.fic: The Exclusion Principle - McKay/Sheppard (PG/PG13) 1.1
Title: The Exclusion Principle
By: HF (with wallpaper by lazure)
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard; referenced Sheppard/Weir
Rating/Warnings: PG/PG13ish
Disclaimers: So not mine.
Advertisements: for artword challenge 003A, using "Bliss," by Tori Amos. Crossposted at artword here, and check out lazure's groovy wallpaper for the fic here.
Notes: Many thanks to lilithien for the beta! This may become part of a larger project, assuming I can get it together.
THE EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE
Rodney can see his reflection through the puddle jumper’s heads-up display, hands stutter-stepping over the controls. Both he and his reflection are tangled in circuitry, only, Rodney thinks, his reflection doesn’t have to inhale air thick with burned plastic and the strange metallic scent of John’s blood.
The HUD flickers out; Rodney prays silently as he taps out commands (Please please please turn back on), breathes a sigh of relief (there is a God) when the display rematerializes. Not that it says anything he doesn’t know already: they’re in space, engines shot and all power diverted to life support, a scrap of metal fading into a dying orbit around the planet beneath them.
He also doesn’t need the HUD to tell him that John is still unconscious, strapped into the other pilot’s seat, where Rodney can keep an eye on him.
It does tell him, though, that he has twenty-one minutes until the atmosphere incinerates them as they fall through it.
The hell of it is, Rodney thinks, that even if he gets the engines back online, they’ll probably die anyway. He can barely fly in a straight line, much less perform the bit of Sheppardian wizardry they’ll need to pull the puddle jumper out of freefall.
He glares at the charred control panel, circuits hanging like guts out of it.
“You’re not supposed to die, you know,” he tells John crossly as he bends over the tangle of wires. “That’s not how it works.” Or not how it’s supposed to work, anyway. “I’m supposed to fix the ship, and you’re supposed to fly us out of here.”
John doesn’t say anything, but Rodney’s not really surprised. Bad head wound and concussion, so far as Rodney’s limited knowledge of witch-doctoring tells him, courtesy of a hostile native with a projectile weapon.
“And aren’t you supposed to... to come up with some kind of smart remark right about now? You know, to diffuse the tension?” Rodney jams a control crystal back into place, not really caring that he should probably be more careful with already-damaged technology. “Smart remark, any time now. Or you can say something about how I’m supposed to save us, because you know I can’t work without pressure, Sheppard.”
John still doesn’t say anything. It’s starting... well, it’s starting to get annoying. And frightening.
“Well, okay then,” Rodney says. Try some new connections, Circuit A into Plug X, pray it doesn’t blow up in your face. It doesn’t; reassuring beep means something’s come back online. “Maybe Ronon and Teyla will come. Yeah, that’s it - they’ll come at the last possible minute and save the day. I’m sure Elizabeth will send them when she realizes we didn’t show up,” he checks his watch, “two hours ago.”
Mentioning Elizabeth probably isn’t a good idea. They’re about to die, for God’s sake, and the last thing Rodney wants to have on his mind is John and Elizabeth.
Because for a time he’d thought JohnandRodney was like E = mc2, natural and inevitable. But the problem with that is Rodney trusts equations, not the people who do things with them, and somewhere in the tangle of the two of them, himself and John, he’d miscalculated. His fault, and he’s got... thirteen minutes to accept that and move on.
It’s not right, though, on very many levels, but physics doesn’t care that Rodney’s never going to be able to tell John exactly what he thinks about the whole mess.
Furthermore, Rodney and John aren’t supposed to die, because the hot military pilot guy and the hot Canadian scientist guy can’t die. They’re the ones who save the day. It’s some nameless guy, back row, third from the left who dies, because Rodney and John carry the show. Kill them and you might as well cancel it.
Physics doesn’t care about Rodney’s Star Trek philosophy, and time doesn’t, either. Quick calculations: Here’s how much energy the engines need to boost the ship up and out of the planet’s gravity well. Here’s how much energy the engines can tolerate. Here’s how much energy they need to keep for life support, so Rodney doesn’t end up exchanging death by incineration for death by suffocation and hypothermia.
