(no subject)

[athenaktt]

Title: Commencement
Author: Athenaktt
Rating: Everyone
Characters/Pairings: Sheppard/Weir
Summary: Commencement ceremonies are notoriously boring...
Other notes: This plot bunny attacked me when I was stuck in a three hour commencement ceremony this past weekend, and every little thing you read in here, did actually happen in one way or another.


A monotonous sound droned in John’s ears as he widened his eyes to keep himself awake. Occasionally the monotonous sound stuttered over a word or two; grab everyone’s amusement for several seconds and continued on.

Commencement speeches, especially those in the scientific departments, were boring. Speeches given in the humanities departments usually took attempts to add wit and anecdotes to keep their audience’s interests, but they were still boring. For the math and sciences, when it came to speeches, they usually ended up sounding like badly disguised lectures on differential calculus or Kepler’s Law, instead of the intended witty speeches about life and the future.

John resisted the urge to slouch down in his chair since he was sitting on the front stage facing the graduating class. Instead he made himself sit up straighter and glanced over the other professors sitting to the side of him. They were either as bored as him, or they had perfected the art of sleeping with their eyes opened. John was tempted to nudge one of the professors to see if his theory was correct, but he resisted.

Everyone glanced over at Doctor Slovak as he stuttered over another word in his speech. John wondered. Of all the mathematics professors in Langford, why did they choose Doctor Slovak? He was notorious for stuttering in his lectures, yet here he was giving the commencement speech for the Mathematics department. John remembered overhearing that some students enrolled into Slovak’s class just because the man’s stuttering was amusing.

No one could deny that watching Doctor Slovak stutter through this year’s commencement speech was amusing, but the stuttering extended the seven-minute speech to fifteen minutes. And this was only the beginning of the ceremony. They still had the student speaker, the alumni’s speech, and then they had the recognizing of the graduates.

John groaned inwardly to himself. He knew he should have had breakfast before the ceremony, but an extra hour of sleep on a Saturday was more tempting than breakfast. Not only was he bored out of his mind, he was starving.

He looked out beyond rows of graduates in their black robes, to the family and friends baking in the sun waiting for their graduate’s name to be called. So they could cheer for them as they walked across the stage to receive a piece of paper that wasn’t their diploma.

John almost felt bad for them, since the other faculty members and he were sitting under the shade of umbrellas. Then he remembered he was wearing a long black robe and silly looking velvet cap with a tassel dangling off the side.

He tugged on the satin hood around his neck since the warmth of the midday sun was bearing upon them and the hood that represented his Doctorate of Philosophy in Mathematics was starting to choke him.

Doctor Slovak had finally stuttered himself to the end of his speech and the alumni’s speech was nearly finished. One more speech to go.

John started to play with a fold crease he found on the front of his robe. Elizabeth was right. He should have ironed the robe, or at least hung it up for a few hours instead of just wearing it straight out of the bag. It didn’t matter anymore; the gown was getting wrinkled as he sat here waiting for the ceremony to end.

His stomach started to growl when he saw one of the graduates in the front row munching on a piece of candy. John was starting to really wish he had eaten breakfast before this noon time ceremony. He discreetly pushed up the sleeves of his black robe and glanced at his watch. It was nearly one o’clock. Unless they read everyone’s name at auction announcer speed, there was at least one more hour before the ceremony ended.

John furrowed his eyebrows when he listened to the student speaker start her speech. For a moment it sounded like she was reading a poem, since she insisted on adding a dramatic pause after every three words. From the hundreds of students in the mathematics department this year, they picked this student to be the commencement speaker? John felt sorry for the graduating class. Today was their day, and their student speaker insisted on talking to them like they were kindergartners.

For the next hour, John stared at his shadow and started to make shadow puppets on the ground. When he got bored of that, he started to readjust his cap and pick on the three velvet chevrons that decorated each of his sleeves. Then when he lost interest in that, he attempted to pick the lint off of the long strips of dark blue velvet that decorated the front of his robe. Every now and then he would hear someone in the audience hoot and holler for their graduate, with ludicrous screams of “I love you!” “It’s about time!” “You da man,” or just yells of their names in various tones and volumes.

As soon as the last graduated was recognized, John joined in the thunderous applause for the long awaited end of the ceremony, and made his escape with the other professors as the exit music cued. John planned to head straight to his office, remove his ridiculous medieval outfit, and find some food before he had a hypoglycemic reaction.

