FIC: "Contraflow" (SGA) Cadman. McKay.
May. 18th, 2006 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Title: Contraflow
Author: Lobelia;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Lt Laura Cadman. Dr Rodney McKay. Also features Drs Katie Brown, Carson Beckett, and Radek Zelenka.
Summary: Whoa. Being a man is like, whoa. In fact, it's more like double whoa.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Rating: 18
Length: c. 14,000 words.
Spoilers: Series 2, Episode 4, 'Duet'.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I am not making money. I did not invent these characters.
Thanks to:isiscolo for humblingly thorough beta, Ameripicking, and for the sticks and bones, and sheldrake for the beating heart, and phineasjones for last-minute wonderbeta. All remaining errors are my own.
For those who do not know these people: Pics . :-)
Posted in two parts to accommodate LJ word limits. This is Part One.
Linked to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sga_noticeboard and mckay_cadman.
Contraflow
by Lobelia
My name is Laura Cadman. I am a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, stationed at the intergalactic base of Atlantis and currently, I am trapped inside the body of Dr Rodney McKay.
Thursday
Whoa.
Being a man is like, whoa.
In fact, it's more like double whoa.
I am so totally not used to this.
It reminds me of when I was little and wanted to be a boy. I used to wear jeans and my brothers' football shirts, and everything had to be blue or green. Never, ever pink. And never, ever anything in the hair, any ribbon or scrunchie or bobby pin. Mom hated that. She'd been so sick of nothing but boys, and I was going to be her little special girl. Except I wasn't. Frilly socks? Nope. Patent leather strappy shoes? No, siree, not me. Ballet class and Barbie dolls? I chained the Barbies to the backs of the Action Man motorbikes and dragged them through the dirt until their heads came off.
Also, I cut my hair. That one time when I was nine. With the kitchen scissors.
It felt a bit like McKay's hair feels on me now. McKay can shake his head and nothing happens, nothing bobs, nothing flies in his eyes, nothing swishes round the back of the neck. The hair is invisible; it's just sort of there. And it's not even tied back, either.
The thing is, even though it's kind of cool to finally be a boy, a man, what I wanted to be all those years ago; the thing is, even though that's interesting, to see what it's like-- why, of all men, does it have to be Dr Rodney McKay?
I mean, look at the guy!
If I had my choice, if I could be any man at all, I would not be Rodney McKay. I would be, hell, I'd be, I don't know. Colonel Sheppard would be good, or that Ronon guy, man, that would be something. Those guys have got muscle and they kick ass and they strut around, being manly and all. They're what I joined this freaking outfit for, so I'd get to wear those snazzy boots and those out-of-this-world combat suits. So I'd get to strut and swear and shoot the bejeesus out of alien badasses.
Not to be stuck in some kind of flabby excuse for a bod!
And it's flabby, all right. He doesn't even know it is, he doesn't care. But I know. I feel it. There's flesh up around the belt, it moves when he walks. When we walk. And when he undoes the belt, it all sort of goes gloomph and relaxes down and out. I did not go running for two hours every day for the past eight years so that my tummy can go gloomph when I take my belt off! It's gross, that's what it is. It is totally off-putting.
I do not know what that Katie Brown sees in him. I have no idea. You wouldn't catch me wasting a Friday night on a date with Rodney McKay.
Friday morning
So what's with this waking-up shit? Does this happen to him every day?
He gets up, and there it is: low-level headache.
Now, I haven't had a headache since that time in high school when I fell off the rappelling cliff at Brandon Gorge that one time because me and Freddie, we had a bet that we didn't need to secure all the carabiners, just the front-locking ones. Plus, we didn't wear helmets. That was part of the bet, too. So no wonder. Nine-foot drop. Could've been worse.
But McKay: he isn't dropping off any cliffs. All he's done is sleep. He should be rested and raring to go. Ten miles before breakfast, I could do that, easy. And then some nice orange-and-grapefruit juice, or what passes for orange-and-grapefruit juice around these parts, to go with a huge bowl of raisin bran and a double helping of...
No, we're not doing that, it seems. No running. No stretching, even. No pre-breakfast exercise at all. It's straight into the shower. Well, that's something at least. At least we're going to keep clean here.
He keeps his boxers on in the shower.
"McKay," I tell him. "Do not keep your boxers on in the shower."
"What? What?" He still gets startled every time I say something. He drops the soap and bangs his temple on the shower head, and ow, that hurts. I felt that, too. Then he's scrambling round for the soap and oops, are those his feet? I haven't yet seen McKay's feet up close. Weird: they don't look at all like my own feet.
"It's unhygienic," I inform him. "You can't wash properly with your boxers on. You've got to take them off."
"I am not taking off my underwear," says McKay. No, he doesn't say that; he snaps that. "And that is final."
I roll my eyes inside his brain but whoa, maybe I was rolling them a little too forcefully because now the shower cubicle is rotating like it's in a Hitchcock movie and I'm getting vertigo because that was unexpected.
"Don't do that!" yells McKay who's grabbing onto the shower curtain.
I want to grab on as well but it's a stupid idea, how is the shower curtain going to hold anyone up? I try to yank McKay's hand off the curtain but it seems my yanking isn't as forceful as my eye-rolling. Nothing happens. He stays grabbed onto the shower curtain, and then he doesn't because the whole shebang just sort of rips off in slow motion and falls onto his head; and now I can't see anything, the world's gone blue with yellow flowers all over it.
"Never," McKay says in a voice muffled by plastic, "never talk to me in the shower again."
"Okay, okay," I say. "Geez. I'm just thinking of health issues here."
"Kindly leave my health to me, and no, I do not want you ogling me in... in the nude. It's bad enough having no privacy at all. I want to preserve at least some vestiges of dignity."
"You know, it isn't as if I've never seen a man's naked genitals before."
That was not the right thing to say. That gets him really mad, tearing at the curtain and making a sort of growling noise, and there's water dripping into my eyes and soap going up my nose.
So we're out of the shower, only half clean, and the headache's gotten worse. It's kind of throbbing now, above both ears. I don't like the feel of it at all, and I'm thinking, this is so the wrong kind of body to be trapped in, this is the worst kind of body. And there's a sort of pressure as well, down below the navel, darned if I know what it is.
Oh. I know what it is.
I grin. He's got to take off his boxers some time.
I can't remember how we got through this yesterday. Bed pan? I don't know. I was still in a daze, in the infirmary, still sort of concussed. If you can be concussed without even having a freaking head. But now? I'm all there, oh yeah, and this is going to be interesting.
McKay is not taking his boxers off even now. His, I should add, sodden boxers. That are highly uncomfortable, all clingy and cold and riding up his crack. My crack. Because I can feel that, and it's not pleasant.
"Okay. Why are you sitting down to pee?"
"I always sit down. Do you mind?"
"Well, as it happens, I always sit down, too. So no, I don't mind. I was just wondering, you know, what it feels like to do it standing up."
"I am not your personal trans-sexual human experiment. And will you stop talking to me while I'm in here, going about my morning ablutions, because this is really, really not the time nor the place, so can we just get on with it? I mean can I just get on with it?"
"Yeah, of course. Go right ahead."
"Thank you."
He's not taking off his boxers. He's sitting on the can and he's groping round inside his shorts, through his fly, and pulling out his...
Whoa.
We have touch.
So that's what Dr Rodney McKay's dick feels like in Dr Rodney McKay's hand.
He's got hold of himself between the tips of thumb and index finger.
He's very careful not to grab more. Because he doesn't want me to feel it, that's why, I just bet that's why. And he's very careful not to look down. Because he doesn't want me to see it, either. All I can see is the wall across from the john, made not of tiles but of that weird styrofoamy stuff that you get so much of at this place, some sort of intercosmic fibre thing. So I'm staring at the white foamy stuff, and down below, there's a hot stream of piss whooshing out, and it doesn't feel so much different than when I was still a girl.
Then he shakes it (and yeah, that's a bit different), and now that I'm attuned to it, I can feel it wobbling around inside his boxers as he gets up. And okay, that is strange.
I bet there's pee all over the toilet what with him not looking but he's out of that bathroom in a shot -- "Hey, aren't you going to wash your hands?" "What do you think I am, do you think I tinkle on my hands?" --, and he did say 'tinkle'. Which is hilarious.
I guess.
All of a sudden I'm missing my pussy. Now, who'd have thought it?
Thankfully, he finally loses the wet boxers and puts on dry ones, staring resolutely at the ceiling all the while, and then he's dressed, and his pants are tight so that jiggly-wobbly sensation stops and we're sort of back to normal.
Sort of.
'Cause the pants are also kind of constraining, the fabric is pressing against his dick in all the wrong places, and the balls too, my oh my. I'd never really thought about the balls before but there they are, taking up a surprising amount of space inside of those poly-velcro or whatever they're made of civilian pants of his, and how do guys ever manage without kilts?
Ah, that's better. So that's what you do. You need to bend your knees a little and hoick and grab and pat everything around a bit, and then it snuggles into place and yes, we're good to go.
He hasn't even noticed he's just done that, has he?
Because he's all intent on walking now. He's walking very fast. His walk is different than what I'm used to, his hips move differently, and the knee joints are somehow attached in an unfamiliar way to the thighs. But it gets him around very fast and before I know it, we're in the mess hall and making a bee line for...
... the coffee.
"Oh no, you don't! I'm not having that in me first thing in the morning! Caffeine is so unhealthy; people think it gives them a shot but it only lasts for like, a half hour, it causes cancer, it's totally acidic and fantastically bad for your stomach lining and..."
Gulp. Gulp.
I guess Rodney McKay doesn't give a crap's ass about his stomach lining because he's pouring that stuff down my gullet like nobody's business.
And hooray! The headache has stopped.
This man must really be addicted.
"You must really be addicted," I tell him. "You've got to break this habit. I mean, it's giving you headaches, you're having withdrawal symptoms..."
"You are too right that I am having withdrawal symptoms. I am having withdrawal symptoms from my life! And no, we are not going in that direction, why are you trying to make me approach the fruit tray? I cannot ingest citrus, you know that I'm allergic, I've mentioned this a thousand times already."
"It is so much healthier than that caffeine shit. You're poisoning yourself! Every day! And poisoning me! Yes, me, because now that I'm in you, I get poisoned as well."
"Oh, spare me your sermonising. Isn't it enough that I am stuck with you in my head? Do I have to listen to your whining all day, as well? Can't we just have breakfast with at least some semblance of peace and quiet?"
"Well, it's not just you stuck with me. I am stuck in you. You know that? I didn't ask to be here, and let me tell you this is one hell of a crappy body to be stuck in."
His voice goes all calm when he replies, but I know he's not calm because I can feel his heart buzzing like a killer bee, and his breath is shallow. "Now, Cadman," he says, all calm and slow but with his heart going badoomph, badoomph. "I would really be very grateful if you stopped making personal remarks in that infantile way. Especially personal remarks about my body which, might I remind you, is the only body you've got at the moment so why don't you just be grateful for it and be a good quiet girl and let me get on with the important things so that we can maybe, just maybe, rescue this hellforsaken situation?"
"You're just being stubborn. I bet it's not a real allergy. It's probably just a trick of the mind."
"I am not being stubborn!" he yells, so loud that a dozen heads swivel round and someone drops their plate with a clang. "It is not a trick of the mind!"
Friday, early afternoon
It is not a trick of the mind.
We're sick as dogs. We just about made it to the bathroom after that post-lunch siesta during which I snuck out to get my fix of grapefruit juice, it's not as though it was a lot, just a tiny sip; and it's not even real grapefruit, either, just some weird off-world substitute. But, boy, was that a mistake, because now I'm hanging onto the toilet bowl for dear life. There's sweat on my neck, my stomach muscles are convulsing, and green and yellow spots are dancing the polka across my eyeballs.
"Jesus, Cadman, you're a full-blown hell of an idiot." McKay presses the words out through gritted teeth.
I am even willing to concede this. I don't get the chance to say anything, though, because now we're vomiting into the toilet bowl.
Shit, this feels so not good.
