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Three fics again... what's with all the threes at the moment... originally written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sg1_five_things:
5 times members of SG-1 gave each other rides to or from work for whatever reason (some Cam/Teal'c, ~1500 words, spoilers up to SGA 501 Search and Rescue)
1. Cam’s not sure why he hangs around the mountain after Daniel, Sam and Teal’c leave to celebrate the election result. He doesn’t want to sleep there, but he doesn’t want to go home yet either. He knows it’s a cliché, but he also knows he won’t be able to stop himself digging out the photo albums from when he and Ferguson were serving together, remembering. He doesn’t want to forget, but he doesn’t have enough alcohol to face the memories yet either.
Every time he blinks, he sees Ferguson’s face, blissed out on Cam’s memories.
He’s in his office, poking at the report for the rescue mission for Teal’c that he still hasn’t finished, when someone knocks on the open door frame.
“Hey,” Sam says when he looks up. She’s in jeans and a pink t-shirt, jacket over her arm, smiling slightly, mildly flushed face saying she’s come back for him. “Time to pack it up for the day, come on.”
“I’m not good company,” Cam tells her. He knows himself when he’s drinking and upset, and he’s not subjecting the people he cares for to it.
“I know,” Sam says sympathetically. “That’s why I’m taking you home.” Cam shakes his head, tries to think of a good reason to say no, but Sam steps further into his office. “I’ve got an overnight bag in my car, and you have a guest room. We’ve got tomorrow off, you can make me breakfast.”
Cam shakes his head again, not even sure why he’s refusing when he wants to say yes, and Sam touches his arm, her fingers cool and light. He has to look down, right on the edge of tears. “You’d do it for me,” she says quietly. “Let me be a friend for you for a change.”
It sounds really good. Cam nods his head yes.
*
2. “You’re going to make us late,” Sam calls from somewhere in her apartment as Vala borrows some of the fruity smelling hand cream that Sam used the evening before. Sam has a surprisingly large number of potions and lotions in her bathroom, though Vala’s not surprised to find that most of them are unopened, or barely used.
“You can tell General Landry it’s entirely my fault, darling,” she calls back.
“I will,” Sam mutters, loudly enough for Vala to hear, but she doesn’t sound really angry. Vala smiles at herself in the mirror. Girls night in may be a new thing for her – and, she thinks from the hesitant way Sam explained it, for Sam – but she thinks she could get used to it. And not just because Sam’s guest bed is much more comfortable than her bed at the SGC. It’s been a long time since she had a good female friend.
*
3. “Wow, I think this place is actually more of a mess than it was when I still worked here,” Jack says, startling Daniel into looking up from trying to make sense of his experiences as a prior. Jack’s standing in his doorway, dressed in regular clothes, and it feels both familiar and not. “I wouldn’t have said that was possible.”
“I don’t think Mitchell knows how to keep people out of here,” Daniel says mildly. Actually, he’s pretty sure the team was working out of his office while he was gone, which is kind of nice, even if they have messed with his cataloguing system. It doesn’t seem right to tell Jack this.
Jack nods like he’s giving this serious thought. “Well, sorting it out can wait for tomorrow,” he says firmly. “Come on, get your coat.”
“I’ve got to get this report done,” Daniel says. He clicks save anyway, knowing how this is going to end. Years of practise have made him good at putting off the inevitable, but not at avoiding it entirely. “Landry will –“
“Landry told me to drag you out of here by the ear if necessary,” Jack interrupts. “Don’t think anyone would stop me if I tried it either.”
Daniel’s sure they wouldn’t. He’s pretty sure that, even after two years, Jack could lead a mutiny against Landry with a couple of words. “That sounds painful,” he says, pretending to consider, watching his computer run through the log-out procedures. “And also humiliating.”
Jack gives him another serious, considering nod. “Much easier just to come. We’ll go get dinner – I assume you don’t have anything in your fridge.”
Daniel’s sure this is true, and also that the prospect of dinner not from the mess would have worked for him even if he didn’t want to spend the evening with Jack. It’s always a shock to realize, when he sees him, just how much he still misses having Jack around.
“Fine,” he says, long-sufferingly, and grabs his jacket from the back of the door.
*
4. Cameron Mitchell is, as the Tau’ri movies say, a cuddler, or at least, this is what Teal’c surmises when he awakens to find him with his head on Teal’c’s shoulder, his arm around Teal’c’s waist. The day is really too warm to be so close, even this early, but Teal’c does not object. It is pleasant to be able to relax with another body against his, skin to skin.
Cameron Mitchell – Cameron now, no longer distanced by rank – wakes slowly, shifting against Teal’c and finally pushing himself up to look at Teal’c’s face. When he meets Teal’c’s eyes, his entire face lights up in a sweet smile which makes him look much younger. “Cool,” he says. “Thought I might have been dreaming. Again.”
