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.au swatches: Restoration Hardware; Outside Woman Blues; Peregrinations; With Feathers
.Restoration Hardware
for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sheafrotherdon's request for a very exasperated, pantsless Rodney. Rodney is a very exasperated, pantsless professor and John is a contractor who specializes in historical buildings and architectural restoration work.
Thud-thud-thud….. thud-BANG.
He’s had his conference paper and the résumés of five interviewees open for four hours, the syllabus for his graduate seminar for two and the websites of various clothing stores for one, has been working on a stress headache for five hours at least, and has spent all of this time riding the downward spiral into insanity.
Rodney appreciates that the maintenance and grounds department does have buildings to fix and grounds to tend, and he appreciates that there’s no good time for them to put up CAUTION tape and safety cones and bring in huge noisy trucks that disrupt foot traffic and his students’ already-truncated attention spans. But there’s really no good time at all for repairing the roof on the venerable (universityspeak for “antiquated and not up to code”) physics building, especially when the repairs are going on right over Rodney’s head.
He briefly imagines standing in front of a lecture hall full of his colleagues and intellectual inferiors and laughing maniacally while explaining that he’s built a laser-guided cold fusion bomb and is going to blow up the moon unless the government of the world gives him trillions of dollars, a spaceship, and his own volcanic island in the Pacific.
While he frames his speech and wonders if white pants with pale grey checks would undermine his demented evil overlord image, Rodney stalks outside. The thumps and clangs change in pitch as he rockets outside, no longer coming from directly over his head and causing him to fear that a pile driver was going to punch through first the roof and then his skull. They’re louder now, with a metallic whine that sets his teeth on edge.
"Hey!" he shouts at the top of his lungs. "Hey!"
He coughs – it’s cold, the air burns his trachea, and he’s shouting well before he’d thought he needed to. After a minute he tries again. And again. And again, until a dreadlocked head pokes out over the roofline.
"What?" the dreadlocked one asks.
"Keep it down!" Rodney hollers. "You’re driving me crazy!"
"Okay," the dreadlocked one says, and vanishes.
"Oh my god." Rodney draws another breath and hollers some more, and keeps at it and keeps at it until at last a different head appears, this one dark and helmet-mussed, peers down at him for a moment, and is then followed by a long, lean body that slithers down the ladder.
"Can I help you?" the construction guy of, um, unbelievable hotness asks.
Rodney stammers for a moment and says something about insanity interfering with important scientific advancement and how this would qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention and... um, yes, so would you, you know... and then his brain kind of goes offline when the crazy-haired guy in the plaid shirt shifts his weight to one hip and smirks at him.
And no no, he does not get to do that! Rodney thinks, and then to his horror he's saying it, "No, no! You do not get to do that!" and waving an emphatic finger.
Crazy-haired construction guy of sex asks him what is it he's not allowed to do, Rodney gestures and says "make me come out into the cold with that infernal racket of yours and... and then lean and make me remember how long, exactly, it's been since I've had -- um, peace and quiet to get my work done, so... so stop slouching! Besides, it isn't good for your back."
Construction guy of sex smirks even more at Rodney’s tirade and rubs at his neck like he's having to think about how words work, and then he says, "my back, huh?"
Rodney scowls ferociously (he hopes) and says, "Yes, your back. Not that you probably haven't ruined it with throwing steel beams around or whatever it is you do and... and yes. I'm going back inside before I freeze to death, so could you tell your compatriots to turn it down before I snap and blow up the campus in an effort to get some quiet?"
"So you want the construction workers to be quiet when they're fixing the huge hole in your roof," construction guy of infinite annoyance asks, frowning.
"As the grave," Rodney says, and nods. And construction guy who will very likely drive Rodney to an early grave says, "We'll work on that" and turns around, and for an almost non-existent ass, Rodney thinks distantly, construction guy's ass is pretty hot
Also, Rodney realizes, there is a rip in the seam of one pocket, and there are boxers visible. Blue-striped boxers, no less.
"Hey, guys, we need to keep it down!" construction guy shouts, with enough sarcasm that Rodney knows he's being mocked and he doesn't (he really, really doesn't) need the rest of the construction crew's laughter to confirm it. That construction guy turns back around and smirks at him again just... Rodney scowls and stalks back inside, vowing to look up the name of the contractor and making sure that said contractor will never do work for the university again.
While he's at it, he'll find out the name of construction guy of torn jeans and infinitely irritating hotness. For purposes of getting him fired, of course, and not at all for, say, stalking.
Finding the number for Sheppard and Dex Contracting and Restoration doesn't take long, but despite a five-minute rant at the secretary and then the administrator, Rodney doesn't manage to get construction guy's name. He describes the slouch, the smirk, the hair (complete with hand gestures, until he realizes that of course none of the morons he's talking to can see him do an interpretive dance of construction guy's cowlicks), but no luck whatsoever, and Rodney can't decide if it is because they're morons or simply fantastically unobservant.
"It's John," says the already maddeningly familiar voice from his doorway.
Rodney drops the phone mid-tirade and spins in his chair so hard he over-rotates and almost does a 360.
"What?" he squawks, just managing to save himself by grabbing at the edge of his desk.
"My name's John," construction guy says. "John Sheppard." He follows this up with more leaning, like he's a structural support and the doorframe will collapse if he doesn't hold it up.
"My name's Rodney," Rodney offers weakly.
"I know," construction John says, and at Rodney's blank look adds, "your name's next to the room number?" and Rodney nods, remembering his unsuccessful campaign to get the department to make the building manager take his name off the door and the building directory so random students couldn't bother him.
"Um," Rodney says, and normally he wouldn't have any problem at all following that up with something -- a brilliant observation, a remark specifically designed to obliterate his target's self-worth, but his brain stops at the void after "um" and he stares at construction -- John, dammit! John Sheppard -- helplessly.
"So," Sheppard drawls (drawls! Rodney didn't know such a thing was possible outside of westerns), "you going to have me fired?"
"I, well, that is..." Rodney wonders furiously for how long, exactly, Sheppard has been eavesdropping. "Seeing as you co-own the company, I suppose I can't."
Sheppard smiles brightly.
"You could, though, tell your minions to keep it down," Rodney adds.
"I could," Sheppard agrees, but he seems to be too busy looking around Rodney's office to be paying attention to Rodney's advice. His eyes flick across Rodney's degrees, the overloaded bookcases, his beloved file cabinets, and settle on, "Tom Baker, huh?"
