[Fic] Flight by Vega
Title: Flight
Author: Vega
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Pairing: None
Genre: Humour
Notes Based on the fic “Photographs” by As the Black Rose Wilts, and sequel to my own “Photo Collage”
Spoilers: Up to and including “The Intruder”, 2x02, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”, and all of “Smallville”.
Disclaimers: “Stargate: Atlantis” and all identifiable characters and concepts are property of MGM Studios. “Harry Potter” and all identifiable characters and concepts are property of J.K. Rowling. “Smallville” and all identifiable characters and concepts are property of DC Comics and Warner Brothers.
***
Getting a budget from the SGC to go buy Wizarding supplies had been easier than Rodney had expected. General Landry had pointed at the pendant around his neck and said, “If I give you this money, you can make one of those for SG-1 for me?”
Rodney had nodded. “Yes! And protection charms, and these lovely clocks that have, instead of hours, you know, ‘mortal peril’ or ‘coming home late from school.’ ”
“What about wands?” Landry asked.
Rodney fidgeted, touching the top of his own wand with spry, blunt fingers. Sheppard had laughed at the blue velvet drawstring bag Rodney had been tying to his belt loops, and rigged up a sort of hip holster with bits of cannibalized tac vests and belts. Rodney was actually kind of touched.
“Wands are harder,” Rodney admitted. “Muggles can’t use them. Erm, non-Wizarding folk. You have to have magic to make them work.”
“Like the ATA gene.”
“Merlin’s shorts!” Rodney swore, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Magic is vastly different from the ATA gene, General, it’s not just some simple matter of thinking ‘on’ at a wand, you have to know the incantations and the proper gestures, and a lot of the time you have to actually know the physics, the arithmancy behind what you’re doing or you’ll turn a beetle into a box instead of a button, and--”
“So that’s a no, then?”
Rodney swallowed his scathing retort and said, “No.”
So Landry wrote Rodney a cheque with a few more zeros than Rodney had anticipated, and told him that he had to be back with all his supplies in three days or the Daedalus was going back to Atlantis without him.
***
John Sheppard had incredulity on his face, which Rodney thought was perhaps a little rude considering that he was an alien and he had never told Rodney. Rodney reached out and tapped at the bricks on the wall of the alleyway behind The Leaky Cauldron.
The Daedalus had been good enough to transport them both into a blind alley in Muggle London, because Rodney couldn’t do a two-person Apparation, and Sheppard refused to fly them, despite all of Rodney’s wheedling.
“I’m not comfortable in it, Rodney,” he said. “What if I fall out of the sky? What if I drop you into the Atlantic by mistake? Besides, I’m not fast, yet, not really. No match for a Puddlejumper.”
So they had transported.
Walking into the Leaky Cauldron after being a Muggle for so long had been a bit of a thrill to Rodney. A giant was at the bar, or half-giant, probably, because he was too small. There was a hag in the corner, and an elf in the other, refusing to mingle. A warlock in mothbally robes, a few young fops in ‘Weird Sisters’ tees trying desperately to grow fuzz on their upper lips, and everywhere, magic.
Someone was talking to a loved one whose head was in the fire, and the barkeep was pouring out butterbeers (“Oh,” Rodney said, licking his lips, “Butterbeer.” “No drinking on the job,” Sheppard had said. Rodney pouted artfully. “But it’s been so long.” “No.” ) and floating them to the patrons with a flick of his wand.
They had walked through the tavern to the alley outside, and now Sheppard was looking askance at him. Instead of answering, Rodney kept tapping the stones with his wand until the whole wall folded itself away like a rubiks cube. The askance melted into wonder and Rodney felt suitably smug.
“Look it all of them,” Sheppard breathed. “What are they wearing? Dresses?”
“Robes,” Rodney sniffed. “And you’re the one who’s dressed funny, Maj-Colonel. Trousers and a short jacket. Won’t do. Indecent, even.”
“I’m sorry, Rodney, I left my housecoat on Atlantis,” Sheppard hissed.
