Fic: Sympathy for Eve 20/27 (PG)
Title: Sympathy for Eve, 20/27
Author: SGAtlantisLight
Characters: McKay, Beckett, Sheppard, Lorne, Zelenka, Emmagan, Dex, Kusanagi, Simpson, Kavanagh, Weir
Relationships: McKay/Beckett, Sheppard/Kusanagi, Zelenka/???, Emmagan/???
Rating: PG
Warnings: mpreg, baby shower horrors
Spoilers: None
Summary: Part 20 of the Sympathy for Eve series. When Rodney gets turned into a woman for a month, he decides to experiment, but little did he know it could have unforeseen consequences. Set somewhere in a nebulous third season AU after any cliffhanger-y stuff has been resolved.
Disclaimer: The characters, the setting, etc. are NOT mine, even if I wish they were.
Author's Notes: Beta and useful comments provided by mice1900 and lapislaz, but mistakes are entirely mine.
"I don't want to go to the party," Rodney whined, flopping back onto the bed.
"Shower," Carson corrected, patting his tummy. "And they can't start until the guest of honour is there."
Rodney sighed, closing his eyes. "I'm so tired of being pregnant. And I keep having these nightmares right out of Alien."
Carson chuckled. "I'm sure it feels a bit like having an alien parasite, but believe me, he'll be worth it."
"Yeah. You just remember that when he's asking for the keys to the car in a few years." His eyes blinked open. "Oh, God! I keep forgetting this is a real human being. Where are we going to send him to school? Who does he play with? What do we do if we end up back on Earth and he has to keep all these secrets? What if one of us dies? What if both of us die? Carson, we're--"
Carson pressed two fingers to Rodney's lips, silencing him. "We've talked about this before, love. No one's life is certain, anywhere. People lose jobs, have to move, go broke, get into accidents, and so on. Our uncertainties are a wee bit different than others', but every couple who brings a life into the universe is taking a step of faith."
Rodney swallowed. "How can you be so sure we're making the right choice?"
"I've been to some of those worlds Teyla and Ronon talk about-- the ones where the people have given up. They're cold and joyless and empty of childish laughter."
"That may be true of societies, but that isn't true of people. Many childless people aren't like that."
"Oh, aye, they're not. But someone has to be the first here in Atlantis-- the first to recognise us as a culture and a people separate from Earth now. For reasons that you well know, it isn't going to be a regular couple, at least not for many more years."
"So we're the harbingers of change, then," Rodney said. "And that somehow makes it right for our child, to be the product of some groping after hope?"
"Each child is brought into the world for a lot of reasons, Rodney-- not all of them particularly fair or altruistic to the child. Love and hate and joy and grief, war, famine, pride, empire, revolution, the list goes on. The trick is to nurture the altruistic reasons."
"You're such an idealist."
Carson leaned down and kissed him. "And you should consider yourself lucky that I am, Rodney McKay, for what better match is there for a realist?"
Rodney smiled and kissed him back, Carson settling next to him, warm and solid and sexy as hell, as unlikely as the universe itself and just as certain. "I guess I can't argue with that."
***
Carson and Rodney arrived at the large meeting room where the shower was supposed to take place just a couple of minutes late. When they walked in, it was to be greeted by most of the physicists and engineers, almost all the medical department, a smattering of other scientists, a few military officers, and Elizabeth, John, Teyla, and Ronon.
"Good God," Rodney muttered to Carson, eyeing the pale blue decorations.
"Be good," Carson whispered back.
Rodney's eyes skittered to the table full of presents and then alighted on the table next to it, full of finger foods and a cake-- hideously decorated with a baby-carrying stork, but a cake nonetheless. "Okay, okay. Just get me food."
Carson rolled his eyes, then turned and smiled at their hostess as she hurried away from a conversation with Vogel on the non-alcoholic nature of the punch and why it should stay that way. "Miko, lass, ye've really outdone yourself on the decorations."
She beamed and then shot a knowing smile at John. "Thank you, Doctor--"
"Carson."
"Yes, Carson. Thank you. I believe they create an atmosphere."
"Oh, yes. They're very... festive, wouldn't you say, Rodney?"