He wonders, in the midst of all these calculations, how it was that John had moved into him. Because that was what he’d done, taken up residence in some dark corner of Rodney’s brain and even though he’d moved on, he’s still in there, weirdly bilocated, present and absent all at once. It occurs to Rodney that he’s thinking about all of this - their imminent death, his last-ditch attempt to avoid said imminent death - in terms of RodneyandJohn, and that aggravates him.
Don’t think about it. If you’re thinking about something other than saving your life, you obviously don’t have enough to do.
Okay. Divert the tiniest trickle of power from life support to the engines. Tiny because you don’t want to die from oxygen deprivation, and because you don’t want the engines - already pretty much shredded - to blow up. A little more, once the fluctuations have steadied a bit.
The puddle jumper shudders. Rodney’s heart echoes its pained ker-thump in miniature.
John moans, head lolling, tilting forward at an awkward angle. Either help him or keep an eye on the power flow to make sure they’re not going to be blown to hell, and it’s really no choice. Rodney jumps up - well, lifts himself awkwardly - and is there, carefully tilting John’s head up and back, staying away from the dried blood and the awkward bandage Rodney’s wrapped around it. Doesn’t look like the wound’s opened up again, which Rodney supposes is a good thing.
“Don’t do that again, okay?” Rodney’s voice is... wow, his voice is really loud and obnoxious. And he doesn’t know if he’s talking to John or the puddle jumper.
“I’ll try not to.”
Rodney’s not sure if the sound he makes is a curse or a squawk. It sounds like both, and the look on John’s face falls somewhere between pain and humor.
“Where are we?”
“In a very bad place.” Rodney moves back to his tangle of circuits and his control board. Engines still barely functional but not about to explode, and oh God, they just might get out of this.
Silence answers him.
“Did you or did you not hear me when I told you you’re not supposed to die?”
“Heard,” John says eventually, eyes - squinting painfully, mere slivers of grey-green under heavy lids - slanting over to him. “I’m... I’m working on that. The not dying, I mean.”
“Oh. Good.” Rodney makes himself refocus on the readouts, feeding a bit more power into the engines. Tells himself his breath is getting short only because he’s trying to control his terror enough to concentrate, and the weird buzzing sensation in his head has nothing to do with the fact that life support is starting to go.
The engines have as much power as he can give them. Now, with six minutes left, comes the hard part.
“I don’t suppose you could work on flying this thing out of here?” Rodney asks.
“Probably not.” John tries to sit up and a sharp gasp of pain checks the motion.
“Okay.” Rodney stares at the controls. “We still have six minutes. We can do this.”
“I hope so.” John is looking at him, Rodney can tell. He always knows when John is looking at him, even when he can’t see. “Is the navigation - ”
“It’s okay.” Miraculously.
“Can’t read the HUD,” John says quietly. And of course he can’t, with his eyes nearly swollen shut. Rodney reads off the figures to him, trying not to stammer.
“And, um, it’s five minutes,” he concludes.
John’s eyes fall shut, and for a second Rodney thinks he’s in denial.
No, it’s John sliding into unconsciousness again.
He’s out of the other pilot’s chair before he even knows it, tripping over circuitry, tangled in it, not caring, saying John’s name over and over again, first name, last name, full title, give me name, rank, and serial number and for God’s sake don’t do this, don’t don’t don’t, just wake up, okay?
“Awake.” John doesn’t really sound awake at all, but it’s something. And it hurts to watch him struggle back to consciousness, because John hurts, brow furrowed in pain as he tries to think, and Rodney’s not prepared for how much the sight affects him, that sort of average human vulnerability he’s never really associated with John. “Okay. Here’s - here’s what you need to do.”
Rodney’s hands are awkward, splayed over the controls, nothing like John’s at all. John’s hands, which are quick and clever and good at everything.
The entire puddle jumper shivers like it’s about to break apart, and over the metallic whine Rodney can hear the engines straining, can practically see fractures forming in the casings. Sharp drop of his stomach - inertial dampers going offline, unpleasant weightlessness that makes him sick, lightheaded - and it’s almost enough to make him cut power.