The campus was pretty much empty, since everyone was attending one graduation or another and school was out for the summer. John slipped into the Law school and found the halls empty as he expected. He lifted his robe and tried to search for his office keys in his pants pockets when he walked by Elizabeth’s office. The door was opened and Peter’s desk was empty. He wasn’t surprised to find Peter absent. It was a Saturday. Out of habit, John stepped into the office. Elizabeth’s door was ajar, but the room seemed dark. John used a finger and slowly pushed the door open as if he was afraid to disturb the silence.

When he finally opened the door wide enough, John crossed his arms over his chest and leaned on one side of the doorframe and watched Elizabeth sitting at her desk reading a piece of paper under her desk lamp. He watched Elizabeth furrow her eyebrows at the piece of paper and cross out a word and write another word next to it, before rereading the paper again.

He did not know how long he stood there watching her. But he could not help observing how graceful she looked even when she was working. Sure her hair was done more nicely than usual, and she had more make-up for the ceremonies, but Elizabeth always managed to look beautiful even when stressed. When he was busy or stressed, he always looked frazzled, at least that’s what his colleagues told him. John had a feeling the frazzled description must have been contributed by his haphazard hair-do.

During this time, John’s stomach decided to remind him of its need for sustenance. John looked down in the general direction of his stomach, and Elizabeth finally looked up from her desk.

“It was that loud, huh?” John said, still leaning on the doorframe.

Elizabeth looked at him perplexed. “You’re looking sharp in that outfit,” she finally said, “but that laid back posture of yours doesn’t look right.”

“Am I supposed to stand like this?” John straightened his posture, “and look pompous and snobby like this?” He held his head up high and stuck his chest out.

Elizabeth laughed. “So how was the Mathematics Commencement?” she asked.

“Like any commencement,” he shrugged. “Long and boring.”

“These commencements aren’t that bad,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve been through ones where there were a thousand graduates. Now those were long commencements.”

“But you’re use to sitting through boring speeches for long periods of time.”

“True,” Elizabeth shrugged, “but you know a commencement is too long when the audience starts making paper airplanes out of the program booklets then try to aim them at the graduates.”

“Now that you mention it, I think I saw a couple paper airplanes being flown through that Ring thing in the quad,” John said, reverting to his previous posture of leaning on the doorframe, “but that graduation you are talking about that sounds like fun.”

“Not exactly, apparently one of the graduates brought along bag of tortillas in with him.”

“Tortillas? Interesting choice for a snack.”

“The thing is, they weren’t eating it. They were throwing it around like Frisbees,” Elizabeth said making a face.

“Nothing like playing with your food to pass the time,” John said. “I remember at my graduation, we attempted to do a wave.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow with interest. “How did that work out?”

“The wave was more like a ripple, it died after three rows,” John shrugged and started to walk towards the chair in front of Elizabeth’s desk. “What are you still doing here?” he asked sitting down.

“I’m looking over this speech I have to give later.”

John looked towards the small closet in Elizabeth’s office and found her neatly pressed robe hanging on the front of the door. His gaze returned to Elizabeth, who had returned her attention to the speech and started to scribble something in the margin. Then he saw on the corner of Elizabeth’s desk was a velvet six-sided tam.

John picked up the tam and started to fiddle with the golden tassel that hung on the side.

“Why do you get the six-sided pompous barrette?”

“The correct term for it is a tam,” Elizabeth said looking at John. “Besides, you have one too.” She pointed to the tam on John’s head.

John took off the tam and brushed his hand through his hair. Elizabeth couldn’t help but chuckle at John’s attempt to fix his hair by making it messier.

“My tam only has four sides. If I didn’t know any better, I would think I was wearing a piece of cardboard on my head like the other graduates.”

“You mean a mortarboard,” Elizabeth corrected again.

“Cardboard, mortarboard same difference,” John said rolling his eyes. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous we look wearing these?”

“These robes and tams are symbolic to our academic achievements in the scholar community.”

“I still think we look ridiculous in these,” he said plopping Elizabeth’s tam on his own head. “How do I look?” he asked sitting up straight.

Elizabeth smiled. “Like a professor of mathematics.”

“I thought stating the obvious was Peter’s job,” John said removing the cap from his head and replacing it on Elizabeth’s desk next to his own.

Elizabeth shrugged as she pushed her chair away from her desk. “Peter isn’t here today so that task falls onto me today.”