"I swear, Cadman," he gasps. "You making me suffer like this..."
"Don't worry, it's my allergy too, now. I'm suffering, too."
"Good," he says, "good." And then we both zonk out on the bathroom mat.
Friday afternoon
Figures. He just isn't fit enough. Not as fit as me, anyhow.
So it figures that he'd be out cold for longer. Me, I've woken up and I'm lying here on the mat, staring at the shower from below, seeing everything upside down, the shower head and the curtain all off its rails. It's not very entertaining but he's still too weak to get up; I tried. So I make McKay lift his hand instead.
I hold up his hand and I look at it.
I will the thumb to fold inwards. The thumb folds inwards.
I will the hand to make a fist. The hand makes a fist.
I will the hand to flip a bird. The hand flips me a bird.
It is very strange. This is not my hand. And yet it is my hand. I always thought I knew my hand inside out. 'I know it like the back of my hand'. Dumb expression. Who knows the back of their hand?
Seems I do, though. Did. Now that it isn't my back of the hand any more, I really notice. I remember, too, how it should look. It shouldn't have a vein there, and there shouldn't be so much of the fleshy pads showing above the fingernails, and the joints shouldn't be so wrinkly. My thumb shouldn't hook over like that, and my fingernails are always just a little bit bitten. These fingernails are short and smooth and kind of pink, and the middle fingernail has white spots on it. Calcium deficiency. There are wisps of hair all across the back of the hand, and up the forearm as well.
I turn the hand over. Even the lines in the palm, it's like looking at an alien hand.
It's spooking me out. I put the hand away and I stare at the shower head.
After a while, I raise the hand up again and start biting the side of the thumb.
The hand feels big and warm against my mouth.
It's a weird hand. It's an okay hand. But damn it all to fucking hell, it's not my hand.
Friday, early evening
There's something that I haven't told McKay.
He's striding along through the corridors, and for once, I don't care, I'm just along for the ride right now. I've got some happy thoughts to occupy me, and I'm just hanging on in here, thinking my happy thoughts, my gleeful thoughts, because I pulled one over McKay; oh, this is going to be so good.
Thing is, when I snuck out while McKay was having his siesta in my brain? I didn't only go and drink that juice, okay, which was a mega-stupid thing to do, I see that now. But I also did something else, hee, it's making me giggle inside. I went to see Beckett, Dr Beckett, Dr Carson Beckett, in the infirmary. And I invited him along to this date of McKay's later on tonight.
So yeah. If I had a face, I'd be grinning all over it.
And because of the grinning to myself inside McKay's head, I'm not really so bothered right now about being schlepped all over Atlantis, into transporters and out of them, along corridors and along some more corridors; he knows places in this city that I didn't even know existed. But then he's been here much longer than me.
One thing, though. I have to say it is really cool to have the Ancient gene.
The way he doesn't even have to lift his hand to open doors. I mean, I thought it was amazing that all you had to do was wave your hand across some glowing panels and make doors open and lights turn on but the gene is something else entirely. Oh boy, that gene thing is so awesome. Here, for example, here we are at a door, big huge door, more like a warehouse gate, and all he has to do is think at it. I can feel him thinking at it. There's a sort of jolt in his thoughts. No, not a jolt, more like a reshuffling. First time I noticed it, I was like ooh, what was that? And once he's done this shuffling, it's like the thought sort of goes out of his head into the door, and whoosh, that door just glides right open. We march through, and he's going shuffle in his head, doesn't even stop, just keeps on marching, and I can hear the door whooshing shut behind.
Awesome.
Faucets, too. Just thinks at them and water spurts out. Lights. Air conditioning. Toilets flushing. Those dimmer things on the windows. Computer displays. It's brilliant! It's magic!
So where are we now? Aha, I know. This is the hangar. Dr Zelenka's hangar.
We are in this hangar seventeen million times a day. I getting so sick of this hangar. And we see Dr Zelenka seventeen million times a day, too. I barely even knew how to pronounce his name before, when I was still me, but now, since yesterday, we've been practically joined at the hip.
I think I'll just try to relax and think my happy Dr-Beckett-thoughts. Because once those two, McKay and Dr Zelenka get talking, I might as well be in a coma; they talk a mile a minute, they shout and they wave their arms, and what they yadda on about makes about as much sense to me as parakeets yacking. And they never explain anything. You want to ask a question, they just yell at you to shut up. Well, McKay does; Zelenka stops and waits, and then starts up again a minute later, blabbering at the speed of sound.
Well, let the shouting roll, and the arm waving, and the blathering on about I don't know what. I can't understand four-fifths of the things that come out of my mouth when I'm in this hangar so it's easy to tune them out.
To tune them out and think about Dr Beckett.
I have to say that before, when I was still me, I didn't see Dr Beckett an awful lot. I'm not the kind of person to get sick a lot. I'm never sick, heck, I don't even get menstrual cramps. But there was that time when we were together for a bit, right after I saved his life. When we were out on that planet, can't remember the name of it now, some long string of numbers and letters. And when I'd hacked that six-foot tall man-eating plant to death, if you can hack a plant to death, with my standard-issue machete. Just after that, with the tendrils wrapped around him and his shirt sort of torn and when he still had plant juices dripping down his face and looked like something hatched by that mother from Aliens. He sort of looked at me then. A look look.
And god, does he have a pair of gorgeous eyes.
And the way his eyebrows sort of slope across the top of his eyes. And the way his hair curves around the top of his ears. And that three-day beard, and that cute little pompadour, and those hands, and those eyes, oh my, those eyes.
Now, of course, I see Dr Beckett ten times a day, but he never looks at me anymore. He looks right through me, and he just says, "Rrrodney."
Like I'm not even there.
Actually, it's not just him, either. Come to think of it. It's everybody.
It is quite amazing how men look at men in a different way than how men look at women.
Or how men look at McKay, I should say. I've got no idea, after all, how men look at men in general but the way that they look at McKay? That is very different to how men look at me.
Looked.
Even men who I didn't like and who didn't like me. They still looked at me, I don't know, they acknowledged me as a woman. And now they just sort of stare through me. Or around me. Or.
It makes me feel like a ghost. Like I've lost my outline. Like I'm part of the decor on the walls.
So I'm hoping that it'll be better tonight. I'm hoping it so much. That Dr Beckett will somehow see me. He knows, after all. He knows all about me being trapped inside McKay. He knows that this isn't my real body but that the real me is in here, somewhere, and surely he'll remember, once we're out of that depressing infirmary environment and in nicer surroundings. Maybe there'll be candles, and flowers... No, what am I thinking? There aren't going to be any flowers because if there were going to be flowers, McKay would have to be bringing them, and when I said, "McKay, why don't you take her some flowers?", he snorted and said, "Cadman, she's a botanist. What would she want with flowers?"
I never heard anything so dumb in my life.
Anyway, here we are, doing the shouting and the waving and the mouth compressing, oh yeah, we have to do the mouth compressing, it seems. We do that mouth compressing so much that my cheeks start to feel like they're stuck in a nutcracker. And then suddenly it's all quiet, and I tune back in, and there's Dr Zelenka.
And yeah. He's looking at me all right.
I know that look. That is a real look. It is so much of a real look that it goes right through my eyes and down past my throat into my stomach, McKay's stomach, and there it settles, whoomph, above his flabby waistline.
But McKay, does he notice anything?
Nope.
Guy's as thick as a three-foot brick wall.
No, thicker.
There's this moment of quiet but it turns out that's only because of me. Because I've been so dumbstruck by that look of Dr Zelenka's. That sort of lost look, with the fluorescent lights reflecting off his glasses; maybe it's those lights that are making his eyes look lost.
But then I remember myself, and McKay continues shouting and waving and lip-compressing, and I'm here, inside his head, kind of reeling. Kind of thinking, whoa, if it wasn't for Dr Beckett. And then remembering, double whoa, this one's not for me.
This one seems to be looking at me but he's actually looking at McKay.
Friday evening
Finally, we're on our way. I'm so excited! And so is McKay, hah. I can feel it. I can feel his pulse racing, shoom shoom. Or is that my pulse? Hard to tell.
Five more minutes and I'll be having dinner with Dr Beckett!
But McKay. What am I going to do about McKay? And what is he wearing? But would he take my advice? You bet not. I mean, running shoes! Who wears running shoes on a date? And tuck in your shirt, man, don't let it flop over your belt, that's what Boy Scouts do; it's bad enough that the shirt looks like it's from the discount rack at K-Mart. I guess, though, that what with the flabby belly and all it might even be better to let the shirt hang out, but at least do up the jacket buttons!
What on Earth, and what on Atlantis, does Katie Brown see in him? It must be some sort of power thing. It can't be anything else. She must be one of those civilians who fall for sciencey authority, and what with him being the right-hand man of Dr Weir and the smartest guy in two galaxies and wow, look, he gets to go off-world and I don't, poor me, I just get to sit in my lab with the plant specimens he brings back for me. Or not.
Plant specimens? Flowers? Chocolate? Not even a bottle of anything.
But Katie Brown, she didn't just agree to this date thing out of pity. She was really excited. And I know! I saw!
You wouldn't think it to look at her. All prim and proper. 'Proper little madam', is what Mom calls girls like her. I mean, don't get me wrong. Katie's a sweetie and all but she is just a teensy weensy bit buttoned-up. The way she got all shy at the girls' poker night when she was down to just her bra and panties. What did she think strip poker was? Not that she's got anything to hide. I don't get what she's so uptight about. I mean, those tits, they are fabulous. They are pert.
She got them out in the end. Just needed to get enough vodka in her. All shy and prim at first but then later, after the panties had gone flying one way and the bra another, whoa, that girl was crazy. With her cheeks all red and her hair like whoosh, and she's biting down on one strand, chewing her own hair, and she's giggling, "Ooh, girls, girls, I've got a date, with Dr McKay!"
Huh. Little does she know.
And yes! We're here! This is it! This is the door to Katie Brown's quarters!
Ring the chimes, you dolt. Don't just beam your gene at the door and barge on in!
Friday evening, some time later
Okay. Not a good idea.
Bad idea. Terrible idea. Excruciating idea.
This so-called 'date'. What was I thinking?
Things are so totally screwed. Inviting Dr Beckett along as a fourth wheel: so not a great idea. Third wheel. Whatever. I'm the fourth wheel. I'm the fifth fucking wheel, I'm the spare wheel, I might as well not be here, this is so, so, so not a good situation.
McKay might be a genius in the astrophysics department but where women are concerned? Hopeless. Absolutely rock-bottom hopeless. Marching in like he owns the place. Wolfing down the salad without so much as a 'how-de-do'. Babbling on in a completely ridiculous way. Slugging that wine down like nobody's business.
Somebody, help. Get me out of here.
I'll just have to take over. I'll take over, and I know, I'll make McKay get up and walk on over and give Katie Brown the kiss of a lifetime, show the man how it's done! And then I'm out of here.
Friday night
"Turn around," he says. "Turn around. We're heading back."
"No, we're not." Is he insane?
"Yes, we are. I need to get back there immediately. I need to explain! I need to apologise!"
"Apologise?" Nuts, truly nuts. "For what?"
"For what? For the appalling, the absolutely spectacularly inappropriate behaviour..."
"Inappropriate? You kissing Katie? Come on, how was that 'inappropriate'? Or 'appalling'? That was probably the one time in your life that you were being truly honest with a woman."
"Excuse me, what do you know about my life? What would you know about what's inappropriate or appalling in my life? You're sadly mistaken if you think that my idea of so-called honesty is practically assaulting a woman, making unwanted advances..."
"Oh, c'mon, she liked it. I could tell she liked it! Didn't you feel the way she kissed you back? How she was getting all soft in your arms and opening up her mouth and..."
"This is not what I want to talk about."
"And you liked it, too. Don't pretend you didn't."
"I did not like it. I do not like being invaded by my own body!"
"You did like it, McKay. I could feel that you liked it! I could feel your horny hard-on."