Rodney blinked and nodded. "Yes. Festive. And very, you know, uh, baby... uh, baby-ish-like stuff."
She looked a bit confused.
"And the food smells really good!" Rodney added.
"Oh, yes! Quite lovely," Carson said.
"Thank you." She smiled again. "Come in. We cannot have pregnant person standing around and getting sore feet! Oh, I have never seen those shoes, Doctor McKay."
"These?" Rodney asked, peering down at his feet, barely visible past his protruding belly. "Carson borrowed them for me from Sergeant Ferrer."
"Oh! The very tall Marine with the red hair?"
"Yeah. Seems none of my shoes fit."
"And it was a time finding ones to borrow that would be big enough," Carson added. "He has rather large feet even without the swelling."
"Well, you know what they say about large feet," Cadman teased as she stood to surrender her chair to Rodney.
Carson blinked in shock and then turned red when she winked at him.
"Yes, well, you would know, wouldn't you, Cadman?" Rodney shot back.
She grinned. "Call it scientific curiosity, McKay."
"I'd hate to hazard a guess as to how old you were when you achieved a statistically-relevant sample."
"Rodney!" Carson squeaked.
Cadman laughed. "Oh, that's a good one! I might just have to use that one sometime."
"I think it's time for a game," Miko interrupted.
"A game? We have to play games?" Rodney asked.
"You will have fun!" Miko might have intended it to sound like an assurance, but there was more than a bit of command to it. "Now, everyone take a piece of paper. We're going to see how many words everyone can find in 'John Nikola Beckett-McKay.'"
"Can we count foreign words?" Radek asked.
"Do derivations like 'kink' and 'kinky' both count?" Lorne asked.
"Should I be worried that you came up with that example so quickly?" John asked his XO.
"What about proper nouns?" Kavanagh asked.
"Quiet, everyone, and I will explain."
***
"What do you think, love? Ronon or Biro?"
"Hm?" Rodney looked up, taking in the teams-- all women except for Ronon-- showing off their 'diapered' compatriots. Ah, so that's what the toilet paper had been for. Ronon and Biro, as well as Simpson and Katie Brown, were modeling toilet paper diapers. "What's the point of this again?"
Carson sighed. "To have fun, Rodney. We're supposed to pick the winner."
"Oh. Hold on. I'll, uh, raise two bottle rings."
Sheppard sighed. "Fold."
"Fold," Kavanagh said almost immediately.
"I'm out," Lorne said.
Teyla regarded Rodney critically and then tossed in three bottle rings. "I will call."
"Too much for me," Elizabeth said.
Radek muttered in Czech and shook his head. "Fold."
Gleefully, Rodney turned over his cards. "Two pair-- queens and threes."
Teyla revealed her hand. "Three eights."
Rodney scowled and turned to Carson. "Okay, since you ruined my concentration, are we supposed to pick based on neatness, most similarity to a real diaper, creativity or what?"
Carson regarded Rodney's meagre collection of bottle seals, rings, and lids being used as poker chips. "I don't think ye can blame me for losing. And I have no idea how we're supposed to judge. Just pick someone."
Rodney shook his head. These were the most idiotic party games. "Ronon, then, because he was brave enough to do it."
"Score!" Cadman crowed, giving Ronon a high-five.
The Satedan just shrugged and grinned. While the rest of the men had retreated to the tables the colonel had designated for "baby bottle poker," Ronon and Carson had remained with the majority of the women playing an array of games that had the women giggling and the poker players shaking their heads. Rodney had to give him credit for not caring. Then again, if Rodney was Ronon-sized, he might not care either...
Rodney grunted and turned back around to where Elizabeth was dealing, tossing in one of the small circular bottle seals as ante.
"Would you like to join us, Doctor Beckett?" Teyla asked.
"Yeah, pull up a chair," Sheppard invited.
Carson shrugged. "No, thank you, Colonel. I'm not very good."
"Neither is McKay," Kavanagh said.
Rodney pointedly looked at Kavanagh's stash, which wasn't much bigger than his own. "I wouldn't talk, Kavanagh."
"Oh, please. As if it's my fault I've gotten such bad hands. The best I've had all night was a pair of jacks."