She got up and walked over to the table she left her purse on. She opened it, found her wallet, plucked out a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to John.

“What this?” John asked.

“For you to go and buy me lunch,” she said matter-of-factly. “You did come in here to ask me to go to lunch with you, didn’t you?”

“Well…yeah,” John paused. “Are you indirectly saying I’m predictable?”

“That and the fact that your stomach was complaining rather loudly earlier,” Elizabeth teased.

“I should just take your twenty bucks and run,” he said taking the money from her. “So what do you want?” He asked as Elizabeth sat back down to work on her speech.

“A chicken salad and a soda should be fine.”

“Anything else? Spoon? Fork? New shoes? New pompous looking cap? A new speech?” John asked.

Elizabeth shook her head with a smile. “Just go, please. I’m starving.”

“You know you could always take a break and come with me to lunch.” Elizabeth gave John a look. “Okay, I’m going,” he said holding his hand up in a gesture of surrender.

John went to the nearest cafeteria to the Law School and bought Elizabeth’s chicken salad, and bought for himself a burger with a bag of chips. He returned to Elizabeth’s office, to find that she had already cleared her desk of stuff to make room for his food delivery.

When he placed the food down on the desk, Elizabeth was still pouring over the speech.

“When is the Law School Commencement?” he asked, placing Elizabeth’s food next to her on the table.

“At three,” Elizabeth said with out looking up.

“You know, no one is going to be listening to the speech, so you don’t have to try too hard.”

Elizabeth stopped reading and looked up at John. “Well, I am the Dean of the School of Law. I think should have a decent speech, even if no one is going to be listening to me.”

“I’m sure what ever you have written on there. It is a lot better than what I heard today,” John said taking a bite of his burger.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Really? There weren’t any good speeches?”

“Slovak stuttered through most of his speech. That was amusing. Besides you’ve got math geeks, whose primary language consists of variables and numbers. You’re better off listening to them recite L’Hospital’s Rule or something.”

“What about the student speech? Those are usually decent speeches.”

“Are you kidding? This girl was quoting from Doctor Seuss and patronizing everyone, by talking to everyone as if we were elementary school children. If I was actually listening to her speech, I might have been offended.”

Elizabeth poured her dressing on her salad. “You were offended because an undergraduate didn’t know how to give a speech properly?”

“I didn’t say I was offended. I just said I might have been offended, if I was listening.”

“Right,” Elizabeth said rolling her eyes and took a bite of her salad.

“So my advice, when you give that speech today. Don’t have too many dramatic pauses and don’t patronize your audience.”

“Thanks for the advice, Professor,” she said taking another bite from her salad. “Aren’t you going to take off your robe?”

John had forgotten that he was still wearing his academic regalia. “Too late now, my hands are dirty,” he said, holding out his half-eaten burger in one hand.

Elizabeth let out a small sigh. “Here let me help you.” She put down her fork and wiped a ketchup stain off the corner of his mouth with a napkin. Then she helped pull John’s satin hood over his head and draped it on her arm. She then helped him unzipped the front of his robe.

“Put your burger down, so you won’t get ketchup on the sleeves when you take if off,” she ordered and walked over to her closet and pulled out a spare hanger.

John complied, shrugged his robe off, and handed it to Elizabeth. Elizabeth carefully hung his robe and hood on the hanger and hung it on a hook next to her robe.

“See, isn’t it much easier to eat without having to worry about your sleeves being dipped in ketchup and grease,” she asked, taking her seat again and continued to eat her lunch.

“Much better,” John said with his mouth full. “Thank you.”

“What would you do without me, John?” she asked rhetorically.

“I would have a greasy Harry Potter robe for next year’s commencement and still have ketchup on my face,” he said with a boyish smile.

“And you have a PhD in mathematics?” Elizabeth said furrowing her eyebrows.

“That’s what the pompous looking outfit says,” he said taking another bite and pointing to where both of their academic regalia hung.

Elizabeth shook her head at John’s comment and picked up her speech as she ate another fork full of salad.

“Am I that boring, that you’d rather work on your speech than talk to me?”

“Hm?” Elizabeth said her eyes still on the piece of paper. After popping the last bite of his burger into his mouth, John snatched the paper from Elizabeth’s hand.

“Hey!” Elizabeth exclaimed and glared at John.

“Finish your lunch, it’s rude to read at the dinner table,” John said flipping through the pages of the speech.