And that makes him shut up. That makes him shut up good. Who's he trying to kid, anyway? Without me there, he'd never have done anything about it. He'd just have gone on sitting there and stuffing lettuce into his face. And anyone could tell she was up for it. She was practically gagging for it! Also, I thought, if I say so myself, that I did quite a good job there, with the kissing technique and all. I bet he, left to his own devices, would not have had a fifth of that kissing technique. I bet he's one of those guys who grunt and who slobber when kissing, and yeah, he should thank me for having spared Katie Brown the grunting and the slobbering!
But no. He's not saying anything. He marches into his room, he thinks the door shut, and then he takes a few heaving breaths, like he's trying to calm himself down, and then he says:
"Cadman," he says, "it pains me to have to say this but..." And what, is his voice literally cracking now? "...you are not a lady."
What?
Stomping into the bathroom, flinging open the toilet lid, pissing in a great big arc, clearly not caring what I'm seeing any longer, not even bothering to sit down.
"Just because I call a spade a spade!" I shout at the inside of his head.
Throwing cold water on my face, ouch, that was unexpected, and then lathering up with the toothpaste and spitting into the basin, leaving globs of toothpastey spit on the faucets.
"What century are you living in, anyway?" I yell inwardly. "What galaxy are you living in? Lady! Lady! Do I look like I wear a long bustly skirt?"
His mouth is set in that grim line that makes my jaw hurt. He's kicking his shoe across the room, and then he tries to kick the other shoe; he hits his ankle with the freaking shoe but he's not cursing, I'm cursing, I'm going hell for leather. He just bends and picks up the shoes, the running shoes, and then he arranges them side by side next to his chair, and then he's in bed, and I'm still yelling:
"Next you'll be opening doors for me! Pulling out chairs! I'm a fucking lieutenant of the United States Marine Corps, and this is just a crock of crap I don't need, especially from a jumped-up, uptight civilian who can barely string two words together when sitting across from a so-called 'lady', and what do you think that is I carry around with me, do you think that's what ladies carry, a P-90? In their sequined purses, perhaps?"
But he's out. Like a light. Just like that. And I'm left hanging, fuming, raging. He's managed to shut me out, I don't know how he did that, but now he's asleep, I can't fucking believe this.
I'm not asleep. I'm seething.
I'm staring at his pillow because, of course, he's on his front, and I hate it when he does that, just throws himself on his bed, face-down, who sleeps like that? I mean, why does anybody need a special orthopaedic mattress for their back when all they do is sleep on their front and dig my nose into the sheets?
I wrench my brain into gear and I make his body get up.
I pace. I'm pacing around his room. How did I get into such a state? I don't know why I'm in such a state. It's him, he's the one who should be in a state.
Stupid shoes. This is the second time that I've tripped over them.
I pick them up and I chuck them at the wall, first one, then the other. Kerthunk.
Okay. What is this? Why am I in this state? And I am in a state. It damn well got to me when he called me not a lady. It's the stupidest feeling ever. I don't even want to be a lady, it's the last thing I want to be. So why am I getting into such a state when he's telling me I'm not one? I mean, what does he think I joined the army for, huh? To traipse around in high heels and bat my eyelashes? To have doors opened for me and the man walking on the street-side of the pavement to protect me from the big bad cars? I can open my own freaking doors, and I am here to protect men like him from big bad things, and...
...and come to think of it, McKay is actually the last man on Earth to open anybody's door or pull out anybody's chair. And if a girl batted her eyelashes at him, I don't think he'd even notice. The stupid dolt.
I've started to chew on his thumb nail.
This is no good. I'm going to have to go running. To calm myself down.
Where are those shoes of his? Can't see a thing in this stupid room; does the gene work even when he's asleep? Not going to risk it. I just turn on the lamp manually.
There are the shoes, lying around where I threw them. I sit down on the bed to lace them up, left shoe, right shoe, tricky actually, you wouldn't think it'd take so long to put on a simple pair of lace-ups. And it's good that they're running shoes because, yeah, I am going to go running.
The bed's still warm with the warmth of his body. His, mine. I put my hand on the warm dent in the pillow. I look at the night stand. There's an alarm there, a mug with some kind of picture on it, an unchewed apple, a photo in a frame. I pick it up: it's a picture of a white fluffy cat.
He's got a cat? Guy like McKay? You'd figure he'd be allergic to cats.
That's the only photo on his night stand.
His desk is pretty empty, not even a laptop, not like his workstation at the labs. There's a pair of sunglasses in a case. I put them on; the room turns brown. They feel expensive; I bet they've got some sort of state-of-the-art polarised lenses. There are two desk lamps here, another apple, his headset. A wool hat. I put it on; it's snug and itchy. It smells funny. There's also another framed picture, a black and white photo of two people, guy and girl, I've got no idea who they are. They look like something from long ago through the sunglasses, like one of those old sepia photographs. The guy and the girl, they're standing in front of what looks like a barn; they're both squinting because, I guess, the sun's in their eyes. There's a shadow on the barn wall: the photographer.
McKay? I look at the shadow for quite a while. I imagine him taking that picture, holding the camera, standing with his legs apart so that the camera won't wobble, pressing the shutter, telling them not to move or to move closer together. One of them coming to take a picture of him. All of them putting the camera on a rock and taking a self-timer picture, with their arms around each other.
But those other pictures aren't the ones that he chose to take with him to Atlantis.
And maybe they weren't even taken. Maybe that's just me, making things up.
I take off the hat. I put back the photo. I put back the glasses. I go running.
Friday, before midnight
This is nice, this night-time run. This is okay. I've missed this but oh boy, this body is out of shape. Just fifteen minutes and already he, I , we are huffing and puffing and there's a pain shooting up through my left hip but hell. We've just got to start back at square one and get on with it. Get the heart rate up, get the blood pumping.
Get the brain thinking. Get the thoughts calming down.
That's what I like about running, it gives the brain a chance to clear. And my brain needs clearing because my brain is full of darned Rodney McKay. And Katie Brown. And Dr Carson Beckett. And what McKay said and what he didn't say, and what Dr Beckett didn't say. And that hell of a date.
And Katie Brown's pert little tits, crushed up against my chest.
McKay's chest.
It'd be nice to have my boobs back. They're not fantastic boobs or anything. They're not anything special, but still.
And he did so have a hard-on. I don't care what he says. And it felt weird. In fact, it creeped me out. Not that I wanted to admit that to him. Never. But it was, and it did.
And Katie Brown swooning at him, like he was god's gift or something. But only right at the end. Only when he was kissing her.
When I was kissing her.
And all the time the person I really wanted to be kissing was sitting right there, sitting at the table, being shocked and saying nothing and not looking at me.
I mean, he knew I was in there, right?
Okay, this is hard to think about. Because maybe, what with being in another galaxy and battling alien life-sucking monsters and missing Mom more than I ever thought I would and being like, not the only woman in the marine outfit but pretty much... What with all that, it was just a nice sort of thing to have a little, only a very little, a teensy weensy crush on Dr Carson Beckett.
So what is hard is this: the disappointment.
Maybe wasn't fair on Dr Beckett to have to sit there and watch McKay make a fool of himself. But couldn't he have done more? Couldn't he have said something, at least?
There was McKay, basically running into open fire. I knew McKay was clueless but I didn't think, I didn't want to admit, that Dr Beckett was clueless. When we all sat around and nobody said a word. I mean, geez, at least McKay tried to make conversation. But Dr Beckett, and for that matter, Katie Brown, too: they just sat there like stunned mullets.
He was, after all, supposed to be there to be helping his friend. Not stealing his friend's date! And did he do any helping, actually and for that matter? I don't remember anything particularly helpful. I don't remember him doing anything at all! It was McKay who was doing all the doing! Telling Katie Brown that she was funny! That she was smart! Toasting the salad, for chrissake! That's what he was doing, toasting the fucking salad, and he doesn't even like salad, he can't stand the stuff. That little clenched moment when he first spotted the huge bowl of greenery but then he just bravely plunged in; that was like saying, hey, see, I'm making an effort here, is anybody else??
I've got a splitting headache and a mouth that's as dry as a shithouse brick.
Come to think of it, a night-time run was perhaps not the best idea after all. I am hung-over and short of sleep.
That McKay. He can definitely not hold his liquor.
I slow down. On my way back, I come past Katie Brown's door.
I actually stop and for a second there, I'm even considering knocking. Maybe apologising.
But no. Dumb. She'll be deep asleep by now.
Except not because what's that sound? That's the sound of Katie laughing. She's there inside her quarters, laughing at something in the middle of the night.
And that, that is the sound of someone else laughing along with her, someone else who's a man.
O my god. I am so stupid.
"Up late, sir?" someone says, and I stare, and I don't even know who it is, some kid who was in training with me ages ago.
I stumble down the corridor. Half-way across the north-south bridge, I sink down and have a rest for a bit, just sitting there, waiting for the nausea to pass. Nobody's around up here; the yellow lights on the pillars go blink, blink, there's a hum from behind one of the doors, it's getting louder and louder, it's inside my head.
Nausea. Pins and needles. And now I've got the shakes because there's numbers in my head, long strings of them. They float around and they arrange themselves in columns, some of them look wrong, some of them look beautiful, I want to cry.
But no. No.
That'd wake him up.
In front of his door, I panic. The door is closed, it's locked, and there's no manual override, I let it fall shut behind me, now what? Now? What?
Just. I close my eyes. Focus. Focus. If I think about it hard enough and in a certain way, in a sort of slanted way, I can do this, I can open this door.
Open. In. Lights out. Lie down.
The bed's cold now, and this is incredibly stupid.
I can't believe it, I can't believe it. Katie Brown! Why would she do such a thing? Who'd invite one man round, and then end up with another one? What is with that? And Dr Beckett! All this about how I'm such a lovely lady... yeah, there's another one who goes on about ladies, oh, fuck the lot of them.
And come to think of it, how the hell do I know he hates salad? Only the pasta kind, that's the only kind of salad he can stand, but not anything green and leafy. Rabbit food. Fodder.
But I know it. I remember it. I remember saying, 'Rabbit food', and spitting out some bitter leaves that I was fed by villagers off-world, I remember always choosing the non-salad option in the school cafeteria, I remember a cute little girl with dimples and short hair, I remember having a hard-on for her, just like the hard-on I had earlier, and having to hide it because I didn't want her to know, how embarrassing was that.
Oh god, and the numbers keep going round and round in my head.
The pillow is wet, and it's wet with my own sweat. Our sweat.
Saturday morning
We're lurching into the mess hall, with gums like mould and bones that feel like they've been drowned in acid. Coffee, coffee, where is that coffee?
He drinks down one mug, just standing by the machine. After the second refill, I'm starting to feel vaguely human again.
He's not looking round the room but I can tell, out of the corners of his eyes, that Dr Beckett and Katie Brown are nowhere to be seen.
I want to be sick; instead, I have to eat a cream donut. How disgusting is that?
But I'm keeping my trap shut. I just put up with it. The coffee feels good, anyway; and good that we're having another mugful.
The thing about being stuck in somebody's body: you can't get away.
You can't stomp off. You can't shout and scream and then bang down the phone. You can't even say, 'Let's talk about this later', and go and do the laundry or something.
What you do is, you scream and shout, and then you seethe, and then you just have to get on with it.
Also, it's getting kind of lonely in here.
"Yes," he suddenly says, and I'm a bit startled because he hasn't been saying much at all, he's been unusually silent, he's pissed at me, that's what. But now he's saying something, and he's saying, "The thing about being stuck in someone's body is that you can't get away."
"What?"
"The thing about being stuck..."
"No, no, I mean, no kidding. Hang on. I didn't just say that out aloud, did I?"
"Say what out aloud?" He's talking through the donut so that crumbs spatter on the plastic tray and that's kind of gross but I don't say anything, I don't say a word, I'm too busy freaking out.
After that, I try not to think anything, in case he reads my mind again, or whatever it was he was doing back there. I just lay low. I let myself be transported to the transporters and to, hey, what do you know, to Dr Zelenka's hangar. And we're being shown some fried mice and some data whizzing past on a screen top but I'm frightened I'll start understanding all those columns of numbers so I try to stay numb, I try to think blank thoughts.