“We’ll get something from a robes shop,” Rodney said. He pointed at a green and gold gilt sign up the alley. “Madam Malkins.”
“I’m not wearing a dress, Rodney.”
“Well you can’t walk around looking like a Muggle, either. Just an outer robe. C’mon, when in Rome and all that. You do it offworld.”
Sheppard scowled, but nodded his understanding.
The pushed their way slowly through the crowd of Witches doing their weekday shopping, kids running around, getting behind barrels of potions ingredients (“Oh, my God, is that actually eye of newt?”), and elderly Wizards making their way to the pub for a pint and a fry-up lunch.
Outside of Flourish and Blotts, a kid who couldn’t be older than five tugged on Sheppard’s pants and looked up with wide eyes and said, “Are you a Muggle, mister? Cause Ruby--” here she pointed at someone standing under an umbrella of a café opposite, who looked like an older sister, “Ruby says that you’re a Muggle cause of your clothes, only he’s gots a wand, and you have no wand, unless it’s in your shirt, is your wand in your shirt and are you a Muggle mister?”
Sheppard’s face near cracked in two, his grin was so huge. “No,” he said. “I’m a Kryptonian.”
The girl’s eyes got huge and she ran back to her sister screaming, “He’s a Kyptominan man!”
Rodney folded his arms and snorted. “You’ll tell a little Witch but you won’t tell your best friend.”
Sheppard rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you go back to being mad at me for trying to blow myself up with a nuke? I liked that one better.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Sheppard gestured expansively around him. “You didn’t tell me, either.”
They glared at each other for a long moment, then sighed at the same time.
“This is dumb,” Sheppard said.
Rodney nodded. “Want a fizzing whizzbee?”
“A whosis whatsis?”
Rodney popped into a candy shop, and came out with a small bag of sweets. “I had a few sickles in the bottom of my wand bag. Here, try these ones, they floss your teeth for you.”
“Cool.”
They walked and ate and generally took in the atmosphere of the busy market. Rodney bustled past Madam Malkins, and Sheppard grabbed his shirt sleeve and said, “Rodney, stop, it’s here.”
Rodney laughed. “What, you think they’ll take American dollars? No, no, Colonel. We have to go get our money exchanged first.” He pointed to the leaning, wobbly Grecian style building dominating the far end of Daigon Ally.
“Gringotts,” Sheppard read out loud.
“Yes. And try not to stare at the Goblins. They hate it when you do that.”
Sheppard flashed a smile. “As long as they wear pants. Hermiod creeps me out. I’m not looking forward to weeks on the ship with him.”
***
Several long hours of shouting at incompetent bank clerks, and juggling little sacks of gold coins (“No, seriously, real gold? I feel like a pirate.” Sheppard staid, staring at the Galleon in his palm), and trying to find pockets for all of it, Rodney led Sheppard down the stairs and back towards Madam Malkin’s.
“Now, it’s twenty nine Sickles to the Galleon and thirty four Knuts to the Sickle,” Rodney explained patiently. “The exchange rate is about five pounds to the Galleon, which is around ten American dollars.”
Sheppard blinked and shook his head.
“Oh, c’mon Math Wiz,” Rodney chided, can’t you keep it straight?”
Sheppard grinned cockily as he opened the door to the robes shop. “The math is no problem,” he said, “I was just imagining trying to have a pocketful of nine hundred and eighty-six knuts.”
“Why on earth would you carry around nine-hundred and eighty-six knuts?” Rodney scoffed.
“I always keep a tenner in my pocket,” Sheppard said.
***
Madam Malkin was an accommodating old Witch with a bright smile. Rodney choose robes in a sort of regal sapphire which she adjusted for the breadth of his shoulders on the spot. Sheppard was smacked over the back of the hand for trying to go for black.
“Not your colour, dearie,” she said. “That’ll make you look like one of You-Know-Who’s, you know, this Emerald would be far more suited. Here, here, don’t fuss, try this on, and, dear me, step over to this stool here, aren’t you the tall one now? Your accent - American, yes? And which school did you go to dearie? Well, I can see that your friend went to Beaux Batons by his wand, now, but you son, where’s your wand, and did you go to Eaglehead or Petite Emaraude?”