"Yes, and shut up," Rodney snaps. Sheppard's face wrinkles up in indignation.
A heartbeat later it occurs to Rodney that Sheppard might, in fact, be admiring, that he appreciates both Dr. Who and Rodney's discrimination when it comes to British science fiction shows. He struggles to convey this in such a way that will make it clear he doesn't at all find Sheppard's appreciation sexy, or will give Sheppard the impression that Rodney feels he's made a tactical error, and is still struggling when Sheppard says, "I'd like a sonic screwdriver, myself."
"So would I." Rodney sighs, gazing wistfully at Sheppard's hands and the thumbs hooked through his toolbelt.
"Look," Rodney says at last, "I'm... I'm sorry for yelling at you, but really, I have a lot to do to prepare for dealing with yet another semester of post-pubescent idiocy, and I have this conference and I have no pants."
Sheppard stares at him for a second, gaze flickering down to Rodney’s cargoes, and Rodney realizes what he's just said.
"Well, I have pants, but it’s… I have this conference? And I… my old pants, my conference pants, don’t fit properly anymore, and I ordered a new pair but they haven’t come in yet and I’m trying to figure out what to do."
"You could go to a store," Sheppard says.
"Oh, really?" Rodney asks. "You know, that never occurred to me, that such things as stores even exist, or that there might be a place where one might go to purchase clothing. I was thinking of visiting a bazaar, where I could pick up some saffron and a boa constrictor, or maybe raising the sheep myself, shearing it, spinning the wool, and making the pants myself in the massive amount of time I have between now and when I leave, which is tomorrow."
"There’s that too." Sheppard looks somewhat stunned. Rodney preens.
"Don’t you have more holes to put in the roof?" Rodney asks. He’s got the upper hand, and Sheppard’s extremely hot and extremely distracting presence is threatening to erode his advantage.
"Actually, we’re putting in a new steel reinforcing beam," Sheppard says. "Two hundred-year-old building like this, there’s been a lot of rot and water damage. Lots of termites. Lots of shredded, rotting wood and, you know, structural instability."
"How very This Old House of you." Rodney tries not to think of decades of the quiet gnawing of termites going on right above his head. Sheppard grins insolently and knowingly.
"Listen, Doc," Sheppard shifts his weight off the door frame; Rodney watches it suspiciously for signs of collapse, "I have to get back to work, and I’m sure you have to get back to," a pause to aerate the point and a glance at the Eddie Bauer website on Rodney’s screen for further emphasis, "shopping, but if you want…"
Rodney sits up despite his resolution to remain determinedly superior and disinterested.
"Here’s my number." Sheppard produces a business card from a pocket of his toolbelt – a toolbelt, a thought over which Rodney’s mind lingers fascinatedly even as he reaches to take the card – and grins some more. "Once you’re done, maybe you could give me a call."
"I don’t have anything to be restored," Rodney mumbles, staring at the Sheppard and Dex Contracting and Restoration inscribed on the card and the dirty thumbprint in the corner.
"Check the back," Sheppard tells him, voice low and confidential, and somewhere between Rodney’s desperate attempt to work past his hormones and process Sheppard’s words and turning over the card, Sheppard vanishes from his doorway.
.Outside Woman Blues
forgaffsie who wanted more from this AU (absolutely necessary to understand this snippet). The first bit follows directly, the second still needs to be incorporated.
She couldn’t stop looking at her hands, and she really, really wished she could.
Ever since waking up – only a couple hours ago, after being unconscious for fifteen minutes – she couldn’t stop looking, and out of all the changes she’d undergone in those fifteen minutes (like, say, the acquisition of a penis), why her hands should obsess her, she had no idea.
“I’ll figure this out,” Meredith was saying, her tone somewhere between a complaint and a promise, and Jane knew she would, because McKay always did, so until then, she’d... she’d live, she supposed.
Still, it’d be nice if McKay would hurry up and have one of her brilliant genius insights. Unfortunately, telling Meredith that would probably result in the loss of Jane’s newly-acquired dick. Several of the Lantean crew, and probably more than a few back at the SGC, had been deballed in seconds for far, far less than questioning Meredith’s ability to figure out Ancient tech. Meredith probably kept a box of them in her desk drawer, like trophies.
Jane wasn’t entirely sure whether or not to keep still or move around, talk to fill the silence (and also to annoy McKay, who rambled on even though she insisted she needed quiet to work) or shut up because the sound of her voice – not my voice, she told herself – freaked her out, deep, coming from lower down in her chest. Still and quiet, there was no way to get around the sudden jarring oh my God, I’m a man that swept through her and made her vaguely sick, but moving around, talking, she felt the differences, the unaccustomed heaviness of her body, an unfamiliar power leashed in muscles that weighted down too-solid bone.
Also, moving around, her pants would not stay up, despite the boxers Ronon (in the interest of temporary secrecy) had picked up for her from stores, and that... that led to a host of other uncomfortable thoughts, like oh my God, I have a dick, which seriously freaked her out.
Meredith was, bizarrely, the one calm, familiar thing in all of this. Jane didn’t know Keller well, either in the personal sense or “she’s seen me transformed into a bug” sense, and for a moment missing Carson supplanted the endless litany of oh my God I’m a man, oh my God. For now, though, Meredith was Meredith, quick and capable and fearsome as she bent over the device and tried to glower it into submission.
“So was there a bright light? A noise? Someone telling you ‘Congratulations, you’re now a man’? What?” Meredith was staring at the device in question, but Jane felt every ounce of Meredith’s displeased attention. “Colonel, the sooner you tell me these things, the sooner I can start figuring out how to reverse the effects. Today would be nice.”
“I told you, the last thing I remember before waking up in the infirmary was wondering what it was,” Jane said. She’d said this ten times, in fact, but Meredith wasn’t taking short-term memory loss for an answer. “I was helping Dr. Patricks with the diagnostics for Jumper 12 and it just... popped out of a storage space or something.”
“We’ve taken that jumper out on dozens of missions,” Meredith said, glaring at the smooth, anonymous-looking device. “Why are we just seeing this now?”
“You’d have to ask Patricks.”
“Oh, I’ll ask him all right.” Meredith tapped swift, impatient fingers over her datapad. Jane, taller now, could see over her shoulder easily, though the numbers scrolling across the screen made no sense. “When Jeannie takes Madison to the mall or zoo or wherever, she has this leash-harness thing she hooks to Madison to so she can’t wander off.” She broke off her scrutiny of the amazing sex change machine to eye Jane speculatively. “I’m thinking of investing in one.”