“Indeed,” Teal’c says, hiding his pleasure behind a neutral tone of voice. Although it was Cameron Mitchell who kissed him the evening before, it is nice to know that he has been wanted for as long as he has wanted, when he still finds the Tau’ri so difficult to read.
“Indeed,” Cameron Mitchell repeats, grinning. He moves again, lying back against Teal’c and tilting his head to be kissed.
Teal’c is happy to oblige, even if it does mean that Cameron Mitchell is stopped by a police officer for speeding when they find themselves late for work.
*
5. Sam’s almost out of the mountain when she remembers that her car is parked outside Cam’s apartment block, after he agreed to look after it for her when she went to Atlantis. She hesitates, sighing. She could go back in and get a pool car, but she just wants to be away from the mountain now, to nurse her heartache somewhere Woolsey won’t find her. She could call a cab, but she’ll have to hang around the guard point and wait for it, and, again, she just wants to be home.
She’s still trying to decide when the elevator doors open and Cam and Vala tumble out.
“Carter,” Cam says. “Thought you might have gone already.”
Daniel and Teal’c follow the two of them more sedately, all of them in civvies.
“You need me for something?” she asks, resigned. If she has to hang around, there’s no four people she’d rather do it with.
“We do,” Vala says, sliding her arm through Sam’s and turning her towards the exit. “We’re kidnapping you.”
“Okay,” Sam says slowly.
Daniel smiles patiently. “We’re taking you for dinner, then to a bar.”
“To get you drunk,” Cam adds, which Sam thinks was pretty clearly implied.
“And then back to Colonel Mitchell’s,” Vala goes on. “Since he and muscles are already going there for the night.”
Cam puts one hand over his eyes and groans. “Didn’t we go over how you shouldn’t say stuff like that around here?” he asks.
Vala, unsurprisingly, ignores him, but Sam can’t help laughing. Though – Cam and Teal’c? They’ve been holding out on the gossip. “Where we intend to feed you popcorn and chocolate and other Earth delicacies until you’re too stuffed to eat another bite, at which point we shall paint each others’ toe nails and exchange gossip.”
“Girls night in,” Sam says, and Vala nods, looking pleased. “With these three?”
“They’re honorary girls for the night,” Vala says breezily.
“Just no discussing who’s hot around the base,” Cam puts in.
“We all know who you think is hot around the base,” Vala says, giving Teal’c a slow once-over. Teal’c just raises an eyebrow.
“Okay, it is definitely time to get this show on the road,” Cam says, putting a hand on Sam’s back and one on Vala’s and propelling them towards the exit. “Okay, baby?” he says quietly in Sam’s ear.
“Yeah,” she says, wondering how Cam intends to fit them all into his mustang, and realizes that, in that moment, surrounded by her friends, her family, she actually is.
4 ways Dave Sheppard didn't find out about the stargate, and 1 way he did (some John/Cam, ~1,300 words, spoilers up to 519 Vegas)
1. John thinks, after he finishes telling Colonel Sumner’s family how much they need him, about recording something to send to his brother and his dad. He actually records, “This is for Patrick and David Sheppard,” but when he takes a breath to go on, he can’t think of anything to say. He doesn’t have the words to explain away years of absence, to get past his father’s disapproval and his brother’s distance, and that’s before he thinks about trying to explain the stargate and Atlantis and how it feels to finally fit somewhere.
He’s interrupted by Elizabeth on his radio before he gets any further, and then he forgets about it. When he remembers, it’s too late, the files are about to be sent, and he figures it’s the universe’s way of telling him not to do it. Dave and his dad have managed perfectly well without him for years; what’s the point of getting in touch just to tell them that he’s probably dead?
*
2. Dave is not an idiot, and neither is he unobservant – you don’t get far running a Fortune 500 company by not seeing things. He may not have seen John for years, but even while he’s pissed at John for leaving, he can tell there’s more to John’s this is work-related than having to go back for a conference call. Not that he expects to ever find out. John’s always been secretive.
It’s a surprise when John comes back, though not, in the end, entirely unwelcome. Dad’s house feels strange without him, too empty, and John might not be Dave’s first choice for company, but there’s something about funerals that makes him want to be around family. It’s obvious that John’s in pain even before he turns down Dave’s offer of a drink with an awkward, “Painkillers.”
Dave knows better than to ask, so he can’t explain why he hears himself say, “The work-related thing?”
John looks up, mouth open like he’s about to speak, and it’s all there on his face: how big this is, whatever he’s doing, how huge a secret it is. How he wants, for that moment anyway, to actually tell Dave. It’s more than Dave ever expected from his brother, and he knows what it must cost John to let him see it. Almost as much as it would cost John to know that he broke the trust placed in him.
“Don’t,” Dave says softly. John looks at him for a long moment, then blinks, looks down, shaking his head. Dave sits down next to him on the couch, nudges his arm till John looks at him from the corner of damp, red eyes. “Thank you,” he adds.