Sheppard was all too happy to escape the seamstress as soon as his hems were charmed up and Rodney spilled out of the robe shop after him, laughing.
Sheppard stood on the street scowling. “That was terrifying. She was like... like Carson only she never stopped. Rodney, I don’t think she breathed.”
“Possibly a charm,” Rodney conceded, his blue eyes made brighter by the sapphire of his robe. He flicked up the collar in a fashion that Sheppard pointed out was very nineteen-seventies, and Rodney, realizing it had been that long since he had worn a robe, smoothed it back down.
Sheppard fingered the embroidered sleeve of his own robe and smiled softly. “Thanks,” he said.
“For what?” Rodney snorted.
“For the robe. For the... this,” he made the same spread handed gesture as earlier to indicate the world around them, but this time there was no anger in it. “For sharing this with me.”
Rodney shifted from foot to foot and looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, you’re my best friend, so shut up. Who else was I going to take?” He grabbed the elbow of Sheppard’s sleeve. “C’mon, let’s go look at racing brooms.”
Sheppard’s face crinkled into a grin and he kept pace. “Racing brooms? You mean Witches and Wizards really fly around on brooms?”
“Oh, Quidditch,” Rodney said. “I’ll get you a book, the ones with the moving pictures. I always wanted to play. I was the right size to play a Beater, but I have bad aim. Oh, you’ll like it Colonel. Way better than your crappy American football. ”
“Hey!” Sheppard protested, but then they were standing in front of the display case of a place called Quality Quidditch Supplies, elbowing away a bunch of kids leaving greasy fingerprints and snot-trails on the glass.
“Oh my god, what is that?”
“Wotcher!” said one of the kids he had knocked in the head. “You don’t know?”
Rodney shook his head, pressing his own palms against the glass and staring at the broom displayed inside as if it were a ZedPM. “The broom I had was a CleanSweep Five.”
All around them, the kids chortled and Rodney looked annoyed.
“Thasa Firebolt Mark Two!” the kid beside Rodney said, in the same sort of tone that Rodney always reserved for the likes of Kavanaugh. Sheppard laughed at Rodney’s indignation, and Rodney scowled deeper. “It’s only the best racing broom ever,” the kid said. “The Irish team had them for World Cup.”
“Ireland was in the World Cup and I missed it?” Rodney wailed.
The kid stared at Rodney as if he had an extra head growing on his shoulder. “Yeah. Two years ago. Doi.”
Another kid grabbed Sheppard’s sleeve and said, “That’s the same kind of broom that Harry Potter rides.”
Sheppard crouched to be eye level with the little boy. “Yeah? Who’s Harry Potter?”
The little boy’s eyes got comically round. “You don’t know The-Boy-Who-Lived?” the little boy practically shrieked.
Sheppard craned his head up to meet Rodney’s eyes. “Is that a bad thing?”
“C’mon,” Rodney said impatiently. “I’m indulging and buying myself a nice broom to take back with us, and then you and I are going to sit down over a few butterbeers and I’m going to explain a few things.”
***
The first Saturday back in Atlantis, John stood waiting in the early morning light for Rodney to arrive. Rodney had told him that on no uncertain terms was John allowed to not show.
Of course, Rodney was ten minutes late already.
“Hey! Colonel!”
The shout came from above him, so John craned his head back and looked up. Rodney was perched smugly on his new Firebolt Mark Two.
Rodney was wearing his sapphire robe, left open over his Science blue shirt and grey trousers. The bottom of his pants were tucked into his boots, and he had on a pair of leather gloves and a set of goggles that John recognized as coming from the Quidditch shop around his neck.
Sometime over the course of the trip back to Atlantis, Rodney had fitted the streamlined broom with what appeared to be a coffee holder and a heavy wire support with a clip to hold onto a life-signs detector. And a seatbelt.
“Paranoid much?”
“Don’t want to fall off,” Rodney said.
“I thought you hated flying.”