“Too late,” Jane said.
Meredith’s mouth twitched into one of her usual crooked, reluctant smiles and Jane found herself, despite everything, smiling back.
Then Meredith blinked and blushed and shook her head, smile fading as she turned back toward her tablet and the device, its dully shining surface reflecting back Meredith’s determined face. Jane tried to resettle herself in her seat and not think about the uncomfortable shifting of parts and how spreading her legs helped, but only a bit. She could hear her mother droning on about properly-crossed legs (at the ankle, not knee, legs angled carefully) and shuddered.
While Meredith worked, punctuating the silence with dissatisfied, half-audible remarks and waving hands, Jane tried to remember what had happened, but memory blanked at that first step toward the device. Nothing, not even a white light or darkness or excruciating pain, as though that step had transported her from the jumper to the infirmary, or into another body.
Maybe the pain was so bad she couldn’t remember, but Keller had said Patricks, who’d made the call, hadn’t mentioned anything like pain, only that “something had happened, and you should come down here right away.”
Something. Jane stared at her hands, wider, more capable-looking, still with her calluses, which was a relief, and the small, twisting scars on her arm and neck – less reassuring, and even kind of angering, that a stranger’s body carried the marks of her memories, that it could be alien and familiar at the same time: dark hair peeking out from the cuff of her fleece (fresh out of the bag and still smelling like plastic), the wristbones and tendons more prominent.
“Well, it looks like it did what it was supposed to do,” Meredith said after a moment.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Jane said, aware that Meredith had been staring at her staring at her hands. “What?”
“It’s just...” Meredith turned red again and shook her head, brown ponytail swinging like the tail of an agitated horse. “Well, like I said before, you’re remarkably hairy. Very, um, stubbly.”
“Thank you so much for that, McKay.”
“But you’re...” Meredith’s gaze sharpened, digging underneath Jane’s new skin. “You’re still you in there, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Jane said softly, trying not to hear a stranger’s voice answering the question. “Yeah, I’m still me in here.”
“Of course you are,” Meredith said gruffly. She pushed her hair back from her face. “You’re always impossible.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
She hung on to that when Keller showed up to persuade her back to her quarters and Meredith watched her go with a truly un-Meredith sort of confusion on her face. She hung on to that when she walked by a few of her Marines on her way to her room, wondering why she was trying to hide behind Keller’s tiny, blond self and listening to the uncomfortable heaviness of her footsteps.
“You should rest,” Keller said. She kept glancing at Jane and then away to the rest of the anonymous corridor, to the pillars, water filtration panels, a bulletin board someone had put up for announcements and reminders that got lost in email. “I’m sure Dr. McKay will figure everything out.”
“Yeah,” Jane said. “I know.”
And she did, really.
* * *
“When I was learning to write?” Meredith chewed meditatively on a slice of Athosian apple. “When I was learning to write, my dad told me I should either publish with my first name – my real first name, or else use my initials. Better chance of making it past all the men on the peer review committees, he said. So for homework every night he made me write ‘R.M. McKay’ ten times… I think the teacher got kind of upset about it. There was a conference.”
“Was that the same one where you got in trouble for using your Easy-Bake Oven to manufacture high explosives?”
“That was third grade, and they weren’t high explosives. They just set Ryan Branigan’s hair on fire, but if he hadn’t been leaning so close, that wouldn’t have happened.”
They were out on a balcony some distance from the central tower, Sheppard trying to be reclusive and Meredith being irritated enough with her to track her down.
“I learned how to be nice, you know?” Meredith felt her mouth twist around the word, still unprepared for the bitterness. Sheppard – Jane – was looking at her, the lines of her new face (stronger, more prominent) making her seem more serious than Meredith could remember her ever being.
.Peregrinations
fordarkrosetiger and toft_froggy, who both wanted to see some more of the monk!Rodney and viking!John AU. (Again, necessary to read the earlier installment, which this swatch immediately follows.)
The crew is all well-trained, and even if they weren’t, Ronon’s around to keep them in line: they have everything stowed, the men are on their sea chests reaching for their oars before the first cautious shouts of the villagers come drifting across the water.
“Looks like they did the smart thing,” John says to the monk, who is tucked nearly under the gunwale, still gripping his books.
“Yes, well, simple villagers versus ravening murderers,” the monk – Meredith, Rodney, whatever, snaps. He’s looking ashore, towards the monastery in its thin veil of smoke, the apse of the cloister church lit by a fire only now dying down, and his arms tighten around his books. Every now and then his glance strays to the bag holding the dishes and cups from the treasury. John shoves it out of sight behind Unlaf’s sea chest.
“You know, those are sacred vessels.” Meredith of Hrothney frowns at him, expression black and fierce for a moment before he seems to remember where he is and what John is, but even then the frown only fades into thin lips and dissatisfaction. “Maybe before you melt them down or offer them to idols or whatever, you could treat them with some respect.”
“Odin likes human sacrifices,” John says and grins as Meredith pales even more, but adds “Oh, relax” when it looks like he’s about to faint.
“What about this situation, precisely, is supposed to be relaxing?” Meredith closes his eyes a moment, mouth long and crooked with unhappiness, but then he actually seems to pull himself together. John’s never liked taking captives because they tend to be hysterical and crying and in the way, and it means hanging around off the coast to negotiate ransom, or else heading back to Denmark and missing the open sea.
But Meredith of Hrothney – Rodney, John supposes, because someone this determined to be brave deserves that respect – is sitting in still, determined silence, not even praying for mercy (whether from God or from John). When Rodney’s eyes open again there’s a brief and surprising flash of disappointment, as though Rodney had expected to wake up in his cell instead of crammed under a longship’s gunwale, but he doesn’t say anything, only stares at John as though he’s daring him to do something.
“We got everything stowed.” It’s Ronon’s voice directly behind him, of course, because Ronon is the only person John’s ever met who can move quietly on a creaking wooden deck. “So, are we going today or tomorrow?”
“Today,” John says, rising stiffly. He’s too old for captaining a raiding party. Under the metal plating of his armor, the leather rubs the rough weave of his shirt, which in turn chafes his skin, a discomfort he’s used to but has become more annoying lately. The longship dips gracefully under his feet as he walks aft, feeling Rodney’s gaze sharp against his back. All around him the men are falling into order, taking up their positions at the oars, Gunnar back by the tiller.
He sees the empty sea chest where Thorkell used to sit, next to Skeld. They haven’t divided up his stuff yet, not that Thorkell had a whole lot, but he’d left his heavy-weather cloak in there. John pauses, looking back at the miserably huddled ball of Benedictine habit, and sighs.