*
3. Rodney’s not really sure what makes him look up John’s brother when they’re thrown out of Atlantis, after Ronon and Carter are killed trying to stop Michael. Maybe it’s that, with his team gone and Atlantis abandoned, John’s brother is the closest thing he has to John now. Maybe it’s wanting to know something about a part of his life that John never talked about. Maybe it’s just wanting something to distract him from everything he’s lost, even with Jennifer.
Dave Sheppard’s contact details are not difficult to find. A few clicks through the corporate website, a few minutes hacking their database – apparently Sheppard Utilities aren’t fluffy enough to have one of those ‘contact our CO’ links – and he’s got Sheppard’s email address looking at him from the to line of his gmail.
He leaves the subject line blank and starts typing: Dear Mr Sheppard, You don’t know me, but I was a close friend and colleague of your brother’s. We worked together for four years on a project with the United States Air Force, for a subdivision called Stargate Command, on a base called Atlantis, in the Pegasus Galaxy…
He doesn’t send the email, just leaves it open on his laptop when Jennifer comes home.
When he gets up the next morning, she’s closed down the window. Rodney logs back into his email client, checks the sent items and the drafts folder. The email’s gone, like he kind of knew it would be.
He doesn’t type it up again.
*
4. Exactly a year to the day after his father dies, Phyllis comes into Dave’s office and says, “There are two men from the Air Force wanting to see you. I tried to tell them they needed to make an appointment, but they said it was important.”
Men from the Air Force are just about the last thing Dave wants to deal with. He’s tempted to send them away, but he’s not sure they’d actually go, and he’s not having Sheppard Utilities on the front page for an argument between two Air Force officers and his security people. “Send them in, Phyllis, thanks.”
They turn out to be one man from the Air Force – “Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, sir,” – and one man connected to the Air Force – “Dr Rodney McKay.” Mitchell’s in his dress uniform and McKay is in a dark suit, and neither on them smiles as they sit down.
“Your brother is John Sheppard,” McKay says, not really a question. Dave nods, looks at Mitchell, whose face isn’t quite as locked down as McKay’s and thinks, No, please, not today, like hearing what they’re about to say would be any better in a week, or a couple of months.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Sheppard,” Mitchell says, soft southern voice that reminds Dave of his mom. “But your brother was killed two days ago.”
“He’s not even in the Air Force any more,” Dave says stupidly. “He’s a detective.”
“He was working with us,” Mitchell says. “You should know that he died doing something important, that he saved a lot of lives.”
Dave nods, not sure if he believes Mitchell or not. He hasn’t spoken to John since well before Dad’s funeral, other than to leave an angry voicemail asking what the fuck John had been doing instead of coming to the wake. Even so, he knows that John fucked up badly when he was in the Air Force, hasn’t done much better as a cop. But the Air Force wouldn’t want him back if they didn’t really need him, so maybe it is true. “Can I have his body?” he asks.
McKay and Mitchell talk him through getting John’s body back from them, offer their condolences again, and leave. It’s only when Phyllis is showing them out of the building that Dave realizes he never asked exactly what John was doing.
*
And one way he did:
“Hey,” Cam says, leaning close as he and John wait for the SGC’s publicity officer to finish talking them up to the gathered press. “What did your brother say when you told him what you’ve been doing for the last six years?”
John turns round, close enough that his hand brushed against Cam’s, making him grin until he catches the guilty look on John’s face. “You didn’t call him?” he demands. “You said you’d do it last night!”
“Yeah, well, you distracted me,” John points out, which, okay, it was Cam who started things, but it was John who passed out afterwards and nearly made them late by forgetting to set the alarm.
“I can’t believe you forgot to tell your own brother,” he says, though, really, this is John and his family. It’s the least surprising thing he’s heard in months.
The airman on the door leans in and says, “Colonels, they’re about ready for you.”
John steps away from Cam, straightens his dress uniform jacket. “Pretty sure he’s going to find out now,” he says, and follows the airman out to the conference room to stand with O’Neill and Landry while they tell the world about the stargate program.
5 times General Landry almost quit because he just couldn’t handle these people any more (~1200 words)
1. He’s had tough commands, and weird commands, and he expected the SGC to come with copious amounts of both. He’s heard about Ancient devices, people coming back from the dead, people getting cloned, getting de-aged, meeting their doubles, getting stuck in time loops. He figured he was, if not prepared for anything, at least ready for the prospect of anything.
Then he looked back on his first week in command, in which various combinations of two members of the SGC’s premier team, the new guy, and an alien in leather: fought a holographic knight underground, made a race of powerful beings aware of Earth’s existence, came back to life after being burned alive, and then lead a scavenger hunt across the galaxy.
Suddenly, even ‘ready for the prospect of anything’ seemed like a wildly over-optimistic outlook.