“Only when I can’t control the craft. Brooms are far more responsive than puddlejumpers, and easier to manoeuvre, too.”
“Hey!” John said, insulted on behalf of his precious ‘jumpers. “No fair!”
Rodney snorted. “C’mon up and prove me wrong, then.”
John frowned. Rodney had not yet seen him fly, and John was actually rather ashamed of his meagre ability. He had wanted to practice a lot more before he showed anyone.
“Oh, come on!” Rodney said. He took a sip from his coffee travel mug and placed it back in the holder. Then he held up a ball. It was red and was dimpled with indents. “I’m going to teach you how to play Quidditch.”
“Yeah?” John said, intrigued.
“But only if you get your skinny ass up here.”
John squinted. “Is this supposed to be some trick to get me to show you what I’m capable of?”
“Yes,” Rodney said. “Up. Now.”
Closing his eyes and concentrating, John pushed up gently and felt the toes of his boots brush the deck of Atlantis. The soft sea breeze ruffled his hair and he opened his eyes to steer. He halted, floating with his arms crossed over his chest beside Rodney.
Rodney was grinning like a fool. He tossed John the ball and John caught it easily.
Rodney sipped his coffee again and made a face. “It’s cold,” he complained. “I’ll have to find a way to charm my mug to...”
He trailed off when John narrowed his eyes at the cup and fired a quick, sustained burst of his eye-lasers. The coffee was steaming again.
Now Rodney looked suitably gobsmacked. John grinned and tossed the ball back. Rodney failed to catch it, and it smacked against his chest and tumbled into the waves below.
“Looks like you’re it,” John said, and dropped downwards to go after the ball. “C’mon, slowpoke!”
“Colonel!” Rodney cried from above him. “Hey - wait I... jerk!” and put his broom into a nose dive to give chase.
“Ha ha!” John laughed, clutching the sea-water soaked quaffle to his chest. “Last one to the Mainland has to explain to Teyla what ‘scoring’ means!”
“Colonel! Sheppard! John, slow down! That’s not fair!”
The End.
Author: Vega
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Pairing: None
Genre: Humour
Notes Based on the fic “Photographs” by As the Black Rose Wilts, and sequel to my own “Photo Collage”
Spoilers: Up to and including “The Intruder”, 2x02, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”, and all of “Smallville”.
Disclaimers: “Stargate: Atlantis” and all identifiable characters and concepts are property of MGM Studios. “Harry Potter” and all identifiable characters and concepts are property of J.K. Rowling. “Smallville” and all identifiable characters and concepts are property of DC Comics and Warner Brothers.
***
Getting a budget from the SGC to go buy Wizarding supplies had been easier than Rodney had expected. General Landry had pointed at the pendant around his neck and said, “If I give you this money, you can make one of those for SG-1 for me?”
Rodney had nodded. “Yes! And protection charms, and these lovely clocks that have, instead of hours, you know, ‘mortal peril’ or ‘coming home late from school.’ ”
“What about wands?” Landry asked.
Rodney fidgeted, touching the top of his own wand with spry, blunt fingers. Sheppard had laughed at the blue velvet drawstring bag Rodney had been tying to his belt loops, and rigged up a sort of hip holster with bits of cannibalized tac vests and belts. Rodney was actually kind of touched.
“Wands are harder,” Rodney admitted. “Muggles can’t use them. Erm, non-Wizarding folk. You have to have magic to make them work.”
“Like the ATA gene.”
“Merlin’s shorts!” Rodney swore, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Magic is vastly different from the ATA gene, General, it’s not just some simple matter of thinking ‘on’ at a wand, you have to know the incantations and the proper gestures, and a lot of the time you have to actually know the physics, the arithmancy behind what you’re doing or you’ll turn a beetle into a box instead of a button, and--”
“So that’s a no, then?”
Rodney swallowed his scathing retort and said, “No.”
So Landry wrote Rodney a cheque with a few more zeros than Rodney had anticipated, and told him that he had to be back with all his supplies in three days or the Daedalus was going back to Atlantis without him.