“First of all, this isn’t a dinner table. You are eating at my desk in my office. Second of all, you’re going to get your greasy finger prints all over my speech,” she said.

“My fingers aren’t greasy,” John objected. “I wiped it before I swiped this fifty page speech from you.”

“It is not fifty pages; it’s only five pages, double-spaced.”

“Any speech that is more than a page equals fifty to me.”

“Again I ask you, you have a PhD in mathematics?”

John ignored he question and picked up a pen and started to write something on the speech.

“John, what are you doing?” Elizabeth looked at John with horror in her eyes.

“I’m sprucing up your speech,” John said turning away from Elizabeth’s grasp. “Now stop trying to grab me and eat your lunch.”

“I’m not trying to grab you, but I am considering strangling you.”

John gave Elizabeth of shock. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“With you gone, I can have my office back to myself,” Elizabeth said deviously.

“You offered to let me come whenever I wanted.”

“You know that word, regret? I think if you look it up in the OED your name would be right next to it.”

“Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” John asked, still writing on Elizabeth’s speech. Elizabeth had given up trying to get her speech back and decided to finish eating, since she needed to get ready for the Law School Commencement shortly.

“No, I’m trying to get you to stop messing up my speech.”

“Don’t worry, I assure you. You’ll love my little additions, and you can’t read it until you’re standing on the podium in front of everyone,” John said with a grin.

“And how can you be sure that I won’t read this before I go up on stage?” she asked.

“Because I’m going to walk you to the quad and make sure you don’t read it until you are up on stage.”

Elizabeth sighed and started to clear her desk of empty food cartons. After clearing her table, Elizabeth got up and went to her closet to retrieve her doctoral robe. John also got up, stuffed Elizabeth’s speech in the back pocket of his pants, and followed Elizabeth.

When he reached her, she had already gotten her robe on and was zipping it up. John decided to make himself useful and took the four foot satin hood from the hanger, straightened it, and waited for her to turn around so he could but it around her neck.

Elizabeth thanked John as he carefully placed the hood over Elizabeth’s head. He turned her around to face him to make sure the hood was straight and prim as the woman that donned it.

While John was fussing with Elizabeth’s hood, out of habit, Elizabeth started to straighten John’s tie. For some reason the man’s tie would never say on straight.

“You really need to stop fiddling with your tie,” Elizabeth said. “Every time I see you it’s either crooked or loose.

“I can’t help it, if I don’t like being choked to death by a silk tie,” John shrugged. “Besides, I can always depend on you to fix it,” John said with a smirk.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, and then she noticed her speech tucked in John’s back pocket. She decided to seize the moment and reached behind John to grab her speech, but John hand anticipated her move and quickly stepped away from her grasp.

“And you say you’re not trying to grab me. You just tried to grab my ass,” John teased.

Even though that was not Elizabeth’s intention, blood still rushed to her face. “You know I was not trying to grab your ass,” she said.

John grinned. “I know, but I’d like to think that,” he winked.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and gave John a disapproving look. She took her six-sided velvet tam and placed it over her neatly curled hair.

She sighed. “I’m going to have tam hair now.”

“I still have tam…hat…whatever hair,” John said. “Look at it. It’s a mess,” he pointed to his wild brown hair.

“John, your hair is always messy,” Elizabeth pointed out, still trying to adjust her cap.

“True, but now it doesn’t stick up as much as it should. Here let me help you.” John started to help straighten her cap and moved the gold tassel to the left side, while Elizabeth tried to brush her hair away from her face. When she was sure John was finished fiddling with her cap, she stuck bobby pins on each side to make sure the tam wouldn’t move when she moved around.

“So how do I look?” she asked when she finished.

John crossed his arm and placed one hand under his chin as he observed Elizabeth. “You look like Professor McGonagle.” Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Only way, way, way, hotter,” John quickly added.

“If I had a magic wand that really worked, I’d turn you into-“

“A toad?” John said hopefully.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a big alien bug.”

A perplex look filled John’s expression. “Doctor Weir, I think you have been watching too many Science Fiction shows in your spare time.”

“I can’t help it if you insist on coming over to my place to watch television and leaving it on the Sci-Fi Channel. Then insist on losing my remote control,” she said.

“Well it’s your fault for having a better TV than me, and didn’t loose your remote. I did find it.”

“Yes, you did. Two weeks later,” Elizabeth said placing her hands on her hips.

“Now you remind me of my mother, when she’s annoyed with me,” John said boyishly.