The trunk isn’t locked, though the clasps are rusted and reluctant. John forces the lid open and pulls out the cloak, a wash of stale-smelling oiled wool, sweat, and fox fur when he shakes it free of dust. All the other sailors are watching him narrowly, John knows, wondering what he’s doing and why he’s doing it now, but none of them – not even Ronon – daring to ask.
“John,” Ronon calls from somewhere aft.
“Cast off,” John tells him. “You know your way around as well as I do.”
Ronon gives the orders, and the men fall to their oars. It’s to be a slow start, John thinks, as the ship shivers into reluctant motion, fen-grass rubbing softly against her strakes, but Hrothney sits at the edge of a tidal swamp, on the last outcrop of solid ground, and even a longship can find it dangerous going through sandbars and thick tufts of grass. Gunnar begins to take the ship on its limping course back east and south, heading for open water, and the breeze freshens a little as the ship picks up speed.
“Here,” John says, dropping the cloak on top of Rodney, who jerks upright and stares wildly at the cloak for a moment before redirecting his stare to John. “It’s cold out there,” John says when Rodney fumbles with the clasps, brass but worked with fanciful animal heads, “so you might want to put it on.”
For the first time in their short acquaintance, Rodney doesn’t argue with him. The cloak disarranges his scapular and pushes the hood awkwardly around his neck, but he’s quickly settled, and pulls both hoods up over his head again, hiding the tonsure John thinks is more than a little comical.
“And you might want to get on the oar, too,” John adds, when Rodney’s halfway back to sitting down.
“Excuse me?” Rodney squawks, and John sighs.
Ronon shouts the command to couch oars, and the ship glides slowly under its own momentum for a moment before Ronon calls for starboard oars to bring the ship about to the south. John almost loses his balance when they bump up against some underwater obstruction, and he reminds himself to kill Gunnar if he puts a hole in his ship.
Rodney, however, loses his balance completely and topples over in an awkward heap.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” John tells him, “we have a missing oarsman.”
“And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a monk,” Rodney says. The cloak seems to have given him some confidence, the shadows of its hood providing something like safety, a coat of mail. “Are you completely insane? Well, of course you are, what am I saying, but that’s beside the point... The point is, when I’m not praying or singing I’m studying and writing, and those really don’t prepare one for sudden physical exertion, and besides – ”
“The condition of you coming along and staying alive was that you’d be useful.” They’re moving again, but John’s too distracted to notice the direction. “And thanks to Thorkell drowning, Skeld needs a partner.
Rodney eyes Thorkell’s empty place. Skeld grins horribly at him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says at last.
“Why?” John asks.
He immediately regrets the question, because Rodney launches into a sermon the likes of which John hasn’t heard since leaving home twenty years ago. He’s vaguely aware the rest of the crew is listening in.
“Not only am I a monk,” Rodney tells him, voice high and tight with indignation, “the only boat I’ve been on in my life was this little rowboat we’d take out to the tide marsh to get eels, and I always got horribly seasick, and I don’t even like eels to begin with, but Abbot Wulfsige is – was, I guess, since you killed him – is very insistent on doing unpleasant things. Penance for being so difficult, he’d say, and I can’t even think about eels without – ” He pauses, and for a moment John thinks that’s it, but Rodney snatches an unsteady breath and plows on: “And oh dear God, we’re on a boat that’s headed for open water, and I think – ”
“All puking had better be done over the side of the boat,” John says again.
“Right.” Rodney swallows.
“And if you’re not going to row, you’d better come up with something else to do,” John adds, now that Rodney’s silent. “We’re not hauling a monk across the Channel for free.”
Rodney frowns and looks away, staring fixedly astern. Their progress has been slow enough and the land flat enough that he can probably still see Hrothney outlined by the first light of morning.
“Make up your mind, Meredith,” he says, enough growl in his tone and insult in the name to snap Rodney back to himself. Rodney’s mouth moves silently, snatches of mostly-familiar English and what John supposes is Latin.
A moment later, Rodney shoves past him, almost tripping over Olaf and Grim and then Thorkell’s cloak, but saves himself in time by collapsing onto Thorkell’s sea chest. He stares at the oar for a moment, face grim and sick and determined, and at Skeld’s battered hands on it. He grasps the oar and begins to row with more proficiency than John would have expected but far less than he would have liked. Rodney’s shoulders give him the appearance of capability, his monk’s scapular and the thick-collared cloak making them seem wider than they are already, but his hands on the oar are still shaking and ill-placed. He’s narrowly watching his rowing mate, who is, unfortunately, Skeld, studying, John realizes, placing his hands properly after a few moments and making at least some effort to keep time with the others.
“Straighten up,” Skeld snaps over his shoulder, and Rodney opens his mouth, the retort flashing in his eyes, but Skeld is Skeld, and Rodney swallows back the words and nods.
“Let’s get a move on,” John shouts, striding back (for the third time) to take up his position next to Ronon. Rodney and his hunched, powerful shoulders accuse him silently as he walks by, flinching away when John puts out a hand. “Straighten up, Rodney,” he hisses, and the glare Rodney shoots him from under his hood is pure murder.
Not very meek or monklike, either. John wonders how he ever got by, walled up by old stones and interminable chanting.
They’re running against the wind, which is irritating, because the tide’s running out, swift and dangerous, and though a longship only pulls a few feet of draft they can find themselves beached before they know it, trapped on the marshes until the tide comes in to free them. Ronon calls out harsh encouragement every few strokes, and Gunnar is a bit unsteady as the ship slips to and fro, gaze flickering from the horizon down to the thin skim of water around the hull.
“It’ll be close,” Ronon mutters, but he doesn’t sound particularly worried. Most of the time, Ronon doesn’t sound particularly anything.
It is close, but in another half-hour the still and reluctant marsh gives way to the chop of waves and the grass thins out before the sea swallows it altogether. The light glances off the surface of the water, making it shine like volcanic glass, too faint still to make it the deep blue John knows it is. When the wind comes now, it carries only the clean salt scent that loosens a tight, coiled something in John’s chest.
.With Feathers
fordogeared, who wanted TURKEYS.
@ sga_flashfic, whose brand-new "Not Human" challenge is, assheafrotherdon pointed out, as good as God saying he wants to read turkey!fic. Also, there is an in-comment sequel, featuring Rodney's fascination with orange hunting jackets.