***
John Sheppard had incredulity on his face, which Rodney thought was perhaps a little rude considering that he was an alien and he had never told Rodney. Rodney reached out and tapped at the bricks on the wall of the alleyway behind The Leaky Cauldron.
The Daedalus had been good enough to transport them both into a blind alley in Muggle London, because Rodney couldn’t do a two-person Apparation, and Sheppard refused to fly them, despite all of Rodney’s wheedling.
“I’m not comfortable in it, Rodney,” he said. “What if I fall out of the sky? What if I drop you into the Atlantic by mistake? Besides, I’m not fast, yet, not really. No match for a Puddlejumper.”
So they had transported.
Walking into the Leaky Cauldron after being a Muggle for so long had been a bit of a thrill to Rodney. A giant was at the bar, or half-giant, probably, because he was too small. There was a hag in the corner, and an elf in the other, refusing to mingle. A warlock in mothbally robes, a few young fops in ‘Weird Sisters’ tees trying desperately to grow fuzz on their upper lips, and everywhere, magic.
Someone was talking to a loved one whose head was in the fire, and the barkeep was pouring out butterbeers (“Oh,” Rodney said, licking his lips, “Butterbeer.” “No drinking on the job,” Sheppard had said. Rodney pouted artfully. “But it’s been so long.” “No.” ) and floating them to the patrons with a flick of his wand.
They had walked through the tavern to the alley outside, and now Sheppard was looking askance at him. Instead of answering, Rodney kept tapping the stones with his wand until the whole wall folded itself away like a rubiks cube. The askance melted into wonder and Rodney felt suitably smug.
“Look it all of them,” Sheppard breathed. “What are they wearing? Dresses?”
“Robes,” Rodney sniffed. “And you’re the one who’s dressed funny, Maj-Colonel. Trousers and a short jacket. Won’t do. Indecent, even.”
“I’m sorry, Rodney, I left my housecoat on Atlantis,” Sheppard hissed.
“We’ll get something from a robes shop,” Rodney said. He pointed at a green and gold gilt sign up the alley. “Madam Malkins.”
“I’m not wearing a dress, Rodney.”
“Well you can’t walk around looking like a Muggle, either. Just an outer robe. C’mon, when in Rome and all that. You do it offworld.”
Sheppard scowled, but nodded his understanding.
The pushed their way slowly through the crowd of Witches doing their weekday shopping, kids running around, getting behind barrels of potions ingredients (“Oh, my God, is that actually eye of newt?”), and elderly Wizards making their way to the pub for a pint and a fry-up lunch.
Outside of Flourish and Blotts, a kid who couldn’t be older than five tugged on Sheppard’s pants and looked up with wide eyes and said, “Are you a Muggle, mister? Cause Ruby--” here she pointed at someone standing under an umbrella of a café opposite, who looked like an older sister, “Ruby says that you’re a Muggle cause of your clothes, only he’s gots a wand, and you have no wand, unless it’s in your shirt, is your wand in your shirt and are you a Muggle mister?”
Sheppard’s face near cracked in two, his grin was so huge. “No,” he said. “I’m a Kryptonian.”
The girl’s eyes got huge and she ran back to her sister screaming, “He’s a Kyptominan man!”
Rodney folded his arms and snorted. “You’ll tell a little Witch but you won’t tell your best friend.”
Sheppard rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you go back to being mad at me for trying to blow myself up with a nuke? I liked that one better.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Sheppard gestured expansively around him. “You didn’t tell me, either.”
They glared at each other for a long moment, then sighed at the same time.
“This is dumb,” Sheppard said.
Rodney nodded. “Want a fizzing whizzbee?”
“A whosis whatsis?”
Rodney popped into a candy shop, and came out with a small bag of sweets. “I had a few sickles in the bottom of my wand bag. Here, try these ones, they floss your teeth for you.”
“Cool.”
They walked and ate and generally took in the atmosphere of the busy market. Rodney bustled past Madam Malkins, and Sheppard grabbed his shirt sleeve and said, “Rodney, stop, it’s here.”