I almost fall asleep. I'm zoning out, and then I'm solving the epicanthic square root of 103, and see? It's not correlated to the erroneous Sanchez Theorem, you have got that all wrong, Radek, the looped Lutz is the fallback position here.
I jerk fully awake.
"What?" says McKay. "What was that?"
I stare at the monitor but it's just columns of numbers again, it means nothing, it's gobbledygook.
I force myself to uncouple. I unfocus my, well not my eyes, but my sort of inner eyes. And the numbers shift in front of the outer eyes, and god, they mean something. They are beautiful numbers, they form beautiful patterns, except for that one glitch down here, the loop, I told you the loop was flawed.
"The loop is not flawed," says Dr Zelenka. "You are proceeding from alpha beta omega but I have calibrated the epicanthem from delta; I did this yesterday, I changed the algorithm."
"You what?" says McKay, and too right, he what?
All of a sudden, I notice Dr Zelenka's thigh.
We're sitting on stools, next to each other, quite close really, and there's Dr Zelenka's thigh, right next to our own leg, I can feel the warmth of his skin through the pants fabric.
It's a bit scary, understanding all these numbers where I never understood them before. I mean, I'm okay at math, I'm not bad at all but I never even heard of all these epi-whatevers before and it's playing around with my brain, that's what it is. I don't like it. In fact, it terrifies the bejeesus out of me. Better, much better to notice Dr Zelenka's thigh and hey, maybe it's about time we did something about this.
I power up my will and I make us put our hand on Dr Zelenka's thigh.
Whoa.
That produced a reaction.
It's like an electric bolt just shot through Dr Zelenka.
He stops talking, and he stares at the monitor, not moving, not saying anything. But I can feel all of his insides shaking, they're all vibrating through his thigh.
McKay's not saying anything, either. That's because he's desperately trying to snatch our hand away from Dr Zelenka's thigh. I can feel the tendons popping in our forearm but I'm not budging, I've got my will on this with an iron grip. Got to do something, something, everything's been such crap lately, everything's trapped in crap. And this, this is almost making me laugh out loud.
"Stop it," McKay mutters through gritted teeth.
"Just keep talking," I tell him inside, "just keep explaining those algorithms."
Heck, they're all wrong, anyway. Everything's shot all to hell and back again. We can't do this, we can't fix this, we are screwed.
"Okay, anyway, these configurations here, they need to be ratified to the power of ten..." And he's doing it, you've got to hand it to him, he is keeping on talking, and he is going on about those algorithms. We're waving our free hand at the screen and blathering on in double-time, and all the while our other hand is resting on Dr Zelenka's thigh, and yeah, that's kind of nice. That's a nice human warmth, sweet somehow, still shaking like anything, and suddenly I wish that somebody would just come up and give me a hug and say, 'Hey, it'll be all right, baby, it'll be fine', like Mom used to do when we were little, my brothers and me; and we'd get candy, that striped kind, I forget what they are called. We named them 'zebra food'.
'Cause that's another thing. Nobody hugs us now. Nobody hugs McKay; nobody touches McKay. Nobody, except Dr Beckett and that's only in a very clinical way.
How does he stand it?
Dr Zelenka still doesn't say a word, just sits there so quiet, like one of those mice he keeps doing tests on. I can't see what his face looks like because we're not moving our eyes in that direction. Our eyes are trained on the computer screen and I can't make them go elsewhere, I've got no energy left. In fact, I'm not even willing our hand to be on Dr Zelenka's thigh any longer, I've relaxed my iron grip.
But the hand is still there.
Hasn't he noticed that I'm not keeping it there? Are we too caught up in our numbers?
Dr Zelenka clears his throat.
We take away our hand. It feels warm; we flex the fingers.
"Look, Radek," we say, "I really think I need a rest. I'm not quite myself today, I'm... as it were." We wave our hands in the air and get up from the stool.
"Good, yes," says Dr Zelenka, and his voice sounds all wriggly. "No. You are not yourself. I understand." And then he just sits there, looking at us, looking right at us, him, at McKay. I've got no idea what's going through his head, maybe he's waiting for him to do something else, maybe he's hoping for an invitation to come along to the rest with him. But no, no, no, we are not going there.
"Yes," we say. "Right. Rest it is, then."
But it isn't, really. Because it's lunch time.
Saturday, lunch time
We're in the mess hall. We've had our lunch. We chose a sort of macaroni and cheese gloop. I thought about going for the salad, I really did; I always have the salad but no, we don't like salad, so, okay, let's not have salad, fine. We can have the cheesy gloop. And yes, we can have a dessert after, what do I care, hell in a hand basket, chocolate pudding, whatever.
"What is up with you today?" he says, in between one spoon of chocolate glop and the next. "At the best of times, you're enough to drive a man to drink, but this morning you have been positively jittery."
"Nothing is up! What should be up?"
"I can feel you jittering around in my head; I really wish you wouldn't. And that little stunt you pulled in the labs before..."
"Coffee!" I yell brightly. "Why don't we get more coffee, huh?"
It's when we're at the coffee machine for our second after-dessert mug that I see them.
Over on the far side, by the full-length windows, the ones with an ocean view, the ones the girls jokingly call 'the romantic tables'. At a small table all by themselves. At a very small, very romantic table.
Shit.
And what the...
"Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, McKay, where do you think we're going?"
"Can't see? That's Dr Brown! And Carson. I'm going to go over and..."
"Yeah, I can see who it is. And no, we are not going over there. Stop."
We don't stop. We've got our mug gripped tight in our hand and our legs are just marching on over there, what a fucking nightmare, no, we are not doing this. I squeeze my brain into twists, I scrunch it all up and I throw all my energy into stopping us but he's got energy, too; he has this figured out, too; he's worked it out, how to take over and how to block me out, and shit.
They're not looking, are they?
I power up my last reserves and I zap him one so that we come to a standstill just outside the ladies' bathroom.
He's pressing his lips together and he's muttering stuff under his breath, I can't hear what, I'm straining to stop us from moving on. He's tugging one way, I'm tugging the other, we must look ridiculous, I don't care, just do not move, McKay. But he yanks me again in the direction of the windows, so I yank back, the mug tips sideways and great, coffee pours all over the place, all over our pants, and fucking hell shit fuck.
We're against the wall. We groan with pain. We clutch our balls. They are fucking fire balls.
"Cadman," he gasps. "I swear when you are back in your own body, if ever, I swear I'm going to..."
"What? What?" It's hard to talk what with having to take huge gulping breaths and the tears springing out of our eyes, and what with the red-hot pokers mashing our balls into a pulp. He gets up, we stumble into the ladies-- "We can't go in here." "Yes, we can, I can." --, we turn on the faucet and splash cold water on our groin.
"Of all the stupid, idiotic things to do," pants McKay.
I am willing to concede this. "But you wouldn't stop! What else could I do to make you stop?"
"Why should I stop? I'm telling you that we need to go and talk to them. I need to talk to Dr Brown, I need to apologise."
"No, no, don't you get it? Don't you get what they did behind our backs? They're at that table, and they're at that table together. Those are the 'romantic tables', everyone knows that."
"Don't be absurd. I worked up to this date for ages, well for quite a while, and I'm not going to have you spoil the good understanding I had with Dr Brown because of some childish whim of yours. I have got to explain to Dr Brown that I was not in full command of my faculties last night. And with Carson watching, too. In case this subtle point had escaped you, it was painfully embarrassing. They need to know that I was not exactly compos mentis, they need to know that I was hijacked..."
"Yeah, that's right. Blame it all on me! And what, exactly, are you going to blame on me? That I got you to give her the greatest kiss of her life?"
"I'm getting very tired of your tedious mockery. Things were going perfectly well before you decided to butt in! Before you started nagging at me like some bossy fishwife!"
Just then someone comes in, it's that science woman, the one with the huge glasses. She looks a bit shocked to see us in here, "good day, Dr McKay", and he goes, "oh, uh", and we glare at her, and hell, when we're McKay we're good at glaring, so good that she turns right round and heads out the door again.
"Listen," I say quickly, "this is not a whim. I heard them."
"What are you talking about?"
I squirm. If it's possible to squirm without a body. My mind squirms. "Last night," I say, "I went running. While you were asleep."
"Oh, you did not," he groans. "Not that it surprises me. Nothing surprises me any longer. No wonder I felt as if I'd been stretched on the rack this morning. This is playing havoc with my skeletal structure."
"And I went past Katie Brown's door," I forge on.
"What? No, no, no, don't tell me you talked to her or anything stupid. Please, don't tell me that."
"I didn't. I didn't talk to her. But I heard them."
"Heard whom?"
"I heard..."
And then it's just all too much. I curl right up and I plonk myself down inside our head and I'm not moving, I'm not doing anything, thank you very much, I just want to stay curled up and suck on some zebra food.
"Cadman? Cadman?"
It's pulling our face out of shape. It's pulling the muscles into all sorts of angry directions, the eyebrows into a frown, and the mouth all big and quivering, and me in the middle trying to stop myself from blubbing like a huge baby, shit, how stupid this all is.
"Stop it!" he hisses and does that thing, and our face is his own again.
"Okay," I say, "okay, okay. It's just that, that, that I was kind of fond of, sort of, I kind of really liked..."
"Carson Beckett."
That shuts me up.
"Yes, well, it wasn't exactly rocket science, figuring that part out."
"Rocket science? But rocket science is the one thing that you're good at. How did you notice this?"
"I am not stupid. And you are inside me, remember? You invited Carson along; my pulse rate kept shooting up into the unhealthy range whenever Carson was mentioned or whenever we went along for a medical, and then last night, when we were at dinner with Carson, well, I... let's just say it could hardly remain hidden from my own body that certain persons were getting rather besides themselves."
"What are you talking about?" What is he talking about?
"And yes, now that you mention it, I can see how they would... I can see how those two would get together after we left. We were quite the spectacle, after all. Gave them something to talk about."
"Yeah, right. That's what they were doing all night. Talking." And that is coming out more bitter than I intended, I didn't even realise I was feeling this bitter but apparently I am. I want to curl up and cry. Everything's such a mess.
"Oh," he says. And then again, "Oh."
Then we're both silent.
The door's going hiss. Before anybody can come in and see us, we're in one of the stalls, bang, and shoving the bolt home. We sink down onto the toilet seat. We put our head in our hands.
There's really not much to say.
Whoever's out there in the bathroom is taking their sweet time about it. Endless shufflings and rustlings in the stall next door, and endless flushings, and then endless uses of that ass-cleaning hose thing, and then the whining of that blow-dryer thing inside the toilet bowl, and if that's not enough, the faucet is then left running for like, years, and then the hand-drying machine, and then who knows what, all sorts of fiddling around with her purse and the clack of something, make-up, a mirror. Finally, she's out of the room, and it's just us again.
I brace myself because he is so going to be yelling at me and what can I say? Yeah, thank you, I know, I practically threw them into each other's arms! Yeah, I ruined your date and made her run away with someone else! And that little bimbo, didn't bat an eyelid, just ditched you. I thought us girls were supposed to stick together; how could she do this to me?
Except, oh yeah, she didn't even know I had any interest in Dr Beckett. And she didn't know, either, that it was me with everyone in the room last night. She was so totally not clued in. But to go kissing one guy and then to go and have sex with the next best... It makes me want to fucking explode.
"Calm down," he says. "For goodness' sake, pull yourself together. And don't be such a girl. You're making my head hurt."
"This is head-hurting territory."
"Look, I'm sure they were just... you know, just talking or something."
Is he trying to make me feel better or does he actually believe his own bullshit?
"Talking!" I burst out. "Who are you kidding? You don't think they were doing it?"
"Well, all right. If you must put it so crudely. Yes, actually. I do think they were 'doing' it. But then, if things had gone my way, I would have been 'doing' it. So."
"How could she do this to me?" I yell. "How could she do this to you? Who'd make a date with one guy and then go and screw another guy within minutes? I thought she was supposed to like you! You ate her salad!"
"Well, I can hardly say I am happy about this but, after all, it's only sex."
"Yeah!"