*
2. SG-8 is known primarily for being the sane, normal, work-horse team. They may not be flashy, they may not stage daring rescues or bring home exciting toys, but they do the job and their missions never end with Hank having to explain away anything weird to the IOA.
Which is why he’s not especially pleased to be called down to the gate-room and find it filled with small, purple, fuzzy animals. He’s even less pleased to discover that their spit – and oh, do they spit – is an aphrodisiac. Actually, he could even deal with that, except that he has a gate-room full of guards who are now half-naked and frolicking amongst the small, fuzzy, purple animals. And SG-8.
When SG-8, previous most notable mission the time one of them was bitten by an iguana, is involved in alien animal derived sex acts, it’s definitely time to start thinking about retirement.
*
3. Hank has mixed feelings about Atlantis – the city, the existence of the expedition, the people who are out there. But they’re in a whole other galaxy, and content to be a law unto themselves, and he’s got enough to deal with with his own people, so he mostly doesn’t think about them too much.
Until they’re all pouring back into his gate-room, loaded down with bags, looking bewildered, some of them in tears, and probably tracking in muddy footprints to boot, all within 48 hours of someone mentioning they were coming. And they’ll need jobs, and somewhere to live, and chance to sort out all their stuff from the Daedalus, and, sure, they usually get glowing evaluations, but Hank does not need 200 people in his base, however brilliant or genetically enhanced they might be.
Not that he couldn’t handle them of course; it’s what he’s paid for, even if he doesn’t have a lot of marines. But in the two minutes it takes him to get down to the gate-room, Sheppard and Lorne are up on the ramp, directing traffic and giving orders, and people are going, even the scientists. Hank’s never been able to get a scientist to follow orders, not even the ones who are military geeks.
He doesn’t think about quitting – he’s still Sheppard’s superior, whatever anyone else might like to think – but he does think, for a second, that he’s glad he’s the one with the power to send them away.
*
4. Hank’s used to the idea that gossip gets around a base almost before the event being gossiped about has happened, it’s the nature of life in a small community, and made worse by being in a small, classified community. He’d prefer it not be about him and his daughter and how they’ve mostly patched up their difference since he nearly died from the prior plague, but there it is, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Within a month, though, he’s heard four different airmen and five different scientists (one of them a woman) wonder about the ethics of asking out Carolyn, as she’s his daughter. He’s also witnessed two different people (one of them, again, a woman) actually ask her out (and seen his daughter accept the woman’s offer, which is something he hadn’t known about her, and is still trying to pretend he doesn’t know while he waits for her to tell him). He’s also heard about one young airman try to follow her into the showers, but that was an official report, made by a very pissed off Colonel Mitchell when he caught the man, which was swiftly followed by the airman getting reassigned to guard the weapons chair in Antarctica.
He hasn’t ever spent this much time worrying about his daughter’s love life, for all that he knows she can take care of herself. That’s not what’s bothering him, though; what’s bothering him is that, every time he hears one of his people wonder if Carolyn would go for it, he wants to haul the person into his office and tell them to stay the hell away from his child, they’re not good enough for her.
He doesn’t think it’s a bad sign that he thinks no-one’s good enough for Carolyn; he’s less sure it’s not a bad sign that he doesn’t think these specific people are good enough for her, not when they’re supposed to be the best and the brightest, and it’s a worry that drives him to seriously consider whether he wouldn’t be better elsewhere.
*
5. SG1 defeat the Ori, the Tok’ra de-snake Ba’al and Atlantis drops in to defeat the Wraith, and life is quiet for, oh, a good two weeks. Then SG-3 stumble upon a race called the Noones, who were exiled from their planet centuries ago by the Tok’ra, who someone accidentally lets slip work with the Tau’ri sometimes, and they’re right back in the middle of a galactic war all over again.
The only person surprised when Hank has a heart attack in the gate room is Hank himself.
He ends up taking a month out on medical leave, leaving Carter, Mitchell and Davies in a kind of triumvirate charge, since all three of them have other duties which can’t be abandoned.
Everyone’s welcoming and happy to see him when he finally goes back. The three of them debrief him about everything (including the defeat of the Noones via Jackson and Teal’c persuading them into a treaty of non-aggression) in mind-numbing detail, and Carter and Davies leave to go back to what they should be doing.
It takes him a week to realize why his workload seems so much lighter than it did before, when he finds Mitchell, Jackson and Teal’c leading the newly formed SG-25 through a pre-mission briefing, Vala sitting with SG-25 because she is, apparently, going along as a kind of mentor. Mitchell starts guiltily when Hank walks in, but the rest of them just look at him, defiant beneath expressions forced into blankness.
“If you want to take over…” Mitchell says hesitantly, and Hank takes a good look at the people lined up behind him.