But John’s watching him, Rodney knows, even though his own eyes are riveted to the HUD that tells him structural integrity is failing, that he’s an idiot for spitting in Newton’s face. He risks a glance at John, sees sweat on John’s face, the thin line of pain in his forehead.
Five more seconds of this, and he thinks it might be working, the HUD telling him they’re creeping away from the planet’s grip, John’s voice low and harsh, yet strangely calming, guiding him through the last bit, the hardest, forcing the engines to overload for one last push. The engines are going to shut down automatically - he can override the command if he has to, but he really doesn’t want to - in three, two -
He can almost feel it, the moment the ship shakes itself from freefall. Or maybe it’s his own sigh of relief, sudden absence of pressure. They’re still in trouble, because life support has dropped dangerously - sixty percent of normal levels - but they’re alive. Barely on the right side of being alive, and he needs to keep John there with him as long as possible.
There’s no real way to make John comfortable in the pilot’s chair, but there’s blankets stowed away and some water and a first-aid kit with bandages. Rodney hunches over John with the canteen, watches as he takes a couple sips.
“You okay?” he asks.
John’s expression is eloquent.
“Well, of course not.” Rodney carefully unwinds the bandage from John’s head, wincing in sympathetic pain as it peels away from the wound, organic ripping sound of dried blood pulled away from flesh. He wonders if he should disinfect it, or if that would start it bleeding again. Errs on the side of caution and presses a fresh pad of gauze to John’s temple, tapes it in place with hands he realizes are shaking.
“You okay?” John asks.
“Not really,” Rodney admits. He makes sure the bandage isn’t going to fall off before he retreats to his own chair, and tries not to think about what it’s like, feeling the weight of John’s gaze upon him.
-end-
Post-fic notes: According to Timothy Ferris's interpretation of things much too complicated for me to understand (in the outdated but still wonderful Coming of Age in the Milky Way), Pauli's exclusion principle "establishes that no two fermions can occupy a given quantum state at the same time." The principle relates more broadly to the fic-in-waiting that might come out of this.
By: HF (with wallpaper by lazure)
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard; referenced Sheppard/Weir
Rating/Warnings: PG/PG13ish
Disclaimers: So not mine.
Advertisements: for artword challenge 003A, using "Bliss," by Tori Amos. Crossposted at artword here, and check out lazure's groovy wallpaper for the fic here.
Notes: Many thanks to lilithien for the beta! This may become part of a larger project, assuming I can get it together.
THE EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE
Rodney can see his reflection through the puddle jumper’s heads-up display, hands stutter-stepping over the controls. Both he and his reflection are tangled in circuitry, only, Rodney thinks, his reflection doesn’t have to inhale air thick with burned plastic and the strange metallic scent of John’s blood.
The HUD flickers out; Rodney prays silently as he taps out commands (Please please please turn back on), breathes a sigh of relief (there is a God) when the display rematerializes. Not that it says anything he doesn’t know already: they’re in space, engines shot and all power diverted to life support, a scrap of metal fading into a dying orbit around the planet beneath them.
He also doesn’t need the HUD to tell him that John is still unconscious, strapped into the other pilot’s seat, where Rodney can keep an eye on him.
It does tell him, though, that he has twenty-one minutes until the atmosphere incinerates them as they fall through it.
The hell of it is, Rodney thinks, that even if he gets the engines back online, they’ll probably die anyway. He can barely fly in a straight line, much less perform the bit of Sheppardian wizardry they’ll need to pull the puddle jumper out of freefall.
He glares at the charred control panel, circuits hanging like guts out of it.
“You’re not supposed to die, you know,” he tells John crossly as he bends over the tangle of wires. “That’s not how it works.” Or not how it’s supposed to work, anyway. “I’m supposed to fix the ship, and you’re supposed to fly us out of here.”
John doesn’t say anything, but Rodney’s not really surprised. Bad head wound and concussion, so far as Rodney’s limited knowledge of witch-doctoring tells him, courtesy of a hostile native with a projectile weapon.