"How about a little cheese with that whine?"
"Oh, such scintillating conversation, Colonel."
"I bet... one ring," Radek said.
"Oh!" Rodney picked up his cards and gave a little smile.
Radek sighed.
***
"Time to go, love."
"Yeah, okay. Just one more hand. I'm just about to start winning."
"That would be a change of pace," the colonel commented.
"I believe I will go now," Teyla said.
"But you're winning," Rodney pointed out.
"I am very tired."
"Yeah. I'm done for the night, too," Lorne said.
"I'll take Teyla's seat," Cadman volunteered, setting down her collection of party prizes.
Miko leaned tiredly into Sheppard, who pulled her into his lap. She let out a little sigh and curled up against him. "I should get you a prize," she said sleepily to Teyla, "since you would have won."
Teyla shook her head. "I will let the lieutenant play for me. We can divide the prize."
"Works for me," Sheppard said. "Carson can play for Lorne."
Carson sighed. "Oh, all right. But only for a wee bit."
***
Teyla dropped into her bed and sighed. It was fortunate that Colonel Sheppard's poker game had distracted her from the baby-oriented games going on at the party or she would very likely have had to leave. As it was, watching the two men open packages full of tiny outfits, soft blankets, and other baby things had caused her eyes to prick. Halling's workmanship on Elizabeth's gift of a crib had been so beautiful, she'd turned away to get herself another drink and stayed with her back turned as Carson opened a package she knew contained a pale yellow hat and booties.
She'd caught the glimmer in his eyes as well.
She sighed, wishing now she had asked him to stay. She still hesitated to be weak with him, though she knew he didn't think less of her for it. But in this, the pain was too much.
She flung an arm over her eyes now and wept into the emptiness of her room.
***
Radek grinned as he let himself into his apartment to discover his lover stretched out quite naked in his bed. He quickly stripped and climbed in, snuggling up to the sleep-warmed body.
"How'd you do?"
"Lieutenant Cadman turned out to be as cutthroat as Teyla, and luckier as well."
"Explosives experts are usually lucky," his lover said sleepily, "or dead."
"And what about physicists who find their lovers waiting naked in their beds?"
His lover grunted and reached for the bedside table, where the lube was conveniently waiting.
***
Elizabeth sighed and slipped out of bed, her mind too full of what-ifs to rest, and turned on her laptop, pulling up the files on the Ancient devices Dr. Kusanagi had been cataloguing recently. Most of them came from the same vicinity as the device that had started this whole insanity and seemed to have similarities of purpose and function. Dr. Heightmeyer had been fascinated by some of the possibilities offered so far, though they were far from ready to test any of them out.
She pulled up the images of the text on one, marked NW27-413 in Miko's precise handwriting. "Activates. No immediate apparent effect," Kusanagi's notes read. "Further experimentation awaiting full translation."
Elizabeth activated the mic in her laptop and began dictating. "Ancient device NW27-dash-413, cylindrical, approximately one inch in circumference and six inches long. Ancient text on one side reads... 'matri'... This is an unusual stem here." She paused the recording and pulled up her ever-expanding Ancient-to-English dictionary.
***
Carson collapsed onto the bed with a groan. "I feel like lead."
Rodney sat next to him and laid a cool hand on his forehead. "You're feeling kind of hot, actually."
"My throat's feeling scratchy, too. I swear every time the Daedalus docks, we have a round of cold or flu or worse on Atlantis," Carson griped.
"Maybe I should, um, go sleep on the couch tonight," Rodney said nervously.
"There's no way you haven't been exposed, love. You'd do better to take a lot of vitamin C and zinc, gargle with salt water, and get a good night's sleep."
"Oh, good point. Maybe you should sleep on the couch then."
Carson glared. "You know, I'd wish ye a child as selfish and thoughtless as you are if that wasn't cursing myself as well."
"How is not wanting to get sick while carrying your child selfish and thoughtless? As a doctor you know I should be avoiding exposure if possible."
Carson sighed and struggled out of the bed. "Heartless bastard," he muttered as he trudged toward the living room.