“No, carry on,” he says, walking out, and goes back to his office to look again at the retirement paperwork. Because he might not be able to call it mutiny, really, but he can sure as hell see that something shifted while he was gone, and he’s not at all convinced he can shift it back again.
sg1_five_things:5 times members of SG-1 gave each other rides to or from work for whatever reason (some Cam/Teal'c, ~1500 words, spoilers up to SGA 501 Search and Rescue)
1. Cam’s not sure why he hangs around the mountain after Daniel, Sam and Teal’c leave to celebrate the election result. He doesn’t want to sleep there, but he doesn’t want to go home yet either. He knows it’s a cliché, but he also knows he won’t be able to stop himself digging out the photo albums from when he and Ferguson were serving together, remembering. He doesn’t want to forget, but he doesn’t have enough alcohol to face the memories yet either.
Every time he blinks, he sees Ferguson’s face, blissed out on Cam’s memories.
He’s in his office, poking at the report for the rescue mission for Teal’c that he still hasn’t finished, when someone knocks on the open door frame.
“Hey,” Sam says when he looks up. She’s in jeans and a pink t-shirt, jacket over her arm, smiling slightly, mildly flushed face saying she’s come back for him. “Time to pack it up for the day, come on.”
“I’m not good company,” Cam tells her. He knows himself when he’s drinking and upset, and he’s not subjecting the people he cares for to it.
“I know,” Sam says sympathetically. “That’s why I’m taking you home.” Cam shakes his head, tries to think of a good reason to say no, but Sam steps further into his office. “I’ve got an overnight bag in my car, and you have a guest room. We’ve got tomorrow off, you can make me breakfast.”
Cam shakes his head again, not even sure why he’s refusing when he wants to say yes, and Sam touches his arm, her fingers cool and light. He has to look down, right on the edge of tears. “You’d do it for me,” she says quietly. “Let me be a friend for you for a change.”
It sounds really good. Cam nods his head yes.
*
2. “You’re going to make us late,” Sam calls from somewhere in her apartment as Vala borrows some of the fruity smelling hand cream that Sam used the evening before. Sam has a surprisingly large number of potions and lotions in her bathroom, though Vala’s not surprised to find that most of them are unopened, or barely used.
“You can tell General Landry it’s entirely my fault, darling,” she calls back.
“I will,” Sam mutters, loudly enough for Vala to hear, but she doesn’t sound really angry. Vala smiles at herself in the mirror. Girls night in may be a new thing for her – and, she thinks from the hesitant way Sam explained it, for Sam – but she thinks she could get used to it. And not just because Sam’s guest bed is much more comfortable than her bed at the SGC. It’s been a long time since she had a good female friend.
*
3. “Wow, I think this place is actually more of a mess than it was when I still worked here,” Jack says, startling Daniel into looking up from trying to make sense of his experiences as a prior. Jack’s standing in his doorway, dressed in regular clothes, and it feels both familiar and not. “I wouldn’t have said that was possible.”
“I don’t think Mitchell knows how to keep people out of here,” Daniel says mildly. Actually, he’s pretty sure the team was working out of his office while he was gone, which is kind of nice, even if they have messed with his cataloguing system. It doesn’t seem right to tell Jack this.
Jack nods like he’s giving this serious thought. “Well, sorting it out can wait for tomorrow,” he says firmly. “Come on, get your coat.”
“I’ve got to get this report done,” Daniel says. He clicks save anyway, knowing how this is going to end. Years of practise have made him good at putting off the inevitable, but not at avoiding it entirely. “Landry will –“
“Landry told me to drag you out of here by the ear if necessary,” Jack interrupts. “Don’t think anyone would stop me if I tried it either.”
Daniel’s sure they wouldn’t. He’s pretty sure that, even after two years, Jack could lead a mutiny against Landry with a couple of words. “That sounds painful,” he says, pretending to consider, watching his computer run through the log-out procedures. “And also humiliating.”
Jack gives him another serious, considering nod. “Much easier just to come. We’ll go get dinner – I assume you don’t have anything in your fridge.”
Daniel’s sure this is true, and also that the prospect of dinner not from the mess would have worked for him even if he didn’t want to spend the evening with Jack. It’s always a shock to realize, when he sees him, just how much he still misses having Jack around.
“Fine,” he says, long-sufferingly, and grabs his jacket from the back of the door.
*
4. Cameron Mitchell is, as the Tau’ri movies say, a cuddler, or at least, this is what Teal’c surmises when he awakens to find him with his head on Teal’c’s shoulder, his arm around Teal’c’s waist. The day is really too warm to be so close, even this early, but Teal’c does not object. It is pleasant to be able to relax with another body against his, skin to skin.
Cameron Mitchell – Cameron now, no longer distanced by rank – wakes slowly, shifting against Teal’c and finally pushing himself up to look at Teal’c’s face. When he meets Teal’c’s eyes, his entire face lights up in a sweet smile which makes him look much younger. “Cool,” he says. “Thought I might have been dreaming. Again.”