"It's not as if it matters. What is it with you women? If it had been me in Carson's place, I'm sure I would have done just the same. "
"Oh, now who's kidding who?"
"I would! I may well have. I could certainly have been tempted. She was, after all, if you care to recall, abandoned by me. I as good as left her there for Carson."
I don't believe a word he's saying. It's all a load of bull crap. I bet he's as cut up about this as I am. And what he's saying is just spinning the bull, that's what it is. But somehow that's not so bad, it doesn't make me feel so bad, he's not all that pissed at me, after all, and he's trying to make us feel better, I can see that he is, it's a bit like zebra food.
And what does that Katie Brown see in Dr Beckett, anyway? I mean, talk about fickle or what.
Continued in Part Two.
Author: Lobelia;
lobelia321Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Lt Laura Cadman. Dr Rodney McKay. Also features Drs Katie Brown, Carson Beckett, and Radek Zelenka.
Summary: Whoa. Being a man is like, whoa. In fact, it's more like double whoa.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Rating: 18
Length: c. 14,000 words.
Spoilers: Series 2, Episode 4, 'Duet'.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I am not making money. I did not invent these characters.
Thanks to:
isiscolo for humblingly thorough beta, Ameripicking, and for the sticks and bones, and sheldrake for the beating heart, and phineasjones for last-minute wonderbeta. All remaining errors are my own.For those who do not know these people: Pics . :-)
Posted in two parts to accommodate LJ word limits. This is Part One.
Linked to
sga_noticeboard and mckay_cadman.Contraflow
by Lobelia
My name is Laura Cadman. I am a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, stationed at the intergalactic base of Atlantis and currently, I am trapped inside the body of Dr Rodney McKay.
Thursday
Whoa.
Being a man is like, whoa.
In fact, it's more like double whoa.
I am so totally not used to this.
It reminds me of when I was little and wanted to be a boy. I used to wear jeans and my brothers' football shirts, and everything had to be blue or green. Never, ever pink. And never, ever anything in the hair, any ribbon or scrunchie or bobby pin. Mom hated that. She'd been so sick of nothing but boys, and I was going to be her little special girl. Except I wasn't. Frilly socks? Nope. Patent leather strappy shoes? No, siree, not me. Ballet class and Barbie dolls? I chained the Barbies to the backs of the Action Man motorbikes and dragged them through the dirt until their heads came off.
Also, I cut my hair. That one time when I was nine. With the kitchen scissors.
It felt a bit like McKay's hair feels on me now. McKay can shake his head and nothing happens, nothing bobs, nothing flies in his eyes, nothing swishes round the back of the neck. The hair is invisible; it's just sort of there. And it's not even tied back, either.
The thing is, even though it's kind of cool to finally be a boy, a man, what I wanted to be all those years ago; the thing is, even though that's interesting, to see what it's like-- why, of all men, does it have to be Dr Rodney McKay?
I mean, look at the guy!
If I had my choice, if I could be any man at all, I would not be Rodney McKay. I would be, hell, I'd be, I don't know. Colonel Sheppard would be good, or that Ronon guy, man, that would be something. Those guys have got muscle and they kick ass and they strut around, being manly and all. They're what I joined this freaking outfit for, so I'd get to wear those snazzy boots and those out-of-this-world combat suits. So I'd get to strut and swear and shoot the bejeesus out of alien badasses.
Not to be stuck in some kind of flabby excuse for a bod!
And it's flabby, all right. He doesn't even know it is, he doesn't care. But I know. I feel it. There's flesh up around the belt, it moves when he walks. When we walk. And when he undoes the belt, it all sort of goes gloomph and relaxes down and out. I did not go running for two hours every day for the past eight years so that my tummy can go gloomph when I take my belt off! It's gross, that's what it is. It is totally off-putting.
I do not know what that Katie Brown sees in him. I have no idea. You wouldn't catch me wasting a Friday night on a date with Rodney McKay.
Friday morning
So what's with this waking-up shit? Does this happen to him every day?
He gets up, and there it is: low-level headache.
Now, I haven't had a headache since that time in high school when I fell off the rappelling cliff at Brandon Gorge that one time because me and Freddie, we had a bet that we didn't need to secure all the carabiners, just the front-locking ones. Plus, we didn't wear helmets. That was part of the bet, too. So no wonder. Nine-foot drop. Could've been worse.
But McKay: he isn't dropping off any cliffs. All he's done is sleep. He should be rested and raring to go. Ten miles before breakfast, I could do that, easy. And then some nice orange-and-grapefruit juice, or what passes for orange-and-grapefruit juice around these parts, to go with a huge bowl of raisin bran and a double helping of...
No, we're not doing that, it seems. No running. No stretching, even. No pre-breakfast exercise at all. It's straight into the shower. Well, that's something at least. At least we're going to keep clean here.
He keeps his boxers on in the shower.
"McKay," I tell him. "Do not keep your boxers on in the shower."
"What? What?" He still gets startled every time I say something. He drops the soap and bangs his temple on the shower head, and ow, that hurts. I felt that, too. Then he's scrambling round for the soap and oops, are those his feet? I haven't yet seen McKay's feet up close. Weird: they don't look at all like my own feet.
"It's unhygienic," I inform him. "You can't wash properly with your boxers on. You've got to take them off."
"I am not taking off my underwear," says McKay. No, he doesn't say that; he snaps that. "And that is final."
I roll my eyes inside his brain but whoa, maybe I was rolling them a little too forcefully because now the shower cubicle is rotating like it's in a Hitchcock movie and I'm getting vertigo because that was unexpected.
"Don't do that!" yells McKay who's grabbing onto the shower curtain.
I want to grab on as well but it's a stupid idea, how is the shower curtain going to hold anyone up? I try to yank McKay's hand off the curtain but it seems my yanking isn't as forceful as my eye-rolling. Nothing happens. He stays grabbed onto the shower curtain, and then he doesn't because the whole shebang just sort of rips off in slow motion and falls onto his head; and now I can't see anything, the world's gone blue with yellow flowers all over it.
"Never," McKay says in a voice muffled by plastic, "never talk to me in the shower again."
"Okay, okay," I say. "Geez. I'm just thinking of health issues here."
"Kindly leave my health to me, and no, I do not want you ogling me in... in the nude. It's bad enough having no privacy at all. I want to preserve at least some vestiges of dignity."
"You know, it isn't as if I've never seen a man's naked genitals before."
That was not the right thing to say. That gets him really mad, tearing at the curtain and making a sort of growling noise, and there's water dripping into my eyes and soap going up my nose.
So we're out of the shower, only half clean, and the headache's gotten worse. It's kind of throbbing now, above both ears. I don't like the feel of it at all, and I'm thinking, this is so the wrong kind of body to be trapped in, this is the worst kind of body. And there's a sort of pressure as well, down below the navel, darned if I know what it is.
Oh. I know what it is.
I grin. He's got to take off his boxers some time.
I can't remember how we got through this yesterday. Bed pan? I don't know. I was still in a daze, in the infirmary, still sort of concussed. If you can be concussed without even having a freaking head. But now? I'm all there, oh yeah, and this is going to be interesting.
McKay is not taking his boxers off even now. His, I should add, sodden boxers. That are highly uncomfortable, all clingy and cold and riding up his crack. My crack. Because I can feel that, and it's not pleasant.
"Okay. Why are you sitting down to pee?"
"I always sit down. Do you mind?"
"Well, as it happens, I always sit down, too. So no, I don't mind. I was just wondering, you know, what it feels like to do it standing up."
"I am not your personal trans-sexual human experiment. And will you stop talking to me while I'm in here, going about my morning ablutions, because this is really, really not the time nor the place, so can we just get on with it? I mean can I just get on with it?"
"Yeah, of course. Go right ahead."
"Thank you."
He's not taking off his boxers. He's sitting on the can and he's groping round inside his shorts, through his fly, and pulling out his...
Whoa.
We have touch.
So that's what Dr Rodney McKay's dick feels like in Dr Rodney McKay's hand.
He's got hold of himself between the tips of thumb and index finger.
He's very careful not to grab more. Because he doesn't want me to feel it, that's why, I just bet that's why. And he's very careful not to look down. Because he doesn't want me to see it, either. All I can see is the wall across from the john, made not of tiles but of that weird styrofoamy stuff that you get so much of at this place, some sort of intercosmic fibre thing. So I'm staring at the white foamy stuff, and down below, there's a hot stream of piss whooshing out, and it doesn't feel so much different than when I was still a girl.
Then he shakes it (and yeah, that's a bit different), and now that I'm attuned to it, I can feel it wobbling around inside his boxers as he gets up. And okay, that is strange.
I bet there's pee all over the toilet what with him not looking but he's out of that bathroom in a shot -- "Hey, aren't you going to wash your hands?" "What do you think I am, do you think I tinkle on my hands?" --, and he did say 'tinkle'. Which is hilarious.
I guess.
All of a sudden I'm missing my pussy. Now, who'd have thought it?
Thankfully, he finally loses the wet boxers and puts on dry ones, staring resolutely at the ceiling all the while, and then he's dressed, and his pants are tight so that jiggly-wobbly sensation stops and we're sort of back to normal.
Sort of.
'Cause the pants are also kind of constraining, the fabric is pressing against his dick in all the wrong places, and the balls too, my oh my. I'd never really thought about the balls before but there they are, taking up a surprising amount of space inside of those poly-velcro or whatever they're made of civilian pants of his, and how do guys ever manage without kilts?
Ah, that's better. So that's what you do. You need to bend your knees a little and hoick and grab and pat everything around a bit, and then it snuggles into place and yes, we're good to go.
He hasn't even noticed he's just done that, has he?
Because he's all intent on walking now. He's walking very fast. His walk is different than what I'm used to, his hips move differently, and the knee joints are somehow attached in an unfamiliar way to the thighs. But it gets him around very fast and before I know it, we're in the mess hall and making a bee line for...
... the coffee.
"Oh no, you don't! I'm not having that in me first thing in the morning! Caffeine is so unhealthy; people think it gives them a shot but it only lasts for like, a half hour, it causes cancer, it's totally acidic and fantastically bad for your stomach lining and..."
Gulp. Gulp.
I guess Rodney McKay doesn't give a crap's ass about his stomach lining because he's pouring that stuff down my gullet like nobody's business.
And hooray! The headache has stopped.
This man must really be addicted.
"You must really be addicted," I tell him. "You've got to break this habit. I mean, it's giving you headaches, you're having withdrawal symptoms..."
"You are too right that I am having withdrawal symptoms. I am having withdrawal symptoms from my life! And no, we are not going in that direction, why are you trying to make me approach the fruit tray? I cannot ingest citrus, you know that I'm allergic, I've mentioned this a thousand times already."
"It is so much healthier than that caffeine shit. You're poisoning yourself! Every day! And poisoning me! Yes, me, because now that I'm in you, I get poisoned as well."
"Oh, spare me your sermonising. Isn't it enough that I am stuck with you in my head? Do I have to listen to your whining all day, as well? Can't we just have breakfast with at least some semblance of peace and quiet?"
"Well, it's not just you stuck with me. I am stuck in you. You know that? I didn't ask to be here, and let me tell you this is one hell of a crappy body to be stuck in."
His voice goes all calm when he replies, but I know he's not calm because I can feel his heart buzzing like a killer bee, and his breath is shallow. "Now, Cadman," he says, all calm and slow but with his heart going badoomph, badoomph. "I would really be very grateful if you stopped making personal remarks in that infantile way. Especially personal remarks about my body which, might I remind you, is the only body you've got at the moment so why don't you just be grateful for it and be a good quiet girl and let me get on with the important things so that we can maybe, just maybe, rescue this hellforsaken situation?"
"You're just being stubborn. I bet it's not a real allergy. It's probably just a trick of the mind."
"I am not being stubborn!" he yells, so loud that a dozen heads swivel round and someone drops their plate with a clang. "It is not a trick of the mind!"
Friday, early afternoon
It is not a trick of the mind.
