"Come to take my EpiPen away, have you?"
Sam abruptly stopped walking, just before she rounded the corner near the door to the main physics lab. McKay's voice was terse, with none of the amused impatience she'd heard underlying everything he'd said since she'd arrived in Atlantis.
It took a moment before the person he spoke to answered, probably because they'd heard the bite in McKay's tone, too. "What?" Colonel Sheppard didn't quite manage not to sound defensive.
Sam knew she should walk away and let them deal with this in private, but she had to admit—at least to herself, if not to Teal'c, who liked to tease her about being a closet noc'ti onac, which was roughly the Jaffa equivalent of a yenta, as far as she could tell—that she was curious how McKay would handle Sheppard's and Mitchell's juvenile behavior. McKay had changed so much since she'd seen him last, as his ease on the Odyssey during a battle situation had shown.
"Well, telling a complete stranger to threaten me with death by anaphylactic shock worked so well that obviously the next level of threat motivation—after I've somehow mysteriously become immune to possible death threats—would be to take away all hope and slide right on to certain death threats, right?"
"McKay—"
"Personally, I tend to work better when I know there's a possibility we'll survive, but that's just me."
"You work better under pressure, McKay, we all know—"
"No, I work better when I know a friend's got my back, making sure nothing else will take me out while I'm trying to save the world for the aforementioned friend." McKay's voice was flatly caustic; Sam could feel the acid hitting its target.
Silence fell, and Sam pictured the scene in her head: McKay sitting in front of whatever he'd been working on, arms crossed, chin jutting out belligerently, his mouth twisted with displeasure. Sheppard was probably standing just inside the door, hands on his hips and that same blandly pleasant look on his face that he'd greeted SG-1 with when they'd arrived.
One of the men sighed heavily, as if he couldn't believe he was having to explain this. It sounded eerily like one of McKay's sighs, but Sam was fairly sure it was Sheppard. "Look, I've read the reports, and reading between the lines—because I know you, Rodney—I have a pretty good idea how your interactions with the SGC have to have gone in the past, so I was trying to—I don't know, deflect the inevitable personality conflicts or something, make Mitchell see you as approachable and human, and not whatever smug chauvinist pig the others might have made you out to be."
"Because nothing says 'approachable mortal human' like sudden-death fruit," McKay replied.
"It wasn't real!"
You just don't get it, do you, Sheppard? Sam thought.
"I didn't know that! You might as well have held a gun to my head and told me to trust you that it was unloaded!"
"But you laughed! I heard you laugh as I walked away!"
"Well, what else was I supposed to do, admit that someone I've worked with every day for the last two years—someone I thought was a friend—is actually a schoolyard bully who hates me so much that he finds nothing wrong with mocking my very real, very life-threatening allergies to complete strangers? My God, Sheppard, even you're not that dense!" McKay's voice rose until he was shouting.
Sam held her breath as they both waited for Sheppard's response.
"I don't—I—" Sheppard's voice caught, and he didn't continue right away. Sam heard a metal lab stool scrape along the floor.
"You don't," McKay replied with a sneer in his voice. "Yes, you're good at that, aren't you, Colonel? You don't trust me. You don't trust Elizabeth. You don't even trust Teyla or Ronon—not really. You don't want anyone to know you, and you think you don't need anybody. You think you'll be fine if you can just keep anyone from expecting more from you than that you do your job, as if that's all you are to anyone here. Thanks for the vote of confidence; it's nice to know what you really think of us."
"No, I don't—damn it, McKay, don't put words in my mouth!"
"You're not using it to make any sense, so I may as well pretend to have a rational conversation with you, seeing as it's the closest I'll probably ever get."
"Rodney, you know I—can't express myself well when it comes to all this, but you have to know I don't think that."
"How, exactly, would I know that? I get that we're guys, I do, and I realize that you buy into all this macho crap about stoic, manly silence when it comes to discussing feelings. But this is not a topic I will let anyone make jokes about, not even you, and I will not keep how I feel about it to myself, just because talking about it makes you squirm. That subject is completely off limits. End of discussion."
Sheppard sighed, and Sam imagined his chin was pressed to his chest as he tried to gather the words to respond. McKay was probably waiting expectantly with his arms crossed and foot tapping.
"We're rational, adult humans, Colonel, not apes. I would hope that after thousands of years, we've evolved beyond beating on our chests to express ourselves. So try spelling out what you're thinking, just this once. I promise it won't kill you."
"I fucked up. It wasn't—I'm—really sorry." There was a slight pause as Sheppard stuttered to a stop.
"Look at that, no lightning struck you down. Amazing. However will I contain my surprise?"
Sheppard let out a short, pained laugh. "Shut up, Rodney."
"No, seriously, I might expire from the shock, and then where would you be?"
Sheppard muttered, "I wouldn't be forced to talk about my feelings like you're my girlfriend, that's for sure."
"You should be so lucky," McKay said with what sounded like a relieved grin.
"Yeah, I should," Sheppard replied, sounding equally relieved to Sam's ears. "Are we—are we okay now?"
"Oh, I think you deserve at least a week of artifact duty before I'm prepared to let it go completely."
"Pushing it, Rodney."
"If I didn't push it, you'd think I was still mad at you. Which is not to say I'm not, but you get my point."
"Yeah, I do. C'mon, I hear the SGC sent a ton of gourmet coffee since they hadn't filled our latest official supply requests before the Odyssey left Earth."
"Gourmet coffee? And you didn't mention it right away? Really, Colonel, I know you like to talk about yourself at length, but some of us have significantly different priorities."
"Lucky for you I left Lorne overseeing their security."
"Oh, please, like Lorne's not the mastermind of the luxury goods black market. I'll be lucky if we get our hands on enough to last a week without having to give up something important in exchange."
Sam smiled to herself at the relief patently evident in both men's voices, which were quickly fading as they walked toward the mess hall. Looked like she owed Vala dinner again, but this was one bet she didn't mind losing. McKay had finally found his niche and understood the value of friends you'd give your life for, friends that you'd work miracles to get back, just so you could give them hell.
She turned back toward the command room, whistling as she went in search of her team.
Gracias to Tiriel for great metaphors and a lightning-fast edit as always. :) And to blade_girl, Ophidiae and Ashlyn, for absolutely not letting me get away with sloppy writing. *vbg*
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