SGA fic: Entangled Particles 1/4 (NC-17)
Title: Entangled Particles
Author: Zinnith
Rating/Category: NC-17/Slash AU
Pairing: John/Rodney
Wordcount: ~10 000
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys. I do own a set of annoying writer's habits.
Notes: Written for
sg_15_fics, prompt 013: For You
the_cephalopod made this beautiful. Thank you!
Summary: "I don’t usually take my groupies out for dinner, but you’re pretty and you seem to have some kind of brain underneath all that hair, and I hate eating alone.”
It was coincidence, really. It was May and John had finished War and Peace way ahead of schedule. He was now so completely and utterly bored that he would have happily read a Harlequin novel if someone had handed him one. This was Antarctica after all, and when you weren’t flying you had two things to do; watch the snow or read.
He had found the book in a break room and picked it up because he thought that the title sounded interesting. He read the blurb on the back, scanned the author’s profile (M. R. McKay, born in Toronto, resident of Sacramento, California, winner of this and that award, lives with his cat, yadda yadda yadda) and then opened the book.
He read the first page. Then he read it again. Then he sat down, turned the page over, and continued to read.
One hour later he was forced to stop reading so he could ferry a fuzzy-haired scientist over to the research-station out on the ice. The one that was so top-secret that the Air Force had made John sign a ton of paperwork just so he could fly out there, drop off some people, pick up another bunch, and fly back. He brought the book and read it while he waited. Had it been possible, he would have read it in-flight as well, but he thought that the silver-haired Air Force general who was his passenger on the way back might have some objections.
It was a book completely unlike anything else John had ever read. It was almost impossible to understand at first, but he kept reading in the hope that on the next page, he might come across the piece that would make the whole puzzle fit together.
Forty-seven hours later, and he had finished it, and was none the wiser than when he had started. So he turned back to the first page and started reading from the beginning again.
John kept the increasingly frayed paperback in his nightstand drawer. He taped the pages together when they started falling apart. Every time he re-read it, he found another perfect phrase that he had to underline. It was human relationships explained as physics, and it was a beautiful, brilliant, genius piece of work.
By the end of the summer, he had read the book five times, and had started on the sixth. It was then that the thought hit him, the relationship he had with this book had lasted longer than his affairs with most women.
* * *
John’s father died in September and he had to go to Houston to make arrangements for the funeral. The last time the two of them had spoken, long before the whole Afghanistan debacle, John’s father had stated that he no longer had a son. So the entire affair was, at best, profoundly uncomfortable.
When it all got too much, John walked. It was the best thing he could think of to do when he couldn’t fly. He would just walk out the door, decide on a direction by the flip of a coin, and set off. It was coincidence, really, that on one late afternoon he walked by a tiny little bookshop and saw a sign in the window that read: Book signing today! Meredith R. McKay.
What were the odds?
John stepped inside and was immediately accosted by the smell of dust and unread books. The shop was even smaller on the inside than it had looked from the outside. There were exactly three people within; a little old lady standing behind the counter, a broad-shouldered man with a coffee-mug staring morosely out of the window, and a pretty red-blonde woman sitting at a rickety table lording over a pile of books.
There had been no picture of the author in John’s edition of the novel, but he applied his best logic to the situation, walked straight up to the woman at the table and asked, “Excuse me, are you Meredith McKay?”
She gave him a bright smile and was just about to answer, when the heavyset man with the coffee-mug interrupted, “No, she’s not Meredith McKay, I am, and it’s not Meredith, it’s Rodney, and it doesn’t matter what paper you’re from, I’m not giving any interviews.”
John raised an eyebrow. “Actually,” he said, eyes darting between them. “I was just wondering if you, either one of you, is the M. R. McKay who wrote Entangled Particles.”
The blonde woman stood up and reached out her hand: “Laura Cadman,” she said. “I’m Mr. McKay’s assistant.” She sent the man a glare. ”Don’t mind him, he gets grumpy when he hasn’t eaten.”
“Entangled Particles!” the man, who John supposed had to be McKay, exclaimed. “Where did you dig up that old thing? And just for the record,” he glared back at Laura, “I would be significantly less grumpy if I hadn’t been sitting here all afternoon for a grand total of seven customers.”
“Eight,” Laura corrected, with a nod in John’s direction.
John felt a bit like he had just stepped into some bizarre sit-com, but after spending five days listening to his relatives discuss whose fault it was that Aunt Glenda was no longer on speaking terms with Cousin Bart and why Uncle Harry was such an old geezer, he had determined that the best way of coping was to just act like everything was perfectly normal.
“I’m not really a customer,” he admitted. “I was just passing and saw the sign outside. I read the book and liked it, so I thought…”
“Don’t get me started on the sign!” McKay hissed, with an even darker look aimed at the little old lady behind the counter.