“Indeed,” Teal’c says, hiding his pleasure behind a neutral tone of voice. Although it was Cameron Mitchell who kissed him the evening before, it is nice to know that he has been wanted for as long as he has wanted, when he still finds the Tau’ri so difficult to read.
“Indeed,” Cameron Mitchell repeats, grinning. He moves again, lying back against Teal’c and tilting his head to be kissed.
Teal’c is happy to oblige, even if it does mean that Cameron Mitchell is stopped by a police officer for speeding when they find themselves late for work.
*
5. Sam’s almost out of the mountain when she remembers that her car is parked outside Cam’s apartment block, after he agreed to look after it for her when she went to Atlantis. She hesitates, sighing. She could go back in and get a pool car, but she just wants to be away from the mountain now, to nurse her heartache somewhere Woolsey won’t find her. She could call a cab, but she’ll have to hang around the guard point and wait for it, and, again, she just wants to be home.
She’s still trying to decide when the elevator doors open and Cam and Vala tumble out.
“Carter,” Cam says. “Thought you might have gone already.”
Daniel and Teal’c follow the two of them more sedately, all of them in civvies.
“You need me for something?” she asks, resigned. If she has to hang around, there’s no four people she’d rather do it with.
“We do,” Vala says, sliding her arm through Sam’s and turning her towards the exit. “We’re kidnapping you.”
“Okay,” Sam says slowly.
Daniel smiles patiently. “We’re taking you for dinner, then to a bar.”
“To get you drunk,” Cam adds, which Sam thinks was pretty clearly implied.
“And then back to Colonel Mitchell’s,” Vala goes on. “Since he and muscles are already going there for the night.”
Cam puts one hand over his eyes and groans. “Didn’t we go over how you shouldn’t say stuff like that around here?” he asks.
Vala, unsurprisingly, ignores him, but Sam can’t help laughing. Though – Cam and Teal’c? They’ve been holding out on the gossip. “Where we intend to feed you popcorn and chocolate and other Earth delicacies until you’re too stuffed to eat another bite, at which point we shall paint each others’ toe nails and exchange gossip.”
“Girls night in,” Sam says, and Vala nods, looking pleased. “With these three?”
“They’re honorary girls for the night,” Vala says breezily.
“Just no discussing who’s hot around the base,” Cam puts in.
“We all know who you think is hot around the base,” Vala says, giving Teal’c a slow once-over. Teal’c just raises an eyebrow.
“Okay, it is definitely time to get this show on the road,” Cam says, putting a hand on Sam’s back and one on Vala’s and propelling them towards the exit. “Okay, baby?” he says quietly in Sam’s ear.
“Yeah,” she says, wondering how Cam intends to fit them all into his mustang, and realizes that, in that moment, surrounded by her friends, her family, she actually is.
4 ways Dave Sheppard didn't find out about the stargate, and 1 way he did (some John/Cam, ~1,300 words, spoilers up to 519 Vegas)
1. John thinks, after he finishes telling Colonel Sumner’s family how much they need him, about recording something to send to his brother and his dad. He actually records, “This is for Patrick and David Sheppard,” but when he takes a breath to go on, he can’t think of anything to say. He doesn’t have the words to explain away years of absence, to get past his father’s disapproval and his brother’s distance, and that’s before he thinks about trying to explain the stargate and Atlantis and how it feels to finally fit somewhere.
He’s interrupted by Elizabeth on his radio before he gets any further, and then he forgets about it. When he remembers, it’s too late, the files are about to be sent, and he figures it’s the universe’s way of telling him not to do it. Dave and his dad have managed perfectly well without him for years; what’s the point of getting in touch just to tell them that he’s probably dead?
*
2. Dave is not an idiot, and neither is he unobservant – you don’t get far running a Fortune 500 company by not seeing things. He may not have seen John for years, but even while he’s pissed at John for leaving, he can tell there’s more to John’s this is work-related than having to go back for a conference call. Not that he expects to ever find out. John’s always been secretive.
It’s a surprise when John comes back, though not, in the end, entirely unwelcome. Dad’s house feels strange without him, too empty, and John might not be Dave’s first choice for company, but there’s something about funerals that makes him want to be around family. It’s obvious that John’s in pain even before he turns down Dave’s offer of a drink with an awkward, “Painkillers.”
Dave knows better than to ask, so he can’t explain why he hears himself say, “The work-related thing?”
John looks up, mouth open like he’s about to speak, and it’s all there on his face: how big this is, whatever he’s doing, how huge a secret it is. How he wants, for that moment anyway, to actually tell Dave. It’s more than Dave ever expected from his brother, and he knows what it must cost John to let him see it. Almost as much as it would cost John to know that he broke the trust placed in him.
“Don’t,” Dave says softly. John looks at him for a long moment, then blinks, looks down, shaking his head. Dave sits down next to him on the couch, nudges his arm till John looks at him from the corner of damp, red eyes. “Thank you,” he adds.