“And aren’t you supposed to... to come up with some kind of smart remark right about now? You know, to diffuse the tension?” Rodney jams a control crystal back into place, not really caring that he should probably be more careful with already-damaged technology. “Smart remark, any time now. Or you can say something about how I’m supposed to save us, because you know I can’t work without pressure, Sheppard.”
John still doesn’t say anything. It’s starting... well, it’s starting to get annoying. And frightening.
“Well, okay then,” Rodney says. Try some new connections, Circuit A into Plug X, pray it doesn’t blow up in your face. It doesn’t; reassuring beep means something’s come back online. “Maybe Ronon and Teyla will come. Yeah, that’s it - they’ll come at the last possible minute and save the day. I’m sure Elizabeth will send them when she realizes we didn’t show up,” he checks his watch, “two hours ago.”
Mentioning Elizabeth probably isn’t a good idea. They’re about to die, for God’s sake, and the last thing Rodney wants to have on his mind is John and Elizabeth.
Because for a time he’d thought JohnandRodney was like E = mc2, natural and inevitable. But the problem with that is Rodney trusts equations, not the people who do things with them, and somewhere in the tangle of the two of them, himself and John, he’d miscalculated. His fault, and he’s got... thirteen minutes to accept that and move on.
It’s not right, though, on very many levels, but physics doesn’t care that Rodney’s never going to be able to tell John exactly what he thinks about the whole mess.
Furthermore, Rodney and John aren’t supposed to die, because the hot military pilot guy and the hot Canadian scientist guy can’t die. They’re the ones who save the day. It’s some nameless guy, back row, third from the left who dies, because Rodney and John carry the show. Kill them and you might as well cancel it.
Physics doesn’t care about Rodney’s Star Trek philosophy, and time doesn’t, either. Quick calculations: Here’s how much energy the engines need to boost the ship up and out of the planet’s gravity well. Here’s how much energy the engines can tolerate. Here’s how much energy they need to keep for life support, so Rodney doesn’t end up exchanging death by incineration for death by suffocation and hypothermia.
He wonders, in the midst of all these calculations, how it was that John had moved into him. Because that was what he’d done, taken up residence in some dark corner of Rodney’s brain and even though he’d moved on, he’s still in there, weirdly bilocated, present and absent all at once. It occurs to Rodney that he’s thinking about all of this - their imminent death, his last-ditch attempt to avoid said imminent death - in terms of RodneyandJohn, and that aggravates him.
Don’t think about it. If you’re thinking about something other than saving your life, you obviously don’t have enough to do.
Okay. Divert the tiniest trickle of power from life support to the engines. Tiny because you don’t want to die from oxygen deprivation, and because you don’t want the engines - already pretty much shredded - to blow up. A little more, once the fluctuations have steadied a bit.
The puddle jumper shudders. Rodney’s heart echoes its pained ker-thump in miniature.
John moans, head lolling, tilting forward at an awkward angle. Either help him or keep an eye on the power flow to make sure they’re not going to be blown to hell, and it’s really no choice. Rodney jumps up - well, lifts himself awkwardly - and is there, carefully tilting John’s head up and back, staying away from the dried blood and the awkward bandage Rodney’s wrapped around it. Doesn’t look like the wound’s opened up again, which Rodney supposes is a good thing.
“Don’t do that again, okay?” Rodney’s voice is... wow, his voice is really loud and obnoxious. And he doesn’t know if he’s talking to John or the puddle jumper.
“I’ll try not to.”
Rodney’s not sure if the sound he makes is a curse or a squawk. It sounds like both, and the look on John’s face falls somewhere between pain and humor.
“Where are we?”
“In a very bad place.” Rodney moves back to his tangle of circuits and his control board. Engines still barely functional but not about to explode, and oh God, they just might get out of this.
Silence answers him.
“Did you or did you not hear me when I told you you’re not supposed to die?”
“Heard,” John says eventually, eyes - squinting painfully, mere slivers of grey-green under heavy lids - slanting over to him. “I’m... I’m working on that. The not dying, I mean.”