“See Rodney, this is why none of the critics like you,” Laura said. Her remark apparently fell on deaf ears. McKay was halfway through a rant about how, when you invited an author to a book signing, the least you could do was to get his name right. The little old lady looked like she wanted to take him over her knee and spank some manners into him.
“Okay,” John said. This was getting too weird even for him. “I’m just going to leave now.”
McKay turned around so fast that coffee splashed out of his mug and landed on his shirt. “No! No, no, no, no, you came in here to see me, and here I am, and you said you liked the book?”
John looked at the man. He had never really thought about what M. R. McKay would be like in person, but if he had been expecting something, this wasn’t it. “You’re kind of a jerk, aren’t you?” he asked.
For a guy who had just been insulted, McKay looked strangely unfazed. “Yes, yes, I know, people tell me that all the time. Enough about that, what about the book?”
“Well”, John said. “It’s pretty smart.”
“Again with the obvious!” McKay replied, once again with a hand gesture that spilled the rest of the coffee on top of the stack of books. Laura jumped forward to try to save them, while making a face at John that probably meant something like, ‘Please stroke my crazy employer’s ego a bit so we can get out of here sometime today.’
“Well,” John said. “I didn’t get it at first. But then I took another look at the title and everything sort of fell into place.”
“Yes?” McKay said, urging him on with a circling hand-motion.
“The way all the characters define themselves by looking at others. Entangled Particles. Quantum entanglement. It’s pretty smart.”
McKay turned to Laura. “See?” he said, a wide grin on his face. “He got it! Kavanagh criticized the hell out of it, but this hobo who just walked in from the street gets it!”
John looked at his reflection in the window, the paint-stained jeans, the t-shirt that was beginning to come apart in the seams, and said, “I’m a pilot, actually.”
The look on McKay’s face was part disbelief and part interest. “Really? Well, I won’t hold that against you. Have you eaten?”
“No?” John said. He had a feeling that he’d just lost track of the conversation again.
McKay put the empty coffee-mug down and rubbed his hands together. “Perfect! I don’t usually take my groupies out for dinner, but you’re pretty and you seem to have some kind of brain underneath all that hair, and I hate eating alone.”
John looked at Laura again and she sent a look back that said, ‘You’re on your own here, buddy’. ‘Groupie?’ he thought, and then, ‘What’s wrong with my hair?’ and then he found himself saying, “Sure, why not.”
* * *
They left Laura and the little old lady to clean up McKay’s spilled coffee and went in search of a restaurant. John was willing to eat pretty much anything, especially since McKay was paying. That was during the first thirty minutes of the search. After that, he just wanted McKay to pick a place already. Every restaurant they came across was either too snobby, too boring, probably flagged by the health services, or had lemon in everything. (“What’s wrong with lemon?” John asked. “Nothing, if you want to see me swell up and stop breathing and die,” McKay replied.)
At last they ended up in a small Greek place where McKay ordered moussaka for himself and a big meze plate for John and beer for both of them. The restaurant was family-owned, cosy and with portions large enough to feed two.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be a writer,” McKay said between bites. “If I’d stayed in astrophysics, I would probably have won the Nobel by now. But then my sister decided I needed a hobby and had her English-professor husband drag me to a course in creative writing. Entangled Particles was the result.”
“Mhmm,” John said. He had quickly realised that once McKay started talking, he required very little input to continue. It was a mystery how the guy managed to get any food into his mouth when sounds kept coming out of it.
“It was Caleb who sent it in,” McKay went on. “I hadn’t the slightest idea until I got a call from the publisher, and then the damn book came out and I got a stipend. Jeannie, that’s my sister, said I had to write more, and once I got started I found I just couldn’t stop.”
As John listened, he thought that McKay was a bit like his books. Hard to understand at first, but so fascinating that you just couldn’t tear yourself away. McKay talked more and faster than anyone John had ever met. His hands were constantly moving, accompanying his words.
They had finished their food and moved on to dessert (fudge cake with whipped cream), when McKay suddenly stopped talking and put his fork down. “Hey, I just realized, I’ve told you the whole story of my life and you haven’t said a word. What about you?”
John thought for a moment. There wasn’t really much to say. “I’m in the Air Force”, he said. “I like Ferris wheels, college football and anything that goes faster than two hundred miles per hour.”
“Air Force?” McKay said. “And here I was thinking you were almost intelligent. Why on earth would you want to join the military?”
“To piss off my father, mostly,” John said. In reality, it was a little more complicated than that, but he didn’t feel like telling McKay everything about his life. Most of it was messy and not meant for the ears of a stranger. “That, and I get to fly.”
“I always wanted to go into space,” McKay said dreamily around a mouthful of cake. “But I have a little trouble with claustrophobia.”
