TEAM PLAY: lost in translation, "The Secret Language of Giving"
Title: The Secret Language of Giving
Author: wickedwords
Team: Play
Prompt: lost in translation
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Rodney knows he doesn't always get it when people give him gifts, but he is aware that he's supposed to be happy and please and grateful. His sister keeps telling him he needs to work on that.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
The Area 51 office building could have been any office building, anywhere. With ten stories above ground and more below, Rodney's building reeked of office planning from the nineties, when the Stargate program first started searching for alien tech. It actually felt quite homey. When he got to work each day, Rodney thanked whatever ego demanded that they be built, because after living in Atlantis, he wasn't sure he could stand the 1950s bomb shelter lab life. Dull eggshell walls and patternless industrial grey carpet were almost a second home, but Rodney still missed the blues and greens of his alien life.
Blues, like the city's stained glass and Air Force dress uniforms, and greens like walls and the color of John's eyes when the light was right. Rodney frowned down at the carpet; he wasn't sure John would like that sort of romantic comparison.
He caught a slash of bright pink out of the corner of his eye as he stepped into the office, a color guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of anyone who had gone through the dot com crash or the great recession. They wouldn't lay him off, would they? It was insane! What would he tell John? Heart racing, Rodney picked the paper up off his keyboard carefully, relaxing as Terri's familiar scrawl read: package for you. Come to the main desk.
Setting down his coffee, he stuffed the note in his pocket. Terri's refusal to embrace email was mystifying, but everyone shrugged it off as one of those quirks that people in the Stargate program developed, whether they went off planet or not. In this case, Rodney was willing to go along with it, as it meant less email that he needed to deal with overall.
Coffee back in hand, he shuffled his way past the guard station to the main elevator, taking it to the lobby floor. Terri was on the phone and gestured at him to go to the mail room, which only took about five minutes of winding through unfamiliar corridors to find; he swiped his keycard through the lock for the first time since he'd arrived, and then had to figure out where his mailbox might be. Eventually he found it, and sure enough, a padded white envelope with the USAF logo was waiting for him in his neatly labeled box, along with a flyer for a brown bag lunch on 'An Introduction to Asgard Technology' from two months ago and a schedule for the Area 51 Toastmasters meetings. He threw the flyers and his now empty paper cup into the recycling and carried the envelope back to his lab, wondering what the hell John had sent him this time.
####
Once the package was open, Rodney stared at the green plastic case in horror. The faded colors and blurred printing screamed 'bootleg' to him, and he couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. John's last email had mentioned a surprise, but a bootlegged copy of Total Recall seemed odd, even for John.
Flipping open the plastic case, he blinked twice at the thin Ancient crystal inside. Then he scrabbled through the remains of the envelope and pulled out the notebook paper that still had scraps of spiral binding attached.
"Zelenka got the data recorder working. Thought you'd like to check it out."
Rodney's heart pounded at near-espresso levels as a wave of dizziness washed over him; he grabbed the closest chair and sat down quickly, closing his eyes and resting his head on the back wall. He took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. That was so typical of John, to drop something like this on him without any sort of preparation. Zelenka got the ancient data recorder working? He hadn't even known they were even looking at it; it was supposed to be far down on the priority list, minding its time until Rodney got back. Oh, this was so not fair. He was stuck here on Earth trying to retrofit the shell of an Ancient warship with an Asgard hyperdrive and all of the stupid interface problems that entailed, while John had talked Zelenka into playing with Ancient tech.
His stomach twisted and rolled as an image of John's long, lean body moseying up to Zelenka's hunched shoulders formed in Rodney's mind. John smiling down at Zelenka, and-- Oh, no. Rodney rubbed his churning stomach. Maybe he should get some breakfast before his stomach decided to eat itself. He snapped the case back together and shoved the whole thing in his pocket. The cafeteria wasn't too far from the universal translator lab. He might as well stop in and check the disk out after he got something to eat.