*
3. Rodney’s not really sure what makes him look up John’s brother when they’re thrown out of Atlantis, after Ronon and Carter are killed trying to stop Michael. Maybe it’s that, with his team gone and Atlantis abandoned, John’s brother is the closest thing he has to John now. Maybe it’s wanting to know something about a part of his life that John never talked about. Maybe it’s just wanting something to distract him from everything he’s lost, even with Jennifer.
Dave Sheppard’s contact details are not difficult to find. A few clicks through the corporate website, a few minutes hacking their database – apparently Sheppard Utilities aren’t fluffy enough to have one of those ‘contact our CO’ links – and he’s got Sheppard’s email address looking at him from the to line of his gmail.
He leaves the subject line blank and starts typing: Dear Mr Sheppard, You don’t know me, but I was a close friend and colleague of your brother’s. We worked together for four years on a project with the United States Air Force, for a subdivision called Stargate Command, on a base called Atlantis, in the Pegasus Galaxy…
He doesn’t send the email, just leaves it open on his laptop when Jennifer comes home.
When he gets up the next morning, she’s closed down the window. Rodney logs back into his email client, checks the sent items and the drafts folder. The email’s gone, like he kind of knew it would be.
He doesn’t type it up again.
*
4. Exactly a year to the day after his father dies, Phyllis comes into Dave’s office and says, “There are two men from the Air Force wanting to see you. I tried to tell them they needed to make an appointment, but they said it was important.”
Men from the Air Force are just about the last thing Dave wants to deal with. He’s tempted to send them away, but he’s not sure they’d actually go, and he’s not having Sheppard Utilities on the front page for an argument between two Air Force officers and his security people. “Send them in, Phyllis, thanks.”
They turn out to be one man from the Air Force – “Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, sir,” – and one man connected to the Air Force – “Dr Rodney McKay.” Mitchell’s in his dress uniform and McKay is in a dark suit, and neither on them smiles as they sit down.
“Your brother is John Sheppard,” McKay says, not really a question. Dave nods, looks at Mitchell, whose face isn’t quite as locked down as McKay’s and thinks, No, please, not today, like hearing what they’re about to say would be any better in a week, or a couple of months.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Sheppard,” Mitchell says, soft southern voice that reminds Dave of his mom. “But your brother was killed two days ago.”
“He’s not even in the Air Force any more,” Dave says stupidly. “He’s a detective.”
“He was working with us,” Mitchell says. “You should know that he died doing something important, that he saved a lot of lives.”
Dave nods, not sure if he believes Mitchell or not. He hasn’t spoken to John since well before Dad’s funeral, other than to leave an angry voicemail asking what the fuck John had been doing instead of coming to the wake. Even so, he knows that John fucked up badly when he was in the Air Force, hasn’t done much better as a cop. But the Air Force wouldn’t want him back if they didn’t really need him, so maybe it is true. “Can I have his body?” he asks.
McKay and Mitchell talk him through getting John’s body back from them, offer their condolences again, and leave. It’s only when Phyllis is showing them out of the building that Dave realizes he never asked exactly what John was doing.
*
And one way he did:
“Hey,” Cam says, leaning close as he and John wait for the SGC’s publicity officer to finish talking them up to the gathered press. “What did your brother say when you told him what you’ve been doing for the last six years?”
John turns round, close enough that his hand brushed against Cam’s, making him grin until he catches the guilty look on John’s face. “You didn’t call him?” he demands. “You said you’d do it last night!”
“Yeah, well, you distracted me,” John points out, which, okay, it was Cam who started things, but it was John who passed out afterwards and nearly made them late by forgetting to set the alarm.
“I can’t believe you forgot to tell your own brother,” he says, though, really, this is John and his family. It’s the least surprising thing he’s heard in months.
The airman on the door leans in and says, “Colonels, they’re about ready for you.”
John steps away from Cam, straightens his dress uniform jacket. “Pretty sure he’s going to find out now,” he says, and follows the airman out to the conference room to stand with O’Neill and Landry while they tell the world about the stargate program.
5 times General Landry almost quit because he just couldn’t handle these people any more (~1200 words)
1. He’s had tough commands, and weird commands, and he expected the SGC to come with copious amounts of both. He’s heard about Ancient devices, people coming back from the dead, people getting cloned, getting de-aged, meeting their doubles, getting stuck in time loops. He figured he was, if not prepared for anything, at least ready for the prospect of anything.
Then he looked back on his first week in command, in which various combinations of two members of the SGC’s premier team, the new guy, and an alien in leather: fought a holographic knight underground, made a race of powerful beings aware of Earth’s existence, came back to life after being burned alive, and then lead a scavenger hunt across the galaxy.
Suddenly, even ‘ready for the prospect of anything’ seemed like a wildly over-optimistic outlook.