“Oh. Good.” Rodney makes himself refocus on the readouts, feeding a bit more power into the engines. Tells himself his breath is getting short only because he’s trying to control his terror enough to concentrate, and the weird buzzing sensation in his head has nothing to do with the fact that life support is starting to go.
The engines have as much power as he can give them. Now, with six minutes left, comes the hard part.
“I don’t suppose you could work on flying this thing out of here?” Rodney asks.
“Probably not.” John tries to sit up and a sharp gasp of pain checks the motion.
“Okay.” Rodney stares at the controls. “We still have six minutes. We can do this.”
“I hope so.” John is looking at him, Rodney can tell. He always knows when John is looking at him, even when he can’t see. “Is the navigation - ”
“It’s okay.” Miraculously.
“Can’t read the HUD,” John says quietly. And of course he can’t, with his eyes nearly swollen shut. Rodney reads off the figures to him, trying not to stammer.
“And, um, it’s five minutes,” he concludes.
John’s eyes fall shut, and for a second Rodney thinks he’s in denial.
No, it’s John sliding into unconsciousness again.
He’s out of the other pilot’s chair before he even knows it, tripping over circuitry, tangled in it, not caring, saying John’s name over and over again, first name, last name, full title, give me name, rank, and serial number and for God’s sake don’t do this, don’t don’t don’t, just wake up, okay?
“Awake.” John doesn’t really sound awake at all, but it’s something. And it hurts to watch him struggle back to consciousness, because John hurts, brow furrowed in pain as he tries to think, and Rodney’s not prepared for how much the sight affects him, that sort of average human vulnerability he’s never really associated with John. “Okay. Here’s - here’s what you need to do.”
Rodney’s hands are awkward, splayed over the controls, nothing like John’s at all. John’s hands, which are quick and clever and good at everything.
The entire puddle jumper shivers like it’s about to break apart, and over the metallic whine Rodney can hear the engines straining, can practically see fractures forming in the casings. Sharp drop of his stomach - inertial dampers going offline, unpleasant weightlessness that makes him sick, lightheaded - and it’s almost enough to make him cut power.
But John’s watching him, Rodney knows, even though his own eyes are riveted to the HUD that tells him structural integrity is failing, that he’s an idiot for spitting in Newton’s face. He risks a glance at John, sees sweat on John’s face, the thin line of pain in his forehead.
Five more seconds of this, and he thinks it might be working, the HUD telling him they’re creeping away from the planet’s grip, John’s voice low and harsh, yet strangely calming, guiding him through the last bit, the hardest, forcing the engines to overload for one last push. The engines are going to shut down automatically - he can override the command if he has to, but he really doesn’t want to - in three, two -
He can almost feel it, the moment the ship shakes itself from freefall. Or maybe it’s his own sigh of relief, sudden absence of pressure. They’re still in trouble, because life support has dropped dangerously - sixty percent of normal levels - but they’re alive. Barely on the right side of being alive, and he needs to keep John there with him as long as possible.
There’s no real way to make John comfortable in the pilot’s chair, but there’s blankets stowed away and some water and a first-aid kit with bandages. Rodney hunches over John with the canteen, watches as he takes a couple sips.
“You okay?” he asks.
John’s expression is eloquent.
“Well, of course not.” Rodney carefully unwinds the bandage from John’s head, wincing in sympathetic pain as it peels away from the wound, organic ripping sound of dried blood pulled away from flesh. He wonders if he should disinfect it, or if that would start it bleeding again. Errs on the side of caution and presses a fresh pad of gauze to John’s temple, tapes it in place with hands he realizes are shaking.
“You okay?” John asks.
“Not really,” Rodney admits. He makes sure the bandage isn’t going to fall off before he retreats to his own chair, and tries not to think about what it’s like, feeling the weight of John’s gaze upon him.
-end-
Post-fic notes: According to Timothy Ferris's interpretation of things much too complicated for me to understand (in the outdated but still wonderful Coming of Age in the Milky Way), Pauli's exclusion principle "establishes that no two fermions can occupy a given quantum state at the same time." The principle relates more broadly to the fic-in-waiting that might come out of this.