We're sick as dogs. We just about made it to the bathroom after that post-lunch siesta during which I snuck out to get my fix of grapefruit juice, it's not as though it was a lot, just a tiny sip; and it's not even real grapefruit, either, just some weird off-world substitute. But, boy, was that a mistake, because now I'm hanging onto the toilet bowl for dear life. There's sweat on my neck, my stomach muscles are convulsing, and green and yellow spots are dancing the polka across my eyeballs.
"Jesus, Cadman, you're a full-blown hell of an idiot." McKay presses the words out through gritted teeth.
I am even willing to concede this. I don't get the chance to say anything, though, because now we're vomiting into the toilet bowl.
Shit, this feels so not good.
"I swear, Cadman," he gasps. "You making me suffer like this..."
"Don't worry, it's my allergy too, now. I'm suffering, too."
"Good," he says, "good." And then we both zonk out on the bathroom mat.
Friday afternoon
Figures. He just isn't fit enough. Not as fit as me, anyhow.
So it figures that he'd be out cold for longer. Me, I've woken up and I'm lying here on the mat, staring at the shower from below, seeing everything upside down, the shower head and the curtain all off its rails. It's not very entertaining but he's still too weak to get up; I tried. So I make McKay lift his hand instead.
I hold up his hand and I look at it.
I will the thumb to fold inwards. The thumb folds inwards.
I will the hand to make a fist. The hand makes a fist.
I will the hand to flip a bird. The hand flips me a bird.
It is very strange. This is not my hand. And yet it is my hand. I always thought I knew my hand inside out. 'I know it like the back of my hand'. Dumb expression. Who knows the back of their hand?
Seems I do, though. Did. Now that it isn't my back of the hand any more, I really notice. I remember, too, how it should look. It shouldn't have a vein there, and there shouldn't be so much of the fleshy pads showing above the fingernails, and the joints shouldn't be so wrinkly. My thumb shouldn't hook over like that, and my fingernails are always just a little bit bitten. These fingernails are short and smooth and kind of pink, and the middle fingernail has white spots on it. Calcium deficiency. There are wisps of hair all across the back of the hand, and up the forearm as well.
I turn the hand over. Even the lines in the palm, it's like looking at an alien hand.
It's spooking me out. I put the hand away and I stare at the shower head.
After a while, I raise the hand up again and start biting the side of the thumb.
The hand feels big and warm against my mouth.
It's a weird hand. It's an okay hand. But damn it all to fucking hell, it's not my hand.
Friday, early evening
There's something that I haven't told McKay.
He's striding along through the corridors, and for once, I don't care, I'm just along for the ride right now. I've got some happy thoughts to occupy me, and I'm just hanging on in here, thinking my happy thoughts, my gleeful thoughts, because I pulled one over McKay; oh, this is going to be so good.
Thing is, when I snuck out while McKay was having his siesta in my brain? I didn't only go and drink that juice, okay, which was a mega-stupid thing to do, I see that now. But I also did something else, hee, it's making me giggle inside. I went to see Beckett, Dr Beckett, Dr Carson Beckett, in the infirmary. And I invited him along to this date of McKay's later on tonight.
So yeah. If I had a face, I'd be grinning all over it.
And because of the grinning to myself inside McKay's head, I'm not really so bothered right now about being schlepped all over Atlantis, into transporters and out of them, along corridors and along some more corridors; he knows places in this city that I didn't even know existed. But then he's been here much longer than me.
One thing, though. I have to say it is really cool to have the Ancient gene.
The way he doesn't even have to lift his hand to open doors. I mean, I thought it was amazing that all you had to do was wave your hand across some glowing panels and make doors open and lights turn on but the gene is something else entirely. Oh boy, that gene thing is so awesome. Here, for example, here we are at a door, big huge door, more like a warehouse gate, and all he has to do is think at it. I can feel him thinking at it. There's a sort of jolt in his thoughts. No, not a jolt, more like a reshuffling. First time I noticed it, I was like ooh, what was that? And once he's done this shuffling, it's like the thought sort of goes out of his head into the door, and whoosh, that door just glides right open. We march through, and he's going shuffle in his head, doesn't even stop, just keeps on marching, and I can hear the door whooshing shut behind.
Awesome.
Faucets, too. Just thinks at them and water spurts out. Lights. Air conditioning. Toilets flushing. Those dimmer things on the windows. Computer displays. It's brilliant! It's magic!
So where are we now? Aha, I know. This is the hangar. Dr Zelenka's hangar.
We are in this hangar seventeen million times a day. I getting so sick of this hangar. And we see Dr Zelenka seventeen million times a day, too. I barely even knew how to pronounce his name before, when I was still me, but now, since yesterday, we've been practically joined at the hip.
I think I'll just try to relax and think my happy Dr-Beckett-thoughts. Because once those two, McKay and Dr Zelenka get talking, I might as well be in a coma; they talk a mile a minute, they shout and they wave their arms, and what they yadda on about makes about as much sense to me as parakeets yacking. And they never explain anything. You want to ask a question, they just yell at you to shut up. Well, McKay does; Zelenka stops and waits, and then starts up again a minute later, blabbering at the speed of sound.
Well, let the shouting roll, and the arm waving, and the blathering on about I don't know what. I can't understand four-fifths of the things that come out of my mouth when I'm in this hangar so it's easy to tune them out.
To tune them out and think about Dr Beckett.
I have to say that before, when I was still me, I didn't see Dr Beckett an awful lot. I'm not the kind of person to get sick a lot. I'm never sick, heck, I don't even get menstrual cramps. But there was that time when we were together for a bit, right after I saved his life. When we were out on that planet, can't remember the name of it now, some long string of numbers and letters. And when I'd hacked that six-foot tall man-eating plant to death, if you can hack a plant to death, with my standard-issue machete. Just after that, with the tendrils wrapped around him and his shirt sort of torn and when he still had plant juices dripping down his face and looked like something hatched by that mother from Aliens. He sort of looked at me then. A look look.
And god, does he have a pair of gorgeous eyes.
And the way his eyebrows sort of slope across the top of his eyes. And the way his hair curves around the top of his ears. And that three-day beard, and that cute little pompadour, and those hands, and those eyes, oh my, those eyes.
Now, of course, I see Dr Beckett ten times a day, but he never looks at me anymore. He looks right through me, and he just says, "Rrrodney."
Like I'm not even there.
Actually, it's not just him, either. Come to think of it. It's everybody.
It is quite amazing how men look at men in a different way than how men look at women.
Or how men look at McKay, I should say. I've got no idea, after all, how men look at men in general but the way that they look at McKay? That is very different to how men look at me.
Looked.
Even men who I didn't like and who didn't like me. They still looked at me, I don't know, they acknowledged me as a woman. And now they just sort of stare through me. Or around me. Or.
It makes me feel like a ghost. Like I've lost my outline. Like I'm part of the decor on the walls.
So I'm hoping that it'll be better tonight. I'm hoping it so much. That Dr Beckett will somehow see me. He knows, after all. He knows all about me being trapped inside McKay. He knows that this isn't my real body but that the real me is in here, somewhere, and surely he'll remember, once we're out of that depressing infirmary environment and in nicer surroundings. Maybe there'll be candles, and flowers... No, what am I thinking? There aren't going to be any flowers because if there were going to be flowers, McKay would have to be bringing them, and when I said, "McKay, why don't you take her some flowers?", he snorted and said, "Cadman, she's a botanist. What would she want with flowers?"
I never heard anything so dumb in my life.
Anyway, here we are, doing the shouting and the waving and the mouth compressing, oh yeah, we have to do the mouth compressing, it seems. We do that mouth compressing so much that my cheeks start to feel like they're stuck in a nutcracker. And then suddenly it's all quiet, and I tune back in, and there's Dr Zelenka.
And yeah. He's looking at me all right.
I know that look. That is a real look. It is so much of a real look that it goes right through my eyes and down past my throat into my stomach, McKay's stomach, and there it settles, whoomph, above his flabby waistline.
But McKay, does he notice anything?
Nope.
Guy's as thick as a three-foot brick wall.
No, thicker.
There's this moment of quiet but it turns out that's only because of me. Because I've been so dumbstruck by that look of Dr Zelenka's. That sort of lost look, with the fluorescent lights reflecting off his glasses; maybe it's those lights that are making his eyes look lost.
But then I remember myself, and McKay continues shouting and waving and lip-compressing, and I'm here, inside his head, kind of reeling. Kind of thinking, whoa, if it wasn't for Dr Beckett. And then remembering, double whoa, this one's not for me.
This one seems to be looking at me but he's actually looking at McKay.
Friday evening
Finally, we're on our way. I'm so excited! And so is McKay, hah. I can feel it. I can feel his pulse racing, shoom shoom. Or is that my pulse? Hard to tell.
Five more minutes and I'll be having dinner with Dr Beckett!
But McKay. What am I going to do about McKay? And what is he wearing? But would he take my advice? You bet not. I mean, running shoes! Who wears running shoes on a date? And tuck in your shirt, man, don't let it flop over your belt, that's what Boy Scouts do; it's bad enough that the shirt looks like it's from the discount rack at K-Mart. I guess, though, that what with the flabby belly and all it might even be better to let the shirt hang out, but at least do up the jacket buttons!
What on Earth, and what on Atlantis, does Katie Brown see in him? It must be some sort of power thing. It can't be anything else. She must be one of those civilians who fall for sciencey authority, and what with him being the right-hand man of Dr Weir and the smartest guy in two galaxies and wow, look, he gets to go off-world and I don't, poor me, I just get to sit in my lab with the plant specimens he brings back for me. Or not.
Plant specimens? Flowers? Chocolate? Not even a bottle of anything.
But Katie Brown, she didn't just agree to this date thing out of pity. She was really excited. And I know! I saw!
You wouldn't think it to look at her. All prim and proper. 'Proper little madam', is what Mom calls girls like her. I mean, don't get me wrong. Katie's a sweetie and all but she is just a teensy weensy bit buttoned-up. The way she got all shy at the girls' poker night when she was down to just her bra and panties. What did she think strip poker was? Not that she's got anything to hide. I don't get what she's so uptight about. I mean, those tits, they are fabulous. They are pert.
She got them out in the end. Just needed to get enough vodka in her. All shy and prim at first but then later, after the panties had gone flying one way and the bra another, whoa, that girl was crazy. With her cheeks all red and her hair like whoosh, and she's biting down on one strand, chewing her own hair, and she's giggling, "Ooh, girls, girls, I've got a date, with Dr McKay!"
Huh. Little does she know.
And yes! We're here! This is it! This is the door to Katie Brown's quarters!
Ring the chimes, you dolt. Don't just beam your gene at the door and barge on in!
Friday evening, some time later
Okay. Not a good idea.
Bad idea. Terrible idea. Excruciating idea.
This so-called 'date'. What was I thinking?
Things are so totally screwed. Inviting Dr Beckett along as a fourth wheel: so not a great idea. Third wheel. Whatever. I'm the fourth wheel. I'm the fifth fucking wheel, I'm the spare wheel, I might as well not be here, this is so, so, so not a good situation.
McKay might be a genius in the astrophysics department but where women are concerned? Hopeless. Absolutely rock-bottom hopeless. Marching in like he owns the place. Wolfing down the salad without so much as a 'how-de-do'. Babbling on in a completely ridiculous way. Slugging that wine down like nobody's business.
Somebody, help. Get me out of here.
I'll just have to take over. I'll take over, and I know, I'll make McKay get up and walk on over and give Katie Brown the kiss of a lifetime, show the man how it's done! And then I'm out of here.
Friday night
"Turn around," he says. "Turn around. We're heading back."
"No, we're not." Is he insane?
"Yes, we are. I need to get back there immediately. I need to explain! I need to apologise!"
"Apologise?" Nuts, truly nuts. "For what?"
"For what? For the appalling, the absolutely spectacularly inappropriate behaviour..."
"Inappropriate? You kissing Katie? Come on, how was that 'inappropriate'? Or 'appalling'? That was probably the one time in your life that you were being truly honest with a woman."
"Excuse me, what do you know about my life? What would you know about what's inappropriate or appalling in my life? You're sadly mistaken if you think that my idea of so-called honesty is practically assaulting a woman, making unwanted advances..."