More tonight or tomorrow! Man, you all have awesome ideas.
for
sheafrotherdon's request for a very exasperated, pantsless Rodney. Rodney is a very exasperated, pantsless professor and John is a contractor who specializes in historical buildings and architectural restoration work.Thud-thud-thud….. thud-BANG.
He’s had his conference paper and the résumés of five interviewees open for four hours, the syllabus for his graduate seminar for two and the websites of various clothing stores for one, has been working on a stress headache for five hours at least, and has spent all of this time riding the downward spiral into insanity.
Rodney appreciates that the maintenance and grounds department does have buildings to fix and grounds to tend, and he appreciates that there’s no good time for them to put up CAUTION tape and safety cones and bring in huge noisy trucks that disrupt foot traffic and his students’ already-truncated attention spans. But there’s really no good time at all for repairing the roof on the venerable (universityspeak for “antiquated and not up to code”) physics building, especially when the repairs are going on right over Rodney’s head.
He briefly imagines standing in front of a lecture hall full of his colleagues and intellectual inferiors and laughing maniacally while explaining that he’s built a laser-guided cold fusion bomb and is going to blow up the moon unless the government of the world gives him trillions of dollars, a spaceship, and his own volcanic island in the Pacific.
While he frames his speech and wonders if white pants with pale grey checks would undermine his demented evil overlord image, Rodney stalks outside. The thumps and clangs change in pitch as he rockets outside, no longer coming from directly over his head and causing him to fear that a pile driver was going to punch through first the roof and then his skull. They’re louder now, with a metallic whine that sets his teeth on edge.
"Hey!" he shouts at the top of his lungs. "Hey!"
He coughs – it’s cold, the air burns his trachea, and he’s shouting well before he’d thought he needed to. After a minute he tries again. And again. And again, until a dreadlocked head pokes out over the roofline.
"What?" the dreadlocked one asks.
"Keep it down!" Rodney hollers. "You’re driving me crazy!"
"Okay," the dreadlocked one says, and vanishes.
"Oh my god." Rodney draws another breath and hollers some more, and keeps at it and keeps at it until at last a different head appears, this one dark and helmet-mussed, peers down at him for a moment, and is then followed by a long, lean body that slithers down the ladder.
"Can I help you?" the construction guy of, um, unbelievable hotness asks.
Rodney stammers for a moment and says something about insanity interfering with important scientific advancement and how this would qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention and... um, yes, so would you, you know... and then his brain kind of goes offline when the crazy-haired guy in the plaid shirt shifts his weight to one hip and smirks at him.
And no no, he does not get to do that! Rodney thinks, and then to his horror he's saying it, "No, no! You do not get to do that!" and waving an emphatic finger.
Crazy-haired construction guy of sex asks him what is it he's not allowed to do, Rodney gestures and says "make me come out into the cold with that infernal racket of yours and... and then lean and make me remember how long, exactly, it's been since I've had -- um, peace and quiet to get my work done, so... so stop slouching! Besides, it isn't good for your back."
Construction guy of sex smirks even more at Rodney’s tirade and rubs at his neck like he's having to think about how words work, and then he says, "my back, huh?"
Rodney scowls ferociously (he hopes) and says, "Yes, your back. Not that you probably haven't ruined it with throwing steel beams around or whatever it is you do and... and yes. I'm going back inside before I freeze to death, so could you tell your compatriots to turn it down before I snap and blow up the campus in an effort to get some quiet?"
"So you want the construction workers to be quiet when they're fixing the huge hole in your roof," construction guy of infinite annoyance asks, frowning.
"As the grave," Rodney says, and nods. And construction guy who will very likely drive Rodney to an early grave says, "We'll work on that" and turns around, and for an almost non-existent ass, Rodney thinks distantly, construction guy's ass is pretty hot
Also, Rodney realizes, there is a rip in the seam of one pocket, and there are boxers visible. Blue-striped boxers, no less.
"Hey, guys, we need to keep it down!" construction guy shouts, with enough sarcasm that Rodney knows he's being mocked and he doesn't (he really, really doesn't) need the rest of the construction crew's laughter to confirm it. That construction guy turns back around and smirks at him again just... Rodney scowls and stalks back inside, vowing to look up the name of the contractor and making sure that said contractor will never do work for the university again.
While he's at it, he'll find out the name of construction guy of torn jeans and infinitely irritating hotness. For purposes of getting him fired, of course, and not at all for, say, stalking.
Finding the number for Sheppard and Dex Contracting and Restoration doesn't take long, but despite a five-minute rant at the secretary and then the administrator, Rodney doesn't manage to get construction guy's name. He describes the slouch, the smirk, the hair (complete with hand gestures, until he realizes that of course none of the morons he's talking to can see him do an interpretive dance of construction guy's cowlicks), but no luck whatsoever, and Rodney can't decide if it is because they're morons or simply fantastically unobservant.
"It's John," says the already maddeningly familiar voice from his doorway.
Rodney drops the phone mid-tirade and spins in his chair so hard he over-rotates and almost does a 360.
"What?" he squawks, just managing to save himself by grabbing at the edge of his desk.
"My name's John," construction guy says. "John Sheppard." He follows this up with more leaning, like he's a structural support and the doorframe will collapse if he doesn't hold it up.
"My name's Rodney," Rodney offers weakly.
"I know," construction John says, and at Rodney's blank look adds, "your name's next to the room number?" and Rodney nods, remembering his unsuccessful campaign to get the department to make the building manager take his name off the door and the building directory so random students couldn't bother him.
"Um," Rodney says, and normally he wouldn't have any problem at all following that up with something -- a brilliant observation, a remark specifically designed to obliterate his target's self-worth, but his brain stops at the void after "um" and he stares at construction -- John, dammit! John Sheppard -- helplessly.
"So," Sheppard drawls (drawls! Rodney didn't know such a thing was possible outside of westerns), "you going to have me fired?"
"I, well, that is..." Rodney wonders furiously for how long, exactly, Sheppard has been eavesdropping. "Seeing as you co-own the company, I suppose I can't."
Sheppard smiles brightly.
"You could, though, tell your minions to keep it down," Rodney adds.
"I could," Sheppard agrees, but he seems to be too busy looking around Rodney's office to be paying attention to Rodney's advice. His eyes flick across Rodney's degrees, the overloaded bookcases, his beloved file cabinets, and settle on, "Tom Baker, huh?"
"Yes, and shut up," Rodney snaps. Sheppard's face wrinkles up in indignation.