"I heard that," Rodney said. "So, where do we keep the Lysol?"
Next part
Author: SGAtlantisLight
Characters: McKay, Beckett, Sheppard, Lorne, Zelenka, Emmagan, Dex, Kusanagi, Simpson, Kavanagh, Weir
Relationships: McKay/Beckett, Sheppard/Kusanagi, Zelenka/???, Emmagan/???
Rating: PG
Warnings: mpreg, baby shower horrors
Spoilers: None
Summary: Part 20 of the Sympathy for Eve series. When Rodney gets turned into a woman for a month, he decides to experiment, but little did he know it could have unforeseen consequences. Set somewhere in a nebulous third season AU after any cliffhanger-y stuff has been resolved.
Disclaimer: The characters, the setting, etc. are NOT mine, even if I wish they were.
Author's Notes: Beta and useful comments provided by mice1900 and lapislaz, but mistakes are entirely mine.
"I don't want to go to the party," Rodney whined, flopping back onto the bed.
"Shower," Carson corrected, patting his tummy. "And they can't start until the guest of honour is there."
Rodney sighed, closing his eyes. "I'm so tired of being pregnant. And I keep having these nightmares right out of Alien."
Carson chuckled. "I'm sure it feels a bit like having an alien parasite, but believe me, he'll be worth it."
"Yeah. You just remember that when he's asking for the keys to the car in a few years." His eyes blinked open. "Oh, God! I keep forgetting this is a real human being. Where are we going to send him to school? Who does he play with? What do we do if we end up back on Earth and he has to keep all these secrets? What if one of us dies? What if both of us die? Carson, we're--"
Carson pressed two fingers to Rodney's lips, silencing him. "We've talked about this before, love. No one's life is certain, anywhere. People lose jobs, have to move, go broke, get into accidents, and so on. Our uncertainties are a wee bit different than others', but every couple who brings a life into the universe is taking a step of faith."
Rodney swallowed. "How can you be so sure we're making the right choice?"
"I've been to some of those worlds Teyla and Ronon talk about-- the ones where the people have given up. They're cold and joyless and empty of childish laughter."
"That may be true of societies, but that isn't true of people. Many childless people aren't like that."
"Oh, aye, they're not. But someone has to be the first here in Atlantis-- the first to recognise us as a culture and a people separate from Earth now. For reasons that you well know, it isn't going to be a regular couple, at least not for many more years."
"So we're the harbingers of change, then," Rodney said. "And that somehow makes it right for our child, to be the product of some groping after hope?"
"Each child is brought into the world for a lot of reasons, Rodney-- not all of them particularly fair or altruistic to the child. Love and hate and joy and grief, war, famine, pride, empire, revolution, the list goes on. The trick is to nurture the altruistic reasons."
"You're such an idealist."
Carson leaned down and kissed him. "And you should consider yourself lucky that I am, Rodney McKay, for what better match is there for a realist?"
Rodney smiled and kissed him back, Carson settling next to him, warm and solid and sexy as hell, as unlikely as the universe itself and just as certain. "I guess I can't argue with that."
***
Carson and Rodney arrived at the large meeting room where the shower was supposed to take place just a couple of minutes late. When they walked in, it was to be greeted by most of the physicists and engineers, almost all the medical department, a smattering of other scientists, a few military officers, and Elizabeth, John, Teyla, and Ronon.
"Good God," Rodney muttered to Carson, eyeing the pale blue decorations.
"Be good," Carson whispered back.
Rodney's eyes skittered to the table full of presents and then alighted on the table next to it, full of finger foods and a cake-- hideously decorated with a baby-carrying stork, but a cake nonetheless. "Okay, okay. Just get me food."
Carson rolled his eyes, then turned and smiled at their hostess as she hurried away from a conversation with Vogel on the non-alcoholic nature of the punch and why it should stay that way. "Miko, lass, ye've really outdone yourself on the decorations."
She beamed and then shot a knowing smile at John. "Thank you, Doctor--"
"Carson."
"Yes, Carson. Thank you. I believe they create an atmosphere."
"Oh, yes. They're very... festive, wouldn't you say, Rodney?"