“I can see where that might be a problem”, John said.
They stayed until the restaurant closed, and then stood outside and talked for another ten minutes, until McKay looked at his watch and said, “I’d better get back to the hotel before Laura starts thinking that you’ve kidnapped me.”
“Yeah,” John said. “I should get home too. Thanks for dinner.”
McKay waved it away. “Thanks for the company. It’s not often I meet someone who actually understands what I’m writing.”
They shook hands, and headed off in different directions. John was almost around the corner, when he heard McKay shout after him, “Hey, wait! I forgot to ask your name!”
John turned around. “It’s John!” he yelled. “Major John Sheppard!”
“Great!” McKay shouted. “I’ll see you around!”
“I doubt it!” John answered. “I live in Antarctica!”
* * *
John had been back at McMurdo for about a week when the first package arrived. He hadn’t ordered anything, so it was a surprise when he opened it and found a coffee-stained copy of Duality by M. R. McKay. On the first page was written in dark-blue ink: I just remembered that I never signed anything for you. Read this and tell me what you think. / M. Rodney McKay
Underneath, McKay had scribbled his e-mail address.
John laughed a little and then he read the book. It was just as brilliant as Entangled Particles, every bit as perfect, and still completely unique. He thought about it for a while and sent a single word e-mail to McKay, Cool.
McKay’s response was two pages long and John could almost hear the whining. He replied with a five-page review, comparing Duality to everything he had read since he was ten, including Winnie the Pooh.
The answer read, I think I preferred ‘cool’.
After that, they exchanged e-mails every other day. John wrote about Antarctica, the snow and the ice, climbing Ob Hill on a clear day and seeing half the continent, all the different shades of white.
McKay wrote about publishing parties, idiot critics, his cat, Newton, and Laura’s new boyfriend, some Scottish geneticist by the name of Beckett (who seemed like an okay guy, but Rodney was keeping an eye on him just in case).
John got some leave in October, decided to go to New Zealand, and asked McKay for his post address so he could send a card. The one John chose was from Kawarau Bridge, where he went bungee jumping for the first time in his life and wondered why he hadn’t done it before. On an impulse, he also sent a stuffed kiwi he had found in a gift-shop.
When he came back, McKay had sent him a mail with the heading YOU ARE INSANE, followed by a long list of statistics, detailing all the different ways you could get injured during a bungee jump. McKay finished the message, Newton likes the kiwi. By the way, next time you get leave, don’t do stupid stuff like throwing yourself off a bridge. Come here instead. /Rodney.
By November, John had come to the conclusion that he was unlikely to progress any further in the military. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Antarctica, because he did. It was about as far from Afghanistan you could possibly go and still be on the same planet. It was cold and full of ice and no one was shooting at him.
The thing was that he was lonely. Rodney’s e-mails and occasional care-packages were the only contact John had with the outside world, and he lived for them. Only his body was at McMurdo. His spirit was in Sacramento with Rodney, Newton, Laura and Carson Beckett.
There were a lot of miles between them, but they were all John had.
* * *
Going down in a chopper was pretty much the same wherever you were. Things breaking, lights blinking, tiny little alarms grating on your concentration, and the frantic chanting of stay up stay up stay up as if the power of your mind alone could keep several thousand pounds of metal in the air. Then that moment of eerie calm right before you hit the ground when you realise that it’s out of your hands and all you can do is hold on and hope for the best.
John awoke feeling cold. That was different from going down in Afghanistan, where everything had been hot and dry, with sand in his eyes and the sound of gunfire in the distance. He felt numb, but relatively pain-free at the moment, so he raised his head to try to get a grasp of the situation.
He found himself lying on his back in the snow, some distance from the smoking wreck of the helicopter. John couldn’t remember getting out, but he must have at some point. He could smell ice, and burning rubber, and blood. When he looked down he saw that his leg was at an unnatural angle, and there was a large bloodstain on his pants. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, he couldn’t feel his hands or feet, and he was getting more and more sleepy with every passing second. John came to the conclusion that he was probably not all that far away from hypothermia, maybe with a concussion thrown in for good measure, and that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
He lay back down and watched the sky that had been so clear and blue up until that gust of wind had blown snow all over the windshield and he’d lost orientation. It was pretty and John drifted a little, thinking about how maybe it wouldn’t be all bad if no one found him. It wasn’t as if anyone would miss him much.
Then he thought of Rodney; how they e-mailed each other every day now, and what Rodney would think when the mails stopped. That’s when John realised that he actually had a friend, someone who might worry about him. Rodney had taken the trouble to find out his address and send him a book after only meeting him once. He had shared his life with John.
When he heard the distant sound of rotor-blades, John felt relief. Things got blurry and vague after that, but he knew one thing, he wasn’t going to die alone on the ice.
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