####
It took him awhile to locate the crystal player. They'd found several portable versions scattered throughout Atlantis and sent several to Earth as part of the general "who-hoo, you found us! See what cool Ancient stuff we have" giddiness at the end of their first year--and the players were one of the few things they'd found that still worked.
The Earth-based Stargate science community hadn't been as impressed, and while archeologists--read: Daniel Jackson--had grabbed the few working crystals they found along with one of the players, the rest had been consigned to the "we'll get around to this sometime" inventory out at Area 51.
Rodney had no problem signing one of the spare players out. Then he headed back to his office, locked the door, and punched on the 'Do Not Disturb' indicator. There. That should keep everyone out unless some universe-wide catastrophe occurred and they needed his expertise, so he had at least a couple of hours free.
Atlantis had built-in players and long couches that conformed to every jut and bend of Rodney's body. They were incredibly comfortable and the only thing that had kept Rodney from confiscating one was that the damn things couldn't be moved. Occasionally, he'd made the trip out to the couch room just to nap.
Sometimes John made it out to the napping spot, too, although most of those times there wasn't an actual nap involved.
His face heated from the memories as Rodney slid into his specially purchased ergonomic desk chair and set up the player. It wasn't nearly as comfortable as one of the nap couches, but it was better than anything the government provided.
He settled back into his chair, put on the glasses and headphones, then leaned back in his chair…
####
"Hi, Rodney! Glad you could make it." John sat on one of the couches in the viewing room, only something wasn't right. John's projection looked a bit like the Joker, his skin almost white, his lips a vibrant red. When he spoke, his lips moved and then Rodney would hear the sound. It was like watching a badly dubbed movie.
Rodney swallowed hyperaware of the rough texture of the controls under his fingers. Oh, this was wrong…so wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. What were John and Zelenka doing in Atlantis, anyway? Couldn't they tell that this thing was screwed up?
Still, this was from John, and it was a present. Rodney knew he didn't always get it when people gave him gifts, but he was aware that he was supposed to be happy and pleased and grateful about them. His sister kept telling him he needed to work on stuff like that, and Rodney kept promising he'd try.
Only Rodney wasn't sure what he was supposed to be pleased about. He couldn't make out what John was saying, and when he stood, the proportions were wrong. John looked big and bulky, like a weightlifter with this teeny tiny head and a towel wrapped around his waist. He gestured at one of the walls, and it opened into a field of daisies. John winked slyly at him, and it was deeply disturbing, bringing to mind horrific late night discussions of eldritch creatures and non-Euclidian geometry.
Rodney stabbed at the exit button and sighed deeply as reality reformed around him. Grey carpeting and eggshell walls had never looked so inviting. Covering his eyes with his hands, he took a moment to wait for the panic to die down. He could do this. John made this for him. He would endure.
When he felt ready, he pushed the button and restarted the machine. He was back at the daisy fields, and John's body shimmered, turning into a giant duck with John's head, waddling out into the fields. Rodney was unable to help himself, and he started to laugh.
####
Eventually, the recording wound down, and Rodney had no idea what he would tell John when he asked about it. Sure, he'd enjoyed it in a 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' way, but objectively, John's movie sucked.
At the very end, the image had resolved to one of John in their room back on Atlantis. He was sitting sideways in his chair, his leg thrown over the arm of it, leaning against the back. He looked directly at the camera, a sad smile playing over his lips. "Miss you, buddy. Come home soon."
John reached out like he was turning something off, and the recording went dark; Rodney slowly pulled the VR receiver from his head, his heart aching. John was right. He needed to go home soon.
####
Rodney snapped into overdrive after that, unable to relax enough to really sleep. He'd go back to his place in temporary housing, doze for a few hours, then head back to his office, digging through the database for something he might have missed the last hundred or so times he'd searched.
Eventually, he did find it. One little footnote on one little subparagraph, and poof, the issue he'd spent the last three months working on was solved. He put all of his documentation together, added some highlights to a PowerPoint deck, and sent the whole thing off to Sam for review.
He stared blankly at the screen a moment, the whoosh as the email was sent the only noise in the room. Finally, he was going home.