A heartbeat later it occurs to Rodney that Sheppard might, in fact, be admiring, that he appreciates both Dr. Who and Rodney's discrimination when it comes to British science fiction shows. He struggles to convey this in such a way that will make it clear he doesn't at all find Sheppard's appreciation sexy, or will give Sheppard the impression that Rodney feels he's made a tactical error, and is still struggling when Sheppard says, "I'd like a sonic screwdriver, myself."
"So would I." Rodney sighs, gazing wistfully at Sheppard's hands and the thumbs hooked through his toolbelt.
"Look," Rodney says at last, "I'm... I'm sorry for yelling at you, but really, I have a lot to do to prepare for dealing with yet another semester of post-pubescent idiocy, and I have this conference and I have no pants."
Sheppard stares at him for a second, gaze flickering down to Rodney’s cargoes, and Rodney realizes what he's just said.
"Well, I have pants, but it’s… I have this conference? And I… my old pants, my conference pants, don’t fit properly anymore, and I ordered a new pair but they haven’t come in yet and I’m trying to figure out what to do."
"You could go to a store," Sheppard says.
"Oh, really?" Rodney asks. "You know, that never occurred to me, that such things as stores even exist, or that there might be a place where one might go to purchase clothing. I was thinking of visiting a bazaar, where I could pick up some saffron and a boa constrictor, or maybe raising the sheep myself, shearing it, spinning the wool, and making the pants myself in the massive amount of time I have between now and when I leave, which is tomorrow."
"There’s that too." Sheppard looks somewhat stunned. Rodney preens.
"Don’t you have more holes to put in the roof?" Rodney asks. He’s got the upper hand, and Sheppard’s extremely hot and extremely distracting presence is threatening to erode his advantage.
"Actually, we’re putting in a new steel reinforcing beam," Sheppard says. "Two hundred-year-old building like this, there’s been a lot of rot and water damage. Lots of termites. Lots of shredded, rotting wood and, you know, structural instability."
"How very This Old House of you." Rodney tries not to think of decades of the quiet gnawing of termites going on right above his head. Sheppard grins insolently and knowingly.
"Listen, Doc," Sheppard shifts his weight off the door frame; Rodney watches it suspiciously for signs of collapse, "I have to get back to work, and I’m sure you have to get back to," a pause to aerate the point and a glance at the Eddie Bauer website on Rodney’s screen for further emphasis, "shopping, but if you want…"
Rodney sits up despite his resolution to remain determinedly superior and disinterested.
"Here’s my number." Sheppard produces a business card from a pocket of his toolbelt – a toolbelt, a thought over which Rodney’s mind lingers fascinatedly even as he reaches to take the card – and grins some more. "Once you’re done, maybe you could give me a call."
"I don’t have anything to be restored," Rodney mumbles, staring at the Sheppard and Dex Contracting and Restoration inscribed on the card and the dirty thumbprint in the corner.
"Check the back," Sheppard tells him, voice low and confidential, and somewhere between Rodney’s desperate attempt to work past his hormones and process Sheppard’s words and turning over the card, Sheppard vanishes from his doorway.
.Outside Woman Blues
for
gaffsie who wanted more from this AU (absolutely necessary to understand this snippet). The first bit follows directly, the second still needs to be incorporated.She couldn’t stop looking at her hands, and she really, really wished she could.
Ever since waking up – only a couple hours ago, after being unconscious for fifteen minutes – she couldn’t stop looking, and out of all the changes she’d undergone in those fifteen minutes (like, say, the acquisition of a penis), why her hands should obsess her, she had no idea.
“I’ll figure this out,” Meredith was saying, her tone somewhere between a complaint and a promise, and Jane knew she would, because McKay always did, so until then, she’d... she’d live, she supposed.
Still, it’d be nice if McKay would hurry up and have one of her brilliant genius insights. Unfortunately, telling Meredith that would probably result in the loss of Jane’s newly-acquired dick. Several of the Lantean crew, and probably more than a few back at the SGC, had been deballed in seconds for far, far less than questioning Meredith’s ability to figure out Ancient tech. Meredith probably kept a box of them in her desk drawer, like trophies.
Jane wasn’t entirely sure whether or not to keep still or move around, talk to fill the silence (and also to annoy McKay, who rambled on even though she insisted she needed quiet to work) or shut up because the sound of her voice – not my voice, she told herself – freaked her out, deep, coming from lower down in her chest. Still and quiet, there was no way to get around the sudden jarring oh my God, I’m a man that swept through her and made her vaguely sick, but moving around, talking, she felt the differences, the unaccustomed heaviness of her body, an unfamiliar power leashed in muscles that weighted down too-solid bone.
Also, moving around, her pants would not stay up, despite the boxers Ronon (in the interest of temporary secrecy) had picked up for her from stores, and that... that led to a host of other uncomfortable thoughts, like oh my God, I have a dick, which seriously freaked her out.
Meredith was, bizarrely, the one calm, familiar thing in all of this. Jane didn’t know Keller well, either in the personal sense or “she’s seen me transformed into a bug” sense, and for a moment missing Carson supplanted the endless litany of oh my God I’m a man, oh my God. For now, though, Meredith was Meredith, quick and capable and fearsome as she bent over the device and tried to glower it into submission.
“So was there a bright light? A noise? Someone telling you ‘Congratulations, you’re now a man’? What?” Meredith was staring at the device in question, but Jane felt every ounce of Meredith’s displeased attention. “Colonel, the sooner you tell me these things, the sooner I can start figuring out how to reverse the effects. Today would be nice.”
“I told you, the last thing I remember before waking up in the infirmary was wondering what it was,” Jane said. She’d said this ten times, in fact, but Meredith wasn’t taking short-term memory loss for an answer. “I was helping Dr. Patricks with the diagnostics for Jumper 12 and it just... popped out of a storage space or something.”
“We’ve taken that jumper out on dozens of missions,” Meredith said, glaring at the smooth, anonymous-looking device. “Why are we just seeing this now?”
“You’d have to ask Patricks.”
“Oh, I’ll ask him all right.” Meredith tapped swift, impatient fingers over her datapad. Jane, taller now, could see over her shoulder easily, though the numbers scrolling across the screen made no sense. “When Jeannie takes Madison to the mall or zoo or wherever, she has this leash-harness thing she hooks to Madison to so she can’t wander off.” She broke off her scrutiny of the amazing sex change machine to eye Jane speculatively. “I’m thinking of investing in one.”
“Too late,” Jane said.
