for aureliapriscus
"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
Carson glanced over, and resisted rolling his eyes. He tapped at the PC tablet on the table before him, and said only, "Mm-hm."
"Seriously," Rodney said, leaning forward. "You could calculate my lifespan with the number, size, and..and..ambient temperature of coffee spoons I've used."
"That's nice, dear," Carson said, nodding as though he weren't listening. There was a pause, then Carson yelped as a spoon hit him sharply across the knuckles. "For god's sake, Rodney!"
"Listen to me," Rodney began.
"Or what, you'll break my fingers? That's a fine way to encourage a person." He looked at his knuckles, seeing them turning red. Not going to bruise, he could tell, which he thought was a pity. Nothing like being able to show the bruises to Rodney for the next day or so, and explain to everyone how he'd been beaten.
"I'm trying to explain how it's possible to calculate--"
"Rodney." Carson pushed the tablet aside and leaned forward, giving Rodney his full, undivided attention. "I have a meeting in half an hour. If I've not finished reading everyone's reports, I'm going to have to make them give me full summaries during the meeting. This will make the meeting take three times as long. Which means I won't be able to get away until right before lunch, which is when you're due for your pre-mission briefing. So I'll not see you until you come back from off-world, which means -- if you don't stop interrupting me, neither of us is going to have any sex until next week, rather than an hour and a half from now."
Rodney stared back at him. Throughout Carson's explanation he'd started several times to interrupt, but Carson had long ago learned to simply keep talking. At his conclusion, however, Rodney's mouth snapped shut and he nodded. He made a go-ahead gesture at Carson's tablet, and Carson gave him a nod.
"Thank you."
There was silence for two minutes, before Rodney said, "I suppose you could also use coffee mugs, but if you consider that very occasionally Radek steals my mug before it's empty, it wouldn't be quite as accurate. You could get close, though, because after I broke his CanCon game and made him start over, he's been avoiding me."