####
A dog and pony show was required before Rodney left, which wasn't nearly as satisfying as it should have been once Sam made him take out all the 'you are all idiots' lines. But Rodney got to warm himself thinking of all the glares he got from the other scientists after they saw his conclusions. They would have months of rework to fix the problem, but no one could deny it was the right solution. They'd probably never ask him to work at Area 51 again.
If they did, well, Rodney guessed that he could just send Zelenka.
####
John left a message that he was out at the pier while Rodney went through the 'welcome back to Atlantis' dance; the beer was in the cooler and John in his flip-flops and shorts by the time Rodney arrived.
The wind stirred the water Rodney took a deep breath of the ocean air, and he felt as if his skin were drinking in all of the moisture. He hadn't realized how dry it was at Area 51 because he'd been indoors so much of the time.
"Did you get my message?" John said too casually as he took the top off a beer.
"That recording was a cry for help," Rodney muttered, as he settled down next to him and took the open beer from John's hand. "I wrapped things up as quickly as I could and asked for immediate transport back here."
"I didn't think it was that bad," John said as the wind ruffled his hair in passing.
"Not that bad? Please. Whatever Zelenka did to the translation matrix totally sucked."
John took a sip of his beer. "I thought the daisies were pretty funny."
"Oh, sure, they were funny but did you see--" Rodney's mouth dropped open as he stared at John. "You wrote it yourself, didn't you?"
John's eyes scrunched up, and he looked out across the water. "Maybe?"
"You did a horrible job on the translation matrix."
John's lips twitched into a brief smirk, and Rodney realized-- "You did that deliberately. You were playing with me."
There was a brief flash of laughter in John's eyes, and he shrugged, which was as good as a confession.
Rodney sighed heavily, bumping his shoulder against John's. "You didn't need to go to all that effort."
"Last email I got, it looked like you needed a laugh." Leaning in, John threaded his hand through the hair at the back of Rodney's head and pulled him in close. "Besides, it got you back here, didn't it?" The warmth of his breath lingered against Rodney's lips as Rodney leaned into the kiss--and this time he got John's message right.
The End.
**
Poll
Author: wickedwords
Team: Play
Prompt: lost in translation
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Rodney knows he doesn't always get it when people give him gifts, but he is aware that he's supposed to be happy and please and grateful. His sister keeps telling him he needs to work on that.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
The Area 51 office building could have been any office building, anywhere. With ten stories above ground and more below, Rodney's building reeked of office planning from the nineties, when the Stargate program first started searching for alien tech. It actually felt quite homey. When he got to work each day, Rodney thanked whatever ego demanded that they be built, because after living in Atlantis, he wasn't sure he could stand the 1950s bomb shelter lab life. Dull eggshell walls and patternless industrial grey carpet were almost a second home, but Rodney still missed the blues and greens of his alien life.
Blues, like the city's stained glass and Air Force dress uniforms, and greens like walls and the color of John's eyes when the light was right. Rodney frowned down at the carpet; he wasn't sure John would like that sort of romantic comparison.
He caught a slash of bright pink out of the corner of his eye as he stepped into the office, a color guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of anyone who had gone through the dot com crash or the great recession. They wouldn't lay him off, would they? It was insane! What would he tell John? Heart racing, Rodney picked the paper up off his keyboard carefully, relaxing as Terri's familiar scrawl read: package for you. Come to the main desk.
Setting down his coffee, he stuffed the note in his pocket. Terri's refusal to embrace email was mystifying, but everyone shrugged it off as one of those quirks that people in the Stargate program developed, whether they went off planet or not. In this case, Rodney was willing to go along with it, as it meant less email that he needed to deal with overall.
Coffee back in hand, he shuffled his way past the guard station to the main elevator, taking it to the lobby floor. Terri was on the phone and gestured at him to go to the mail room, which only took about five minutes of winding through unfamiliar corridors to find; he swiped his keycard through the lock for the first time since he'd arrived, and then had to figure out where his mailbox might be. Eventually he found it, and sure enough, a padded white envelope with the USAF logo was waiting for him in his neatly labeled box, along with a flyer for a brown bag lunch on 'An Introduction to Asgard Technology' from two months ago and a schedule for the Area 51 Toastmasters meetings. He threw the flyers and his now empty paper cup into the recycling and carried the envelope back to his lab, wondering what the hell John had sent him this time.