Meredith’s mouth twitched into one of her usual crooked, reluctant smiles and Jane found herself, despite everything, smiling back.
Then Meredith blinked and blushed and shook her head, smile fading as she turned back toward her tablet and the device, its dully shining surface reflecting back Meredith’s determined face. Jane tried to resettle herself in her seat and not think about the uncomfortable shifting of parts and how spreading her legs helped, but only a bit. She could hear her mother droning on about properly-crossed legs (at the ankle, not knee, legs angled carefully) and shuddered.
While Meredith worked, punctuating the silence with dissatisfied, half-audible remarks and waving hands, Jane tried to remember what had happened, but memory blanked at that first step toward the device. Nothing, not even a white light or darkness or excruciating pain, as though that step had transported her from the jumper to the infirmary, or into another body.
Maybe the pain was so bad she couldn’t remember, but Keller had said Patricks, who’d made the call, hadn’t mentioned anything like pain, only that “something had happened, and you should come down here right away.”
Something. Jane stared at her hands, wider, more capable-looking, still with her calluses, which was a relief, and the small, twisting scars on her arm and neck – less reassuring, and even kind of angering, that a stranger’s body carried the marks of her memories, that it could be alien and familiar at the same time: dark hair peeking out from the cuff of her fleece (fresh out of the bag and still smelling like plastic), the wristbones and tendons more prominent.
“Well, it looks like it did what it was supposed to do,” Meredith said after a moment.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Jane said, aware that Meredith had been staring at her staring at her hands. “What?”
“It’s just...” Meredith turned red again and shook her head, brown ponytail swinging like the tail of an agitated horse. “Well, like I said before, you’re remarkably hairy. Very, um, stubbly.”
“Thank you so much for that, McKay.”
“But you’re...” Meredith’s gaze sharpened, digging underneath Jane’s new skin. “You’re still you in there, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Jane said softly, trying not to hear a stranger’s voice answering the question. “Yeah, I’m still me in here.”
“Of course you are,” Meredith said gruffly. She pushed her hair back from her face. “You’re always impossible.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
She hung on to that when Keller showed up to persuade her back to her quarters and Meredith watched her go with a truly un-Meredith sort of confusion on her face. She hung on to that when she walked by a few of her Marines on her way to her room, wondering why she was trying to hide behind Keller’s tiny, blond self and listening to the uncomfortable heaviness of her footsteps.
“You should rest,” Keller said. She kept glancing at Jane and then away to the rest of the anonymous corridor, to the pillars, water filtration panels, a bulletin board someone had put up for announcements and reminders that got lost in email. “I’m sure Dr. McKay will figure everything out.”
“Yeah,” Jane said. “I know.”
And she did, really.
“When I was learning to write?” Meredith chewed meditatively on a slice of Athosian apple. “When I was learning to write, my dad told me I should either publish with my first name – my real first name, or else use my initials. Better chance of making it past all the men on the peer review committees, he said. So for homework every night he made me write ‘R.M. McKay’ ten times… I think the teacher got kind of upset about it. There was a conference.”
“Was that the same one where you got in trouble for using your Easy-Bake Oven to manufacture high explosives?”
“That was third grade, and they weren’t high explosives. They just set Ryan Branigan’s hair on fire, but if he hadn’t been leaning so close, that wouldn’t have happened.”
They were out on a balcony some distance from the central tower, Sheppard trying to be reclusive and Meredith being irritated enough with her to track her down.
“I learned how to be nice, you know?” Meredith felt her mouth twist around the word, still unprepared for the bitterness. Sheppard – Jane – was looking at her, the lines of her new face (stronger, more prominent) making her seem more serious than Meredith could remember her ever being.
.Peregrinations
for
darkrosetiger and toft_froggy, who both wanted to see some more of the monk!Rodney and viking!John AU. (Again, necessary to read the earlier installment, which this swatch immediately follows.)The crew is all well-trained, and even if they weren’t, Ronon’s around to keep them in line: they have everything stowed, the men are on their sea chests reaching for their oars before the first cautious shouts of the villagers come drifting across the water.
“Looks like they did the smart thing,” John says to the monk, who is tucked nearly under the gunwale, still gripping his books.
“Yes, well, simple villagers versus ravening murderers,” the monk – Meredith, Rodney, whatever, snaps. He’s looking ashore, towards the monastery in its thin veil of smoke, the apse of the cloister church lit by a fire only now dying down, and his arms tighten around his books. Every now and then his glance strays to the bag holding the dishes and cups from the treasury. John shoves it out of sight behind Unlaf’s sea chest.
“You know, those are sacred vessels.” Meredith of Hrothney frowns at him, expression black and fierce for a moment before he seems to remember where he is and what John is, but even then the frown only fades into thin lips and dissatisfaction. “Maybe before you melt them down or offer them to idols or whatever, you could treat them with some respect.”
“Odin likes human sacrifices,” John says and grins as Meredith pales even more, but adds “Oh, relax” when it looks like he’s about to faint.
“What about this situation, precisely, is supposed to be relaxing?” Meredith closes his eyes a moment, mouth long and crooked with unhappiness, but then he actually seems to pull himself together. John’s never liked taking captives because they tend to be hysterical and crying and in the way, and it means hanging around off the coast to negotiate ransom, or else heading back to Denmark and missing the open sea.
But Meredith of Hrothney – Rodney, John supposes, because someone this determined to be brave deserves that respect – is sitting in still, determined silence, not even praying for mercy (whether from God or from John). When Rodney’s eyes open again there’s a brief and surprising flash of disappointment, as though Rodney had expected to wake up in his cell instead of crammed under a longship’s gunwale, but he doesn’t say anything, only stares at John as though he’s daring him to do something.
“We got everything stowed.” It’s Ronon’s voice directly behind him, of course, because Ronon is the only person John’s ever met who can move quietly on a creaking wooden deck. “So, are we going today or tomorrow?”
“Today,” John says, rising stiffly. He’s too old for captaining a raiding party. Under the metal plating of his armor, the leather rubs the rough weave of his shirt, which in turn chafes his skin, a discomfort he’s used to but has become more annoying lately. The longship dips gracefully under his feet as he walks aft, feeling Rodney’s gaze sharp against his back. All around him the men are falling into order, taking up their positions at the oars, Gunnar back by the tiller.
He sees the empty sea chest where Thorkell used to sit, next to Skeld. They haven’t divided up his stuff yet, not that Thorkell had a whole lot, but he’d left his heavy-weather cloak in there. John pauses, looking back at the miserably huddled ball of Benedictine habit, and sighs.