*
2. SG-8 is known primarily for being the sane, normal, work-horse team. They may not be flashy, they may not stage daring rescues or bring home exciting toys, but they do the job and their missions never end with Hank having to explain away anything weird to the IOA.
Which is why he’s not especially pleased to be called down to the gate-room and find it filled with small, purple, fuzzy animals. He’s even less pleased to discover that their spit – and oh, do they spit – is an aphrodisiac. Actually, he could even deal with that, except that he has a gate-room full of guards who are now half-naked and frolicking amongst the small, fuzzy, purple animals. And SG-8.
When SG-8, previous most notable mission the time one of them was bitten by an iguana, is involved in alien animal derived sex acts, it’s definitely time to start thinking about retirement.
*
3. Hank has mixed feelings about Atlantis – the city, the existence of the expedition, the people who are out there. But they’re in a whole other galaxy, and content to be a law unto themselves, and he’s got enough to deal with with his own people, so he mostly doesn’t think about them too much.
Until they’re all pouring back into his gate-room, loaded down with bags, looking bewildered, some of them in tears, and probably tracking in muddy footprints to boot, all within 48 hours of someone mentioning they were coming. And they’ll need jobs, and somewhere to live, and chance to sort out all their stuff from the Daedalus, and, sure, they usually get glowing evaluations, but Hank does not need 200 people in his base, however brilliant or genetically enhanced they might be.
Not that he couldn’t handle them of course; it’s what he’s paid for, even if he doesn’t have a lot of marines. But in the two minutes it takes him to get down to the gate-room, Sheppard and Lorne are up on the ramp, directing traffic and giving orders, and people are going, even the scientists. Hank’s never been able to get a scientist to follow orders, not even the ones who are military geeks.
He doesn’t think about quitting – he’s still Sheppard’s superior, whatever anyone else might like to think – but he does think, for a second, that he’s glad he’s the one with the power to send them away.
*
4. Hank’s used to the idea that gossip gets around a base almost before the event being gossiped about has happened, it’s the nature of life in a small community, and made worse by being in a small, classified community. He’d prefer it not be about him and his daughter and how they’ve mostly patched up their difference since he nearly died from the prior plague, but there it is, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Within a month, though, he’s heard four different airmen and five different scientists (one of them a woman) wonder about the ethics of asking out Carolyn, as she’s his daughter. He’s also witnessed two different people (one of them, again, a woman) actually ask her out (and seen his daughter accept the woman’s offer, which is something he hadn’t known about her, and is still trying to pretend he doesn’t know while he waits for her to tell him). He’s also heard about one young airman try to follow her into the showers, but that was an official report, made by a very pissed off Colonel Mitchell when he caught the man, which was swiftly followed by the airman getting reassigned to guard the weapons chair in Antarctica.
He hasn’t ever spent this much time worrying about his daughter’s love life, for all that he knows she can take care of herself. That’s not what’s bothering him, though; what’s bothering him is that, every time he hears one of his people wonder if Carolyn would go for it, he wants to haul the person into his office and tell them to stay the hell away from his child, they’re not good enough for her.
He doesn’t think it’s a bad sign that he thinks no-one’s good enough for Carolyn; he’s less sure it’s not a bad sign that he doesn’t think these specific people are good enough for her, not when they’re supposed to be the best and the brightest, and it’s a worry that drives him to seriously consider whether he wouldn’t be better elsewhere.
*
5. SG1 defeat the Ori, the Tok’ra de-snake Ba’al and Atlantis drops in to defeat the Wraith, and life is quiet for, oh, a good two weeks. Then SG-3 stumble upon a race called the Noones, who were exiled from their planet centuries ago by the Tok’ra, who someone accidentally lets slip work with the Tau’ri sometimes, and they’re right back in the middle of a galactic war all over again.
The only person surprised when Hank has a heart attack in the gate room is Hank himself.
He ends up taking a month out on medical leave, leaving Carter, Mitchell and Davies in a kind of triumvirate charge, since all three of them have other duties which can’t be abandoned.
Everyone’s welcoming and happy to see him when he finally goes back. The three of them debrief him about everything (including the defeat of the Noones via Jackson and Teal’c persuading them into a treaty of non-aggression) in mind-numbing detail, and Carter and Davies leave to go back to what they should be doing.
It takes him a week to realize why his workload seems so much lighter than it did before, when he finds Mitchell, Jackson and Teal’c leading the newly formed SG-25 through a pre-mission briefing, Vala sitting with SG-25 because she is, apparently, going along as a kind of mentor. Mitchell starts guiltily when Hank walks in, but the rest of them just look at him, defiant beneath expressions forced into blankness.
“If you want to take over…” Mitchell says hesitantly, and Hank takes a good look at the people lined up behind him.
“No, carry on,” he says, walking out, and goes back to his office to look again at the retirement paperwork. Because he might not be able to call it mutiny, really, but he can sure as hell see that something shifted while he was gone, and he’s not at all convinced he can shift it back again.
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