"Oh, c'mon, she liked it. I could tell she liked it! Didn't you feel the way she kissed you back? How she was getting all soft in your arms and opening up her mouth and..."
"This is not what I want to talk about."
"And you liked it, too. Don't pretend you didn't."
"I did not like it. I do not like being invaded by my own body!"
"You did like it, McKay. I could feel that you liked it! I could feel your horny hard-on."
And that makes him shut up. That makes him shut up good. Who's he trying to kid, anyway? Without me there, he'd never have done anything about it. He'd just have gone on sitting there and stuffing lettuce into his face. And anyone could tell she was up for it. She was practically gagging for it! Also, I thought, if I say so myself, that I did quite a good job there, with the kissing technique and all. I bet he, left to his own devices, would not have had a fifth of that kissing technique. I bet he's one of those guys who grunt and who slobber when kissing, and yeah, he should thank me for having spared Katie Brown the grunting and the slobbering!
But no. He's not saying anything. He marches into his room, he thinks the door shut, and then he takes a few heaving breaths, like he's trying to calm himself down, and then he says:
"Cadman," he says, "it pains me to have to say this but..." And what, is his voice literally cracking now? "...you are not a lady."
What?
Stomping into the bathroom, flinging open the toilet lid, pissing in a great big arc, clearly not caring what I'm seeing any longer, not even bothering to sit down.
"Just because I call a spade a spade!" I shout at the inside of his head.
Throwing cold water on my face, ouch, that was unexpected, and then lathering up with the toothpaste and spitting into the basin, leaving globs of toothpastey spit on the faucets.
"What century are you living in, anyway?" I yell inwardly. "What galaxy are you living in? Lady! Lady! Do I look like I wear a long bustly skirt?"
His mouth is set in that grim line that makes my jaw hurt. He's kicking his shoe across the room, and then he tries to kick the other shoe; he hits his ankle with the freaking shoe but he's not cursing, I'm cursing, I'm going hell for leather. He just bends and picks up the shoes, the running shoes, and then he arranges them side by side next to his chair, and then he's in bed, and I'm still yelling:
"Next you'll be opening doors for me! Pulling out chairs! I'm a fucking lieutenant of the United States Marine Corps, and this is just a crock of crap I don't need, especially from a jumped-up, uptight civilian who can barely string two words together when sitting across from a so-called 'lady', and what do you think that is I carry around with me, do you think that's what ladies carry, a P-90? In their sequined purses, perhaps?"
But he's out. Like a light. Just like that. And I'm left hanging, fuming, raging. He's managed to shut me out, I don't know how he did that, but now he's asleep, I can't fucking believe this.
I'm not asleep. I'm seething.
I'm staring at his pillow because, of course, he's on his front, and I hate it when he does that, just throws himself on his bed, face-down, who sleeps like that? I mean, why does anybody need a special orthopaedic mattress for their back when all they do is sleep on their front and dig my nose into the sheets?
I wrench my brain into gear and I make his body get up.
I pace. I'm pacing around his room. How did I get into such a state? I don't know why I'm in such a state. It's him, he's the one who should be in a state.
Stupid shoes. This is the second time that I've tripped over them.
I pick them up and I chuck them at the wall, first one, then the other. Kerthunk.
Okay. What is this? Why am I in this state? And I am in a state. It damn well got to me when he called me not a lady. It's the stupidest feeling ever. I don't even want to be a lady, it's the last thing I want to be. So why am I getting into such a state when he's telling me I'm not one? I mean, what does he think I joined the army for, huh? To traipse around in high heels and bat my eyelashes? To have doors opened for me and the man walking on the street-side of the pavement to protect me from the big bad cars? I can open my own freaking doors, and I am here to protect men like him from big bad things, and...
...and come to think of it, McKay is actually the last man on Earth to open anybody's door or pull out anybody's chair. And if a girl batted her eyelashes at him, I don't think he'd even notice. The stupid dolt.
I've started to chew on his thumb nail.
This is no good. I'm going to have to go running. To calm myself down.
Where are those shoes of his? Can't see a thing in this stupid room; does the gene work even when he's asleep? Not going to risk it. I just turn on the lamp manually.
There are the shoes, lying around where I threw them. I sit down on the bed to lace them up, left shoe, right shoe, tricky actually, you wouldn't think it'd take so long to put on a simple pair of lace-ups. And it's good that they're running shoes because, yeah, I am going to go running.
The bed's still warm with the warmth of his body. His, mine. I put my hand on the warm dent in the pillow. I look at the night stand. There's an alarm there, a mug with some kind of picture on it, an unchewed apple, a photo in a frame. I pick it up: it's a picture of a white fluffy cat.
He's got a cat? Guy like McKay? You'd figure he'd be allergic to cats.
That's the only photo on his night stand.
His desk is pretty empty, not even a laptop, not like his workstation at the labs. There's a pair of sunglasses in a case. I put them on; the room turns brown. They feel expensive; I bet they've got some sort of state-of-the-art polarised lenses. There are two desk lamps here, another apple, his headset. A wool hat. I put it on; it's snug and itchy. It smells funny. There's also another framed picture, a black and white photo of two people, guy and girl, I've got no idea who they are. They look like something from long ago through the sunglasses, like one of those old sepia photographs. The guy and the girl, they're standing in front of what looks like a barn; they're both squinting because, I guess, the sun's in their eyes. There's a shadow on the barn wall: the photographer.
McKay? I look at the shadow for quite a while. I imagine him taking that picture, holding the camera, standing with his legs apart so that the camera won't wobble, pressing the shutter, telling them not to move or to move closer together. One of them coming to take a picture of him. All of them putting the camera on a rock and taking a self-timer picture, with their arms around each other.
But those other pictures aren't the ones that he chose to take with him to Atlantis.
And maybe they weren't even taken. Maybe that's just me, making things up.
I take off the hat. I put back the photo. I put back the glasses. I go running.
Friday, before midnight
This is nice, this night-time run. This is okay. I've missed this but oh boy, this body is out of shape. Just fifteen minutes and already he, I , we are huffing and puffing and there's a pain shooting up through my left hip but hell. We've just got to start back at square one and get on with it. Get the heart rate up, get the blood pumping.
Get the brain thinking. Get the thoughts calming down.
That's what I like about running, it gives the brain a chance to clear. And my brain needs clearing because my brain is full of darned Rodney McKay. And Katie Brown. And Dr Carson Beckett. And what McKay said and what he didn't say, and what Dr Beckett didn't say. And that hell of a date.
And Katie Brown's pert little tits, crushed up against my chest.
McKay's chest.
It'd be nice to have my boobs back. They're not fantastic boobs or anything. They're not anything special, but still.
And he did so have a hard-on. I don't care what he says. And it felt weird. In fact, it creeped me out. Not that I wanted to admit that to him. Never. But it was, and it did.
And Katie Brown swooning at him, like he was god's gift or something. But only right at the end. Only when he was kissing her.
When I was kissing her.
And all the time the person I really wanted to be kissing was sitting right there, sitting at the table, being shocked and saying nothing and not looking at me.
I mean, he knew I was in there, right?
Okay, this is hard to think about. Because maybe, what with being in another galaxy and battling alien life-sucking monsters and missing Mom more than I ever thought I would and being like, not the only woman in the marine outfit but pretty much... What with all that, it was just a nice sort of thing to have a little, only a very little, a teensy weensy crush on Dr Carson Beckett.
So what is hard is this: the disappointment.
Maybe wasn't fair on Dr Beckett to have to sit there and watch McKay make a fool of himself. But couldn't he have done more? Couldn't he have said something, at least?
There was McKay, basically running into open fire. I knew McKay was clueless but I didn't think, I didn't want to admit, that Dr Beckett was clueless. When we all sat around and nobody said a word. I mean, geez, at least McKay tried to make conversation. But Dr Beckett, and for that matter, Katie Brown, too: they just sat there like stunned mullets.
He was, after all, supposed to be there to be helping his friend. Not stealing his friend's date! And did he do any helping, actually and for that matter? I don't remember anything particularly helpful. I don't remember him doing anything at all! It was McKay who was doing all the doing! Telling Katie Brown that she was funny! That she was smart! Toasting the salad, for chrissake! That's what he was doing, toasting the fucking salad, and he doesn't even like salad, he can't stand the stuff. That little clenched moment when he first spotted the huge bowl of greenery but then he just bravely plunged in; that was like saying, hey, see, I'm making an effort here, is anybody else??
I've got a splitting headache and a mouth that's as dry as a shithouse brick.
Come to think of it, a night-time run was perhaps not the best idea after all. I am hung-over and short of sleep.
That McKay. He can definitely not hold his liquor.
I slow down. On my way back, I come past Katie Brown's door.
I actually stop and for a second there, I'm even considering knocking. Maybe apologising.
But no. Dumb. She'll be deep asleep by now.
Except not because what's that sound? That's the sound of Katie laughing. She's there inside her quarters, laughing at something in the middle of the night.
And that, that is the sound of someone else laughing along with her, someone else who's a man.
O my god. I am so stupid.
"Up late, sir?" someone says, and I stare, and I don't even know who it is, some kid who was in training with me ages ago.
I stumble down the corridor. Half-way across the north-south bridge, I sink down and have a rest for a bit, just sitting there, waiting for the nausea to pass. Nobody's around up here; the yellow lights on the pillars go blink, blink, there's a hum from behind one of the doors, it's getting louder and louder, it's inside my head.
Nausea. Pins and needles. And now I've got the shakes because there's numbers in my head, long strings of them. They float around and they arrange themselves in columns, some of them look wrong, some of them look beautiful, I want to cry.
But no. No.
That'd wake him up.
In front of his door, I panic. The door is closed, it's locked, and there's no manual override, I let it fall shut behind me, now what? Now? What?
Just. I close my eyes. Focus. Focus. If I think about it hard enough and in a certain way, in a sort of slanted way, I can do this, I can open this door.
Open. In. Lights out. Lie down.
The bed's cold now, and this is incredibly stupid.
I can't believe it, I can't believe it. Katie Brown! Why would she do such a thing? Who'd invite one man round, and then end up with another one? What is with that? And Dr Beckett! All this about how I'm such a lovely lady... yeah, there's another one who goes on about ladies, oh, fuck the lot of them.
And come to think of it, how the hell do I know he hates salad? Only the pasta kind, that's the only kind of salad he can stand, but not anything green and leafy. Rabbit food. Fodder.
But I know it. I remember it. I remember saying, 'Rabbit food', and spitting out some bitter leaves that I was fed by villagers off-world, I remember always choosing the non-salad option in the school cafeteria, I remember a cute little girl with dimples and short hair, I remember having a hard-on for her, just like the hard-on I had earlier, and having to hide it because I didn't want her to know, how embarrassing was that.
Oh god, and the numbers keep going round and round in my head.
The pillow is wet, and it's wet with my own sweat. Our sweat.
Saturday morning
We're lurching into the mess hall, with gums like mould and bones that feel like they've been drowned in acid. Coffee, coffee, where is that coffee?
He drinks down one mug, just standing by the machine. After the second refill, I'm starting to feel vaguely human again.
He's not looking round the room but I can tell, out of the corners of his eyes, that Dr Beckett and Katie Brown are nowhere to be seen.
I want to be sick; instead, I have to eat a cream donut. How disgusting is that?
But I'm keeping my trap shut. I just put up with it. The coffee feels good, anyway; and good that we're having another mugful.
The thing about being stuck in somebody's body: you can't get away.
You can't stomp off. You can't shout and scream and then bang down the phone. You can't even say, 'Let's talk about this later', and go and do the laundry or something.
What you do is, you scream and shout, and then you seethe, and then you just have to get on with it.
Also, it's getting kind of lonely in here.
"Yes," he suddenly says, and I'm a bit startled because he hasn't been saying much at all, he's been unusually silent, he's pissed at me, that's what. But now he's saying something, and he's saying, "The thing about being stuck in someone's body is that you can't get away."
"What?"
"The thing about being stuck..."