####
Once the package was open, Rodney stared at the green plastic case in horror. The faded colors and blurred printing screamed 'bootleg' to him, and he couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. John's last email had mentioned a surprise, but a bootlegged copy of Total Recall seemed odd, even for John.
Flipping open the plastic case, he blinked twice at the thin Ancient crystal inside. Then he scrabbled through the remains of the envelope and pulled out the notebook paper that still had scraps of spiral binding attached.
"Zelenka got the data recorder working. Thought you'd like to check it out."
Rodney's heart pounded at near-espresso levels as a wave of dizziness washed over him; he grabbed the closest chair and sat down quickly, closing his eyes and resting his head on the back wall. He took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. That was so typical of John, to drop something like this on him without any sort of preparation. Zelenka got the ancient data recorder working? He hadn't even known they were even looking at it; it was supposed to be far down on the priority list, minding its time until Rodney got back. Oh, this was so not fair. He was stuck here on Earth trying to retrofit the shell of an Ancient warship with an Asgard hyperdrive and all of the stupid interface problems that entailed, while John had talked Zelenka into playing with Ancient tech.
His stomach twisted and rolled as an image of John's long, lean body moseying up to Zelenka's hunched shoulders formed in Rodney's mind. John smiling down at Zelenka, and-- Oh, no. Rodney rubbed his churning stomach. Maybe he should get some breakfast before his stomach decided to eat itself. He snapped the case back together and shoved the whole thing in his pocket. The cafeteria wasn't too far from the universal translator lab. He might as well stop in and check the disk out after he got something to eat.
####
It took him awhile to locate the crystal player. They'd found several portable versions scattered throughout Atlantis and sent several to Earth as part of the general "who-hoo, you found us! See what cool Ancient stuff we have" giddiness at the end of their first year--and the players were one of the few things they'd found that still worked.
The Earth-based Stargate science community hadn't been as impressed, and while archeologists--read: Daniel Jackson--had grabbed the few working crystals they found along with one of the players, the rest had been consigned to the "we'll get around to this sometime" inventory out at Area 51.
Rodney had no problem signing one of the spare players out. Then he headed back to his office, locked the door, and punched on the 'Do Not Disturb' indicator. There. That should keep everyone out unless some universe-wide catastrophe occurred and they needed his expertise, so he had at least a couple of hours free.
Atlantis had built-in players and long couches that conformed to every jut and bend of Rodney's body. They were incredibly comfortable and the only thing that had kept Rodney from confiscating one was that the damn things couldn't be moved. Occasionally, he'd made the trip out to the couch room just to nap.
Sometimes John made it out to the napping spot, too, although most of those times there wasn't an actual nap involved.
His face heated from the memories as Rodney slid into his specially purchased ergonomic desk chair and set up the player. It wasn't nearly as comfortable as one of the nap couches, but it was better than anything the government provided.
He settled back into his chair, put on the glasses and headphones, then leaned back in his chair…
####
"Hi, Rodney! Glad you could make it." John sat on one of the couches in the viewing room, only something wasn't right. John's projection looked a bit like the Joker, his skin almost white, his lips a vibrant red. When he spoke, his lips moved and then Rodney would hear the sound. It was like watching a badly dubbed movie.
Rodney swallowed hyperaware of the rough texture of the controls under his fingers. Oh, this was wrong…so wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. What were John and Zelenka doing in Atlantis, anyway? Couldn't they tell that this thing was screwed up?
Still, this was from John, and it was a present. Rodney knew he didn't always get it when people gave him gifts, but he was aware that he was supposed to be happy and pleased and grateful about them. His sister kept telling him he needed to work on stuff like that, and Rodney kept promising he'd try.