The trunk isn’t locked, though the clasps are rusted and reluctant. John forces the lid open and pulls out the cloak, a wash of stale-smelling oiled wool, sweat, and fox fur when he shakes it free of dust. All the other sailors are watching him narrowly, John knows, wondering what he’s doing and why he’s doing it now, but none of them – not even Ronon – daring to ask.
“John,” Ronon calls from somewhere aft.
“Cast off,” John tells him. “You know your way around as well as I do.”
Ronon gives the orders, and the men fall to their oars. It’s to be a slow start, John thinks, as the ship shivers into reluctant motion, fen-grass rubbing softly against her strakes, but Hrothney sits at the edge of a tidal swamp, on the last outcrop of solid ground, and even a longship can find it dangerous going through sandbars and thick tufts of grass. Gunnar begins to take the ship on its limping course back east and south, heading for open water, and the breeze freshens a little as the ship picks up speed.
“Here,” John says, dropping the cloak on top of Rodney, who jerks upright and stares wildly at the cloak for a moment before redirecting his stare to John. “It’s cold out there,” John says when Rodney fumbles with the clasps, brass but worked with fanciful animal heads, “so you might want to put it on.”
For the first time in their short acquaintance, Rodney doesn’t argue with him. The cloak disarranges his scapular and pushes the hood awkwardly around his neck, but he’s quickly settled, and pulls both hoods up over his head again, hiding the tonsure John thinks is more than a little comical.
“And you might want to get on the oar, too,” John adds, when Rodney’s halfway back to sitting down.
“Excuse me?” Rodney squawks, and John sighs.
Ronon shouts the command to couch oars, and the ship glides slowly under its own momentum for a moment before Ronon calls for starboard oars to bring the ship about to the south. John almost loses his balance when they bump up against some underwater obstruction, and he reminds himself to kill Gunnar if he puts a hole in his ship.
Rodney, however, loses his balance completely and topples over in an awkward heap.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” John tells him, “we have a missing oarsman.”
“And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a monk,” Rodney says. The cloak seems to have given him some confidence, the shadows of its hood providing something like safety, a coat of mail. “Are you completely insane? Well, of course you are, what am I saying, but that’s beside the point... The point is, when I’m not praying or singing I’m studying and writing, and those really don’t prepare one for sudden physical exertion, and besides – ”
“The condition of you coming along and staying alive was that you’d be useful.” They’re moving again, but John’s too distracted to notice the direction. “And thanks to Thorkell drowning, Skeld needs a partner.
Rodney eyes Thorkell’s empty place. Skeld grins horribly at him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says at last.
“Why?” John asks.
He immediately regrets the question, because Rodney launches into a sermon the likes of which John hasn’t heard since leaving home twenty years ago. He’s vaguely aware the rest of the crew is listening in.
“Not only am I a monk,” Rodney tells him, voice high and tight with indignation, “the only boat I’ve been on in my life was this little rowboat we’d take out to the tide marsh to get eels, and I always got horribly seasick, and I don’t even like eels to begin with, but Abbot Wulfsige is – was, I guess, since you killed him – is very insistent on doing unpleasant things. Penance for being so difficult, he’d say, and I can’t even think about eels without – ” He pauses, and for a moment John thinks that’s it, but Rodney snatches an unsteady breath and plows on: “And oh dear God, we’re on a boat that’s headed for open water, and I think – ”
“All puking had better be done over the side of the boat,” John says again.
“Right.” Rodney swallows.
“And if you’re not going to row, you’d better come up with something else to do,” John adds, now that Rodney’s silent. “We’re not hauling a monk across the Channel for free.”
Rodney frowns and looks away, staring fixedly astern. Their progress has been slow enough and the land flat enough that he can probably still see Hrothney outlined by the first light of morning.
“Make up your mind, Meredith,” he says, enough growl in his tone and insult in the name to snap Rodney back to himself. Rodney’s mouth moves silently, snatches of mostly-familiar English and what John supposes is Latin.
A moment later, Rodney shoves past him, almost tripping over Olaf and Grim and then Thorkell’s cloak, but saves himself in time by collapsing onto Thorkell’s sea chest. He stares at the oar for a moment, face grim and sick and determined, and at Skeld’s battered hands on it. He grasps the oar and begins to row with more proficiency than John would have expected but far less than he would have liked. Rodney’s shoulders give him the appearance of capability, his monk’s scapular and the thick-collared cloak making them seem wider than they are already, but his hands on the oar are still shaking and ill-placed. He’s narrowly watching his rowing mate, who is, unfortunately, Skeld, studying, John realizes, placing his hands properly after a few moments and making at least some effort to keep time with the others.
“Straighten up,” Skeld snaps over his shoulder, and Rodney opens his mouth, the retort flashing in his eyes, but Skeld is Skeld, and Rodney swallows back the words and nods.
“Let’s get a move on,” John shouts, striding back (for the third time) to take up his position next to Ronon. Rodney and his hunched, powerful shoulders accuse him silently as he walks by, flinching away when John puts out a hand. “Straighten up, Rodney,” he hisses, and the glare Rodney shoots him from under his hood is pure murder.
Not very meek or monklike, either. John wonders how he ever got by, walled up by old stones and interminable chanting.
They’re running against the wind, which is irritating, because the tide’s running out, swift and dangerous, and though a longship only pulls a few feet of draft they can find themselves beached before they know it, trapped on the marshes until the tide comes in to free them. Ronon calls out harsh encouragement every few strokes, and Gunnar is a bit unsteady as the ship slips to and fro, gaze flickering from the horizon down to the thin skim of water around the hull.
“It’ll be close,” Ronon mutters, but he doesn’t sound particularly worried. Most of the time, Ronon doesn’t sound particularly anything.
It is close, but in another half-hour the still and reluctant marsh gives way to the chop of waves and the grass thins out before the sea swallows it altogether. The light glances off the surface of the water, making it shine like volcanic glass, too faint still to make it the deep blue John knows it is. When the wind comes now, it carries only the clean salt scent that loosens a tight, coiled something in John’s chest.
.With Feathers
for
dogeared, who wanted TURKEYS.@ sga_flashfic, whose brand-new "Not Human" challenge is, as
sheafrotherdon pointed out, as good as God saying he wants to read turkey!fic. Also, there is an in-comment sequel, featuring Rodney's fascination with orange hunting jackets.More tonight or tomorrow! Man, you all have awesome ideas.
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And more Viking AU is also with the happy! :D
You are brilliant! ♥
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