Rodney laughed. “What, you think they’ll take American dollars? No, no, Colonel. We have to go get our money exchanged first.” He pointed to the leaning, wobbly Grecian style building dominating the far end of Daigon Ally.
“Gringotts,” Sheppard read out loud.
“Yes. And try not to stare at the Goblins. They hate it when you do that.”
Sheppard flashed a smile. “As long as they wear pants. Hermiod creeps me out. I’m not looking forward to weeks on the ship with him.”
***
Several long hours of shouting at incompetent bank clerks, and juggling little sacks of gold coins (“No, seriously, real gold? I feel like a pirate.” Sheppard staid, staring at the Galleon in his palm), and trying to find pockets for all of it, Rodney led Sheppard down the stairs and back towards Madam Malkin’s.
“Now, it’s twenty nine Sickles to the Galleon and thirty four Knuts to the Sickle,” Rodney explained patiently. “The exchange rate is about five pounds to the Galleon, which is around ten American dollars.”
Sheppard blinked and shook his head.
“Oh, c’mon Math Wiz,” Rodney chided, can’t you keep it straight?”
Sheppard grinned cockily as he opened the door to the robes shop. “The math is no problem,” he said, “I was just imagining trying to have a pocketful of nine hundred and eighty-six knuts.”
“Why on earth would you carry around nine-hundred and eighty-six knuts?” Rodney scoffed.
“I always keep a tenner in my pocket,” Sheppard said.
***
Madam Malkin was an accommodating old Witch with a bright smile. Rodney choose robes in a sort of regal sapphire which she adjusted for the breadth of his shoulders on the spot. Sheppard was smacked over the back of the hand for trying to go for black.
“Not your colour, dearie,” she said. “That’ll make you look like one of You-Know-Who’s, you know, this Emerald would be far more suited. Here, here, don’t fuss, try this on, and, dear me, step over to this stool here, aren’t you the tall one now? Your accent - American, yes? And which school did you go to dearie? Well, I can see that your friend went to Beaux Batons by his wand, now, but you son, where’s your wand, and did you go to Eaglehead or Petite Emaraude?”
Sheppard was all too happy to escape the seamstress as soon as his hems were charmed up and Rodney spilled out of the robe shop after him, laughing.
Sheppard stood on the street scowling. “That was terrifying. She was like... like Carson only she never stopped. Rodney, I don’t think she breathed.”
“Possibly a charm,” Rodney conceded, his blue eyes made brighter by the sapphire of his robe. He flicked up the collar in a fashion that Sheppard pointed out was very nineteen-seventies, and Rodney, realizing it had been that long since he had worn a robe, smoothed it back down.
Sheppard fingered the embroidered sleeve of his own robe and smiled softly. “Thanks,” he said.
“For what?” Rodney snorted.
“For the robe. For the... this,” he made the same spread handed gesture as earlier to indicate the world around them, but this time there was no anger in it. “For sharing this with me.”
Rodney shifted from foot to foot and looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, you’re my best friend, so shut up. Who else was I going to take?” He grabbed the elbow of Sheppard’s sleeve. “C’mon, let’s go look at racing brooms.”
Sheppard’s face crinkled into a grin and he kept pace. “Racing brooms? You mean Witches and Wizards really fly around on brooms?”
“Oh, Quidditch,” Rodney said. “I’ll get you a book, the ones with the moving pictures. I always wanted to play. I was the right size to play a Beater, but I have bad aim. Oh, you’ll like it Colonel. Way better than your crappy American football. ”
“Hey!” Sheppard protested, but then they were standing in front of the display case of a place called Quality Quidditch Supplies, elbowing away a bunch of kids leaving greasy fingerprints and snot-trails on the glass.
“Oh my god, what is that?”
“Wotcher!” said one of the kids he had knocked in the head. “You don’t know?”
Rodney shook his head, pressing his own palms against the glass and staring at the broom displayed inside as if it were a ZedPM. “The broom I had was a CleanSweep Five.”
All around them, the kids chortled and Rodney looked annoyed.