Rodney blinked and nodded. "Yes. Festive. And very, you know, uh, baby... uh, baby-ish-like stuff."
She looked a bit confused.
"And the food smells really good!" Rodney added.
"Oh, yes! Quite lovely," Carson said.
"Thank you." She smiled again. "Come in. We cannot have pregnant person standing around and getting sore feet! Oh, I have never seen those shoes, Doctor McKay."
"These?" Rodney asked, peering down at his feet, barely visible past his protruding belly. "Carson borrowed them for me from Sergeant Ferrer."
"Oh! The very tall Marine with the red hair?"
"Yeah. Seems none of my shoes fit."
"And it was a time finding ones to borrow that would be big enough," Carson added. "He has rather large feet even without the swelling."
"Well, you know what they say about large feet," Cadman teased as she stood to surrender her chair to Rodney.
Carson blinked in shock and then turned red when she winked at him.
"Yes, well, you would know, wouldn't you, Cadman?" Rodney shot back.
She grinned. "Call it scientific curiosity, McKay."
"I'd hate to hazard a guess as to how old you were when you achieved a statistically-relevant sample."
"Rodney!" Carson squeaked.
Cadman laughed. "Oh, that's a good one! I might just have to use that one sometime."
"I think it's time for a game," Miko interrupted.
"A game? We have to play games?" Rodney asked.
"You will have fun!" Miko might have intended it to sound like an assurance, but there was more than a bit of command to it. "Now, everyone take a piece of paper. We're going to see how many words everyone can find in 'John Nikola Beckett-McKay.'"
"Can we count foreign words?" Radek asked.
"Do derivations like 'kink' and 'kinky' both count?" Lorne asked.
"Should I be worried that you came up with that example so quickly?" John asked his XO.
"What about proper nouns?" Kavanagh asked.
"Quiet, everyone, and I will explain."
***
"What do you think, love? Ronon or Biro?"
"Hm?" Rodney looked up, taking in the teams-- all women except for Ronon-- showing off their 'diapered' compatriots. Ah, so that's what the toilet paper had been for. Ronon and Biro, as well as Simpson and Katie Brown, were modeling toilet paper diapers. "What's the point of this again?"
Carson sighed. "To have fun, Rodney. We're supposed to pick the winner."
"Oh. Hold on. I'll, uh, raise two bottle rings."
Sheppard sighed. "Fold."
"Fold," Kavanagh said almost immediately.
"I'm out," Lorne said.
Teyla regarded Rodney critically and then tossed in three bottle rings. "I will call."
"Too much for me," Elizabeth said.
Radek muttered in Czech and shook his head. "Fold."
Gleefully, Rodney turned over his cards. "Two pair-- queens and threes."
Teyla revealed her hand. "Three eights."
Rodney scowled and turned to Carson. "Okay, since you ruined my concentration, are we supposed to pick based on neatness, most similarity to a real diaper, creativity or what?"
Carson regarded Rodney's meagre collection of bottle seals, rings, and lids being used as poker chips. "I don't think ye can blame me for losing. And I have no idea how we're supposed to judge. Just pick someone."
Rodney shook his head. These were the most idiotic party games. "Ronon, then, because he was brave enough to do it."
"Score!" Cadman crowed, giving Ronon a high-five.
The Satedan just shrugged and grinned. While the rest of the men had retreated to the tables the colonel had designated for "baby bottle poker," Ronon and Carson had remained with the majority of the women playing an array of games that had the women giggling and the poker players shaking their heads. Rodney had to give him credit for not caring. Then again, if Rodney was Ronon-sized, he might not care either...
Rodney grunted and turned back around to where Elizabeth was dealing, tossing in one of the small circular bottle seals as ante.
"Would you like to join us, Doctor Beckett?" Teyla asked.
"Yeah, pull up a chair," Sheppard invited.
Carson shrugged. "No, thank you, Colonel. I'm not very good."
"Neither is McKay," Kavanagh said.
Rodney pointedly looked at Kavanagh's stash, which wasn't much bigger than his own. "I wouldn't talk, Kavanagh."
"Oh, please. As if it's my fault I've gotten such bad hands. The best I've had all night was a pair of jacks."