Only Rodney wasn't sure what he was supposed to be pleased about. He couldn't make out what John was saying, and when he stood, the proportions were wrong. John looked big and bulky, like a weightlifter with this teeny tiny head and a towel wrapped around his waist. He gestured at one of the walls, and it opened into a field of daisies. John winked slyly at him, and it was deeply disturbing, bringing to mind horrific late night discussions of eldritch creatures and non-Euclidian geometry.
Rodney stabbed at the exit button and sighed deeply as reality reformed around him. Grey carpeting and eggshell walls had never looked so inviting. Covering his eyes with his hands, he took a moment to wait for the panic to die down. He could do this. John made this for him. He would endure.
When he felt ready, he pushed the button and restarted the machine. He was back at the daisy fields, and John's body shimmered, turning into a giant duck with John's head, waddling out into the fields. Rodney was unable to help himself, and he started to laugh.
####
Eventually, the recording wound down, and Rodney had no idea what he would tell John when he asked about it. Sure, he'd enjoyed it in a 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' way, but objectively, John's movie sucked.
At the very end, the image had resolved to one of John in their room back on Atlantis. He was sitting sideways in his chair, his leg thrown over the arm of it, leaning against the back. He looked directly at the camera, a sad smile playing over his lips. "Miss you, buddy. Come home soon."
John reached out like he was turning something off, and the recording went dark; Rodney slowly pulled the VR receiver from his head, his heart aching. John was right. He needed to go home soon.
####
Rodney snapped into overdrive after that, unable to relax enough to really sleep. He'd go back to his place in temporary housing, doze for a few hours, then head back to his office, digging through the database for something he might have missed the last hundred or so times he'd searched.
Eventually, he did find it. One little footnote on one little subparagraph, and poof, the issue he'd spent the last three months working on was solved. He put all of his documentation together, added some highlights to a PowerPoint deck, and sent the whole thing off to Sam for review.
He stared blankly at the screen a moment, the whoosh as the email was sent the only noise in the room. Finally, he was going home.
####
A dog and pony show was required before Rodney left, which wasn't nearly as satisfying as it should have been once Sam made him take out all the 'you are all idiots' lines. But Rodney got to warm himself thinking of all the glares he got from the other scientists after they saw his conclusions. They would have months of rework to fix the problem, but no one could deny it was the right solution. They'd probably never ask him to work at Area 51 again.
If they did, well, Rodney guessed that he could just send Zelenka.
####
John left a message that he was out at the pier while Rodney went through the 'welcome back to Atlantis' dance; the beer was in the cooler and John in his flip-flops and shorts by the time Rodney arrived.
The wind stirred the water Rodney took a deep breath of the ocean air, and he felt as if his skin were drinking in all of the moisture. He hadn't realized how dry it was at Area 51 because he'd been indoors so much of the time.
"Did you get my message?" John said too casually as he took the top off a beer.
"That recording was a cry for help," Rodney muttered, as he settled down next to him and took the open beer from John's hand. "I wrapped things up as quickly as I could and asked for immediate transport back here."
"I didn't think it was that bad," John said as the wind ruffled his hair in passing.
"Not that bad? Please. Whatever Zelenka did to the translation matrix totally sucked."
John took a sip of his beer. "I thought the daisies were pretty funny."
"Oh, sure, they were funny but did you see--" Rodney's mouth dropped open as he stared at John. "You wrote it yourself, didn't you?"
John's eyes scrunched up, and he looked out across the water. "Maybe?"
"You did a horrible job on the translation matrix."
John's lips twitched into a brief smirk, and Rodney realized-- "You did that deliberately. You were playing with me."
There was a brief flash of laughter in John's eyes, and he shrugged, which was as good as a confession.
Rodney sighed heavily, bumping his shoulder against John's. "You didn't need to go to all that effort."
"Last email I got, it looked like you needed a laugh." Leaning in, John threaded his hand through the hair at the back of Rodney's head and pulled him in close. "Besides, it got you back here, didn't it?" The warmth of his breath lingered against Rodney's lips as Rodney leaned into the kiss--and this time he got John's message right.
The End.
**
Poll