“Thasa Firebolt Mark Two!” the kid beside Rodney said, in the same sort of tone that Rodney always reserved for the likes of Kavanaugh. Sheppard laughed at Rodney’s indignation, and Rodney scowled deeper. “It’s only the best racing broom ever,” the kid said. “The Irish team had them for World Cup.”
“Ireland was in the World Cup and I missed it?” Rodney wailed.
The kid stared at Rodney as if he had an extra head growing on his shoulder. “Yeah. Two years ago. Doi.”
Another kid grabbed Sheppard’s sleeve and said, “That’s the same kind of broom that Harry Potter rides.”
Sheppard crouched to be eye level with the little boy. “Yeah? Who’s Harry Potter?”
The little boy’s eyes got comically round. “You don’t know The-Boy-Who-Lived?” the little boy practically shrieked.
Sheppard craned his head up to meet Rodney’s eyes. “Is that a bad thing?”
“C’mon,” Rodney said impatiently. “I’m indulging and buying myself a nice broom to take back with us, and then you and I are going to sit down over a few butterbeers and I’m going to explain a few things.”
***
The first Saturday back in Atlantis, John stood waiting in the early morning light for Rodney to arrive. Rodney had told him that on no uncertain terms was John allowed to not show.
Of course, Rodney was ten minutes late already.
“Hey! Colonel!”
The shout came from above him, so John craned his head back and looked up. Rodney was perched smugly on his new Firebolt Mark Two.
Rodney was wearing his sapphire robe, left open over his Science blue shirt and grey trousers. The bottom of his pants were tucked into his boots, and he had on a pair of leather gloves and a set of goggles that John recognized as coming from the Quidditch shop around his neck.
Sometime over the course of the trip back to Atlantis, Rodney had fitted the streamlined broom with what appeared to be a coffee holder and a heavy wire support with a clip to hold onto a life-signs detector. And a seatbelt.
“Paranoid much?”
“Don’t want to fall off,” Rodney said.
“I thought you hated flying.”
“Only when I can’t control the craft. Brooms are far more responsive than puddlejumpers, and easier to manoeuvre, too.”
“Hey!” John said, insulted on behalf of his precious ‘jumpers. “No fair!”
Rodney snorted. “C’mon up and prove me wrong, then.”
John frowned. Rodney had not yet seen him fly, and John was actually rather ashamed of his meagre ability. He had wanted to practice a lot more before he showed anyone.
“Oh, come on!” Rodney said. He took a sip from his coffee travel mug and placed it back in the holder. Then he held up a ball. It was red and was dimpled with indents. “I’m going to teach you how to play Quidditch.”
“Yeah?” John said, intrigued.
“But only if you get your skinny ass up here.”
John squinted. “Is this supposed to be some trick to get me to show you what I’m capable of?”
“Yes,” Rodney said. “Up. Now.”
Closing his eyes and concentrating, John pushed up gently and felt the toes of his boots brush the deck of Atlantis. The soft sea breeze ruffled his hair and he opened his eyes to steer. He halted, floating with his arms crossed over his chest beside Rodney.
Rodney was grinning like a fool. He tossed John the ball and John caught it easily.
Rodney sipped his coffee again and made a face. “It’s cold,” he complained. “I’ll have to find a way to charm my mug to...”
He trailed off when John narrowed his eyes at the cup and fired a quick, sustained burst of his eye-lasers. The coffee was steaming again.
Now Rodney looked suitably gobsmacked. John grinned and tossed the ball back. Rodney failed to catch it, and it smacked against his chest and tumbled into the waves below.
“Looks like you’re it,” John said, and dropped downwards to go after the ball. “C’mon, slowpoke!”
“Colonel!” Rodney cried from above him. “Hey - wait I... jerk!” and put his broom into a nose dive to give chase.
“Ha ha!” John laughed, clutching the sea-water soaked quaffle to his chest. “Last one to the Mainland has to explain to Teyla what ‘scoring’ means!”
“Colonel! Sheppard! John, slow down! That’s not fair!”
The End.