"How about a little cheese with that whine?"
"Oh, such scintillating conversation, Colonel."
"I bet... one ring," Radek said.
"Oh!" Rodney picked up his cards and gave a little smile.
Radek sighed.
***
"Time to go, love."
"Yeah, okay. Just one more hand. I'm just about to start winning."
"That would be a change of pace," the colonel commented.
"I believe I will go now," Teyla said.
"But you're winning," Rodney pointed out.
"I am very tired."
"Yeah. I'm done for the night, too," Lorne said.
"I'll take Teyla's seat," Cadman volunteered, setting down her collection of party prizes.
Miko leaned tiredly into Sheppard, who pulled her into his lap. She let out a little sigh and curled up against him. "I should get you a prize," she said sleepily to Teyla, "since you would have won."
Teyla shook her head. "I will let the lieutenant play for me. We can divide the prize."
"Works for me," Sheppard said. "Carson can play for Lorne."
Carson sighed. "Oh, all right. But only for a wee bit."
***
Teyla dropped into her bed and sighed. It was fortunate that Colonel Sheppard's poker game had distracted her from the baby-oriented games going on at the party or she would very likely have had to leave. As it was, watching the two men open packages full of tiny outfits, soft blankets, and other baby things had caused her eyes to prick. Halling's workmanship on Elizabeth's gift of a crib had been so beautiful, she'd turned away to get herself another drink and stayed with her back turned as Carson opened a package she knew contained a pale yellow hat and booties.
She'd caught the glimmer in his eyes as well.
She sighed, wishing now she had asked him to stay. She still hesitated to be weak with him, though she knew he didn't think less of her for it. But in this, the pain was too much.
She flung an arm over her eyes now and wept into the emptiness of her room.
***
Radek grinned as he let himself into his apartment to discover his lover stretched out quite naked in his bed. He quickly stripped and climbed in, snuggling up to the sleep-warmed body.
"How'd you do?"
"Lieutenant Cadman turned out to be as cutthroat as Teyla, and luckier as well."
"Explosives experts are usually lucky," his lover said sleepily, "or dead."
"And what about physicists who find their lovers waiting naked in their beds?"
His lover grunted and reached for the bedside table, where the lube was conveniently waiting.
***
Elizabeth sighed and slipped out of bed, her mind too full of what-ifs to rest, and turned on her laptop, pulling up the files on the Ancient devices Dr. Kusanagi had been cataloguing recently. Most of them came from the same vicinity as the device that had started this whole insanity and seemed to have similarities of purpose and function. Dr. Heightmeyer had been fascinated by some of the possibilities offered so far, though they were far from ready to test any of them out.
She pulled up the images of the text on one, marked NW27-413 in Miko's precise handwriting. "Activates. No immediate apparent effect," Kusanagi's notes read. "Further experimentation awaiting full translation."
Elizabeth activated the mic in her laptop and began dictating. "Ancient device NW27-dash-413, cylindrical, approximately one inch in circumference and six inches long. Ancient text on one side reads... 'matri'... This is an unusual stem here." She paused the recording and pulled up her ever-expanding Ancient-to-English dictionary.
***
Carson collapsed onto the bed with a groan. "I feel like lead."
Rodney sat next to him and laid a cool hand on his forehead. "You're feeling kind of hot, actually."
"My throat's feeling scratchy, too. I swear every time the Daedalus docks, we have a round of cold or flu or worse on Atlantis," Carson griped.
"Maybe I should, um, go sleep on the couch tonight," Rodney said nervously.
"There's no way you haven't been exposed, love. You'd do better to take a lot of vitamin C and zinc, gargle with salt water, and get a good night's sleep."
"Oh, good point. Maybe you should sleep on the couch then."
Carson glared. "You know, I'd wish ye a child as selfish and thoughtless as you are if that wasn't cursing myself as well."
"How is not wanting to get sick while carrying your child selfish and thoughtless? As a doctor you know I should be avoiding exposure if possible."
Carson sighed and struggled out of the bed. "Heartless bastard," he muttered as he trudged toward the living room.
"I heard that," Rodney said. "So, where do we keep the Lysol?"
Next part