John, of course, catches him watching and grins, the full-on mad smirk that knows everything and isn’t afraid to say it, the one that drives Rodney crazy.
And, especially considering he’s not lying dead in a pile of leaves, he looks great, relaxed and a bit sloppy, all loose lines and happiness. Paint flecks his forearms, specks of white against the tan of his skin, and there’s a tear in his jeans. A drop of water slips free from his hair and slides down his neck, along the curve of tendon before vanishing under his shirt.
He likes it here, Rodney realizes. Loves it, the woods and the rhythmic sea and the bats in the fireplace and things to fix.
“You okay?” John asks, eyebrow raised significantly. He takes another drink.
“I know how we can reinforce the roof so it doesn’t collapse under all the snow and kill us both.”
“Cool.” John’s still looking at him, his I’m going to figure you out, McKay look.
“You look really good.” You look not dead. You look wonderful. Oh my God.
“Thank you,” John says, his funny little thank you that says satisfaction not only with the compliment, but with the knowledge that Rodney’s bright enough to give it.
“Don’t thank me,” Rodney snaps, stepping closer. John smells like salt and work and sunlight, huff of water-cool breath against Rodney’s mouth. His mouth is warm underneath, and that’s salty too, familiar and confident, and John’s fingers splay across Rodney’s cheekbone, lightest pressure of gun-callused fingers against his face. Thunk goes the water bottle and John’s other hand traces Rodney’s hip, pulling him closer, and John’s chest is firm and hot under his t-shirt, contented pace to his heart that has Rodney’s thoughts slowing to match it and the slow summer day around them.
He leans back to look up at John, whose face is bright and eager and young, and grins.
Hey, McKay, John says, and John wears his smile like silk.
-end-
Next up: John Winchester!
no subject
*snort* Oh, Rodney
I love this whole thing, but these two lines in particular are fantastic.
no subject
*snort* Oh, Rodney
:D Poor guy.