“John Sheppard, you’re definitely a handful,” Elizabeth said and started to walk out her office door.

“Are you sure, you aren’t channeling my mother?” John asked following her out the door.

During their walk towards the quad, Elizabeth attempted several more times to retrieve her speech from John, but each time her attempts were fruitless. When they finally reached the quad, they could see groups of people starting to gather and slowly fill the rows of white chairs, while a few people stood around taking pictures of the Ring sculpture in the quad as they waited.

“Can I have my speech back, please?” Elizabeth asked.

“No.”

“Why not? We are already at the quad and I need to get in line to prepare for the procession.”

“All right, fine.” John handed her speech, which by now was bent and rolled up. So much for having her speech resting neatly on the podium, now she was going to have to wrestle with the paper to make sure it didn’t roll up in the middle of her speech. “Promise you won’t read my notes until you are at the podium,” he added.

Before he even finished his sentence she was already trying to read the words that he had scribbled on the top margin of the first page. John quickly put his hand over the spot she was reading.

“Promise,” he said looking into her green eyes.

Elizabeth sighed reluctantly. “Fine.”

Then the last call for faculty members and graduates to line up for the procession was sounded.

“That’s my cue, are you going to stay?” she asked.

John made a face. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll just stay for your speech. You are the first one right?”

Elizabeth smiled and nodded.

“I’ll stay for your speech, just to make sure you don’t read my notes before you get to the podium.”

John took a seat near the back as he watched Elizabeth join the crowd of law school professors, who were eager for the ceremony to begin and hopefully end quickly.

Before Elizabeth even had to chance to take a peek at the comments John wrote on her speech, the familiar music of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 began to play, and Elizabeth was signaled to lead the procession.

Applause erupted as the procession of the faculty came pass the rows towards the stage followed by the line graduates. John couldn’t help but smile proudly as he watched Elizabeth regally leading the procession. He spotted her hiding her speech within her long sleeves as she walked by him.

As all the faculty members stood by their seats waiting for all the graduates to be seated, Elizabeth finally had to chance to read over her speech and John’s additional comments. She smiled when she saw what John had written on the top margin of the first page. This is too long. Keep it short and simple. Or you’ll find me in the back row doing this. Next to his comment was a face with unruly spiky hair asleep, with a trail of Zs coming from its mouth. Elizabeth quickly put her hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle.

Stupid John, Elizabeth thought as she looked out at his direction. She was sure he was smirking at her. She quickly flipped through the pages to see if John had added any more of his own genius comments, but found nothing else. Just then the professor sitting next to her nudged her. Elizabeth had not realized that the procession was finished and she was just introduced to give her speech.

She quickly recomposed herself and put on a smile as she approached the podium. She flattened her speech on the podium and looked out into the audience and took a deep breath before beginning.

“Good afternoon,” she began. “In life there are many ‘big days,’ and today is one of those big days for all the graduates sitting here today.

“Life is filled with goals we’ve set for ourselves. Today you have all reached one of those goals. After this ceremony ends, many of you will strive for your next goal in life. Be it to become a judge, a lawyer, a politician, a diplomat, or, god forbid, a professor, only you know what awaits you at the finish line.”

Elizabeth paused to glance down to continue reading her speech, and then she noticed John’s writing in between one of the lines. Elizabeth smiled and continued.

“I had a long speech prepared for today, but a good friend of mine reminded me that when it came to speeches, the ‘shortest were always the sweetest.’ But before any you doze off on me.” Elizabeth looked at the corner where John sat. “I want to leave you all with a message. Nothing in life is easy. I’m sure many of you will agree with me that reaching this point was far from easy…”

John smiled. He was impressed to see that Elizabeth was giving this speech off the cuff. Even though he had been doodling and adding his own graffiti to her speech, he managed to skim the contents, and this was far from her final draft.

“…As you all strive for your next goals, remember to stop and smell the roses. Remember to appreciate life, and all the highs and lows that come along with it. I once had a professor say these exact words to me. Appreciate life. Now I pass these wise words to you and congratulate you all for your achievements in the Langford University School of Law, and I wish you success as you work towards your next ‘big day.’ Congratulations!”

After Elizabeth uttered the word of the day, applause ensued and the ceremony continued. Elizabeth took her seat again on the stage and smiled when she saw John stand up and give her a small wave as he slipped away from the crowd. She smiled to herself knowing that that she would surely see John in her office after the ceremony ended.