"No, no, I mean, no kidding. Hang on. I didn't just say that out aloud, did I?"
"Say what out aloud?" He's talking through the donut so that crumbs spatter on the plastic tray and that's kind of gross but I don't say anything, I don't say a word, I'm too busy freaking out.
After that, I try not to think anything, in case he reads my mind again, or whatever it was he was doing back there. I just lay low. I let myself be transported to the transporters and to, hey, what do you know, to Dr Zelenka's hangar. And we're being shown some fried mice and some data whizzing past on a screen top but I'm frightened I'll start understanding all those columns of numbers so I try to stay numb, I try to think blank thoughts.
I almost fall asleep. I'm zoning out, and then I'm solving the epicanthic square root of 103, and see? It's not correlated to the erroneous Sanchez Theorem, you have got that all wrong, Radek, the looped Lutz is the fallback position here.
I jerk fully awake.
"What?" says McKay. "What was that?"
I stare at the monitor but it's just columns of numbers again, it means nothing, it's gobbledygook.
I force myself to uncouple. I unfocus my, well not my eyes, but my sort of inner eyes. And the numbers shift in front of the outer eyes, and god, they mean something. They are beautiful numbers, they form beautiful patterns, except for that one glitch down here, the loop, I told you the loop was flawed.
"The loop is not flawed," says Dr Zelenka. "You are proceeding from alpha beta omega but I have calibrated the epicanthem from delta; I did this yesterday, I changed the algorithm."
"You what?" says McKay, and too right, he what?
All of a sudden, I notice Dr Zelenka's thigh.
We're sitting on stools, next to each other, quite close really, and there's Dr Zelenka's thigh, right next to our own leg, I can feel the warmth of his skin through the pants fabric.
It's a bit scary, understanding all these numbers where I never understood them before. I mean, I'm okay at math, I'm not bad at all but I never even heard of all these epi-whatevers before and it's playing around with my brain, that's what it is. I don't like it. In fact, it terrifies the bejeesus out of me. Better, much better to notice Dr Zelenka's thigh and hey, maybe it's about time we did something about this.
I power up my will and I make us put our hand on Dr Zelenka's thigh.
Whoa.
That produced a reaction.
It's like an electric bolt just shot through Dr Zelenka.
He stops talking, and he stares at the monitor, not moving, not saying anything. But I can feel all of his insides shaking, they're all vibrating through his thigh.
McKay's not saying anything, either. That's because he's desperately trying to snatch our hand away from Dr Zelenka's thigh. I can feel the tendons popping in our forearm but I'm not budging, I've got my will on this with an iron grip. Got to do something, something, everything's been such crap lately, everything's trapped in crap. And this, this is almost making me laugh out loud.
"Stop it," McKay mutters through gritted teeth.
"Just keep talking," I tell him inside, "just keep explaining those algorithms."
Heck, they're all wrong, anyway. Everything's shot all to hell and back again. We can't do this, we can't fix this, we are screwed.
"Okay, anyway, these configurations here, they need to be ratified to the power of ten..." And he's doing it, you've got to hand it to him, he is keeping on talking, and he is going on about those algorithms. We're waving our free hand at the screen and blathering on in double-time, and all the while our other hand is resting on Dr Zelenka's thigh, and yeah, that's kind of nice. That's a nice human warmth, sweet somehow, still shaking like anything, and suddenly I wish that somebody would just come up and give me a hug and say, 'Hey, it'll be all right, baby, it'll be fine', like Mom used to do when we were little, my brothers and me; and we'd get candy, that striped kind, I forget what they are called. We named them 'zebra food'.
'Cause that's another thing. Nobody hugs us now. Nobody hugs McKay; nobody touches McKay. Nobody, except Dr Beckett and that's only in a very clinical way.
How does he stand it?
Dr Zelenka still doesn't say a word, just sits there so quiet, like one of those mice he keeps doing tests on. I can't see what his face looks like because we're not moving our eyes in that direction. Our eyes are trained on the computer screen and I can't make them go elsewhere, I've got no energy left. In fact, I'm not even willing our hand to be on Dr Zelenka's thigh any longer, I've relaxed my iron grip.
But the hand is still there.
Hasn't he noticed that I'm not keeping it there? Are we too caught up in our numbers?
Dr Zelenka clears his throat.
We take away our hand. It feels warm; we flex the fingers.
"Look, Radek," we say, "I really think I need a rest. I'm not quite myself today, I'm... as it were." We wave our hands in the air and get up from the stool.
"Good, yes," says Dr Zelenka, and his voice sounds all wriggly. "No. You are not yourself. I understand." And then he just sits there, looking at us, looking right at us, him, at McKay. I've got no idea what's going through his head, maybe he's waiting for him to do something else, maybe he's hoping for an invitation to come along to the rest with him. But no, no, no, we are not going there.
"Yes," we say. "Right. Rest it is, then."
But it isn't, really. Because it's lunch time.
Saturday, lunch time
We're in the mess hall. We've had our lunch. We chose a sort of macaroni and cheese gloop. I thought about going for the salad, I really did; I always have the salad but no, we don't like salad, so, okay, let's not have salad, fine. We can have the cheesy gloop. And yes, we can have a dessert after, what do I care, hell in a hand basket, chocolate pudding, whatever.
"What is up with you today?" he says, in between one spoon of chocolate glop and the next. "At the best of times, you're enough to drive a man to drink, but this morning you have been positively jittery."
"Nothing is up! What should be up?"
"I can feel you jittering around in my head; I really wish you wouldn't. And that little stunt you pulled in the labs before..."
"Coffee!" I yell brightly. "Why don't we get more coffee, huh?"
It's when we're at the coffee machine for our second after-dessert mug that I see them.
Over on the far side, by the full-length windows, the ones with an ocean view, the ones the girls jokingly call 'the romantic tables'. At a small table all by themselves. At a very small, very romantic table.
Shit.
And what the...
"Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, McKay, where do you think we're going?"
"Can't see? That's Dr Brown! And Carson. I'm going to go over and..."
"Yeah, I can see who it is. And no, we are not going over there. Stop."
We don't stop. We've got our mug gripped tight in our hand and our legs are just marching on over there, what a fucking nightmare, no, we are not doing this. I squeeze my brain into twists, I scrunch it all up and I throw all my energy into stopping us but he's got energy, too; he has this figured out, too; he's worked it out, how to take over and how to block me out, and shit.
They're not looking, are they?
I power up my last reserves and I zap him one so that we come to a standstill just outside the ladies' bathroom.
He's pressing his lips together and he's muttering stuff under his breath, I can't hear what, I'm straining to stop us from moving on. He's tugging one way, I'm tugging the other, we must look ridiculous, I don't care, just do not move, McKay. But he yanks me again in the direction of the windows, so I yank back, the mug tips sideways and great, coffee pours all over the place, all over our pants, and fucking hell shit fuck.
We're against the wall. We groan with pain. We clutch our balls. They are fucking fire balls.
"Cadman," he gasps. "I swear when you are back in your own body, if ever, I swear I'm going to..."
"What? What?" It's hard to talk what with having to take huge gulping breaths and the tears springing out of our eyes, and what with the red-hot pokers mashing our balls into a pulp. He gets up, we stumble into the ladies-- "We can't go in here." "Yes, we can, I can." --, we turn on the faucet and splash cold water on our groin.
"Of all the stupid, idiotic things to do," pants McKay.
I am willing to concede this. "But you wouldn't stop! What else could I do to make you stop?"
"Why should I stop? I'm telling you that we need to go and talk to them. I need to talk to Dr Brown, I need to apologise."
"No, no, don't you get it? Don't you get what they did behind our backs? They're at that table, and they're at that table together. Those are the 'romantic tables', everyone knows that."
"Don't be absurd. I worked up to this date for ages, well for quite a while, and I'm not going to have you spoil the good understanding I had with Dr Brown because of some childish whim of yours. I have got to explain to Dr Brown that I was not in full command of my faculties last night. And with Carson watching, too. In case this subtle point had escaped you, it was painfully embarrassing. They need to know that I was not exactly compos mentis, they need to know that I was hijacked..."
"Yeah, that's right. Blame it all on me! And what, exactly, are you going to blame on me? That I got you to give her the greatest kiss of her life?"
"I'm getting very tired of your tedious mockery. Things were going perfectly well before you decided to butt in! Before you started nagging at me like some bossy fishwife!"
Just then someone comes in, it's that science woman, the one with the huge glasses. She looks a bit shocked to see us in here, "good day, Dr McKay", and he goes, "oh, uh", and we glare at her, and hell, when we're McKay we're good at glaring, so good that she turns right round and heads out the door again.
"Listen," I say quickly, "this is not a whim. I heard them."
"What are you talking about?"
I squirm. If it's possible to squirm without a body. My mind squirms. "Last night," I say, "I went running. While you were asleep."
"Oh, you did not," he groans. "Not that it surprises me. Nothing surprises me any longer. No wonder I felt as if I'd been stretched on the rack this morning. This is playing havoc with my skeletal structure."
"And I went past Katie Brown's door," I forge on.
"What? No, no, no, don't tell me you talked to her or anything stupid. Please, don't tell me that."
"I didn't. I didn't talk to her. But I heard them."
"Heard whom?"
"I heard..."
And then it's just all too much. I curl right up and I plonk myself down inside our head and I'm not moving, I'm not doing anything, thank you very much, I just want to stay curled up and suck on some zebra food.
"Cadman? Cadman?"
It's pulling our face out of shape. It's pulling the muscles into all sorts of angry directions, the eyebrows into a frown, and the mouth all big and quivering, and me in the middle trying to stop myself from blubbing like a huge baby, shit, how stupid this all is.
"Stop it!" he hisses and does that thing, and our face is his own again.
"Okay," I say, "okay, okay. It's just that, that, that I was kind of fond of, sort of, I kind of really liked..."
"Carson Beckett."
That shuts me up.
"Yes, well, it wasn't exactly rocket science, figuring that part out."
"Rocket science? But rocket science is the one thing that you're good at. How did you notice this?"
"I am not stupid. And you are inside me, remember? You invited Carson along; my pulse rate kept shooting up into the unhealthy range whenever Carson was mentioned or whenever we went along for a medical, and then last night, when we were at dinner with Carson, well, I... let's just say it could hardly remain hidden from my own body that certain persons were getting rather besides themselves."
"What are you talking about?" What is he talking about?
"And yes, now that you mention it, I can see how they would... I can see how those two would get together after we left. We were quite the spectacle, after all. Gave them something to talk about."
"Yeah, right. That's what they were doing all night. Talking." And that is coming out more bitter than I intended, I didn't even realise I was feeling this bitter but apparently I am. I want to curl up and cry. Everything's such a mess.
"Oh," he says. And then again, "Oh."
Then we're both silent.
The door's going hiss. Before anybody can come in and see us, we're in one of the stalls, bang, and shoving the bolt home. We sink down onto the toilet seat. We put our head in our hands.
There's really not much to say.
Whoever's out there in the bathroom is taking their sweet time about it. Endless shufflings and rustlings in the stall next door, and endless flushings, and then endless uses of that ass-cleaning hose thing, and then the whining of that blow-dryer thing inside the toilet bowl, and if that's not enough, the faucet is then left running for like, years, and then the hand-drying machine, and then who knows what, all sorts of fiddling around with her purse and the clack of something, make-up, a mirror. Finally, she's out of the room, and it's just us again.
I brace myself because he is so going to be yelling at me and what can I say? Yeah, thank you, I know, I practically threw them into each other's arms! Yeah, I ruined your date and made her run away with someone else! And that little bimbo, didn't bat an eyelid, just ditched you. I thought us girls were supposed to stick together; how could she do this to me?
Except, oh yeah, she didn't even know I had any interest in Dr Beckett. And she didn't know, either, that it was me with everyone in the room last night. She was so totally not clued in. But to go kissing one guy and then to go and have sex with the next best... It makes me want to fucking explode.
"Calm down," he says. "For goodness' sake, pull yourself together. And don't be such a girl. You're making my head hurt."
"This is head-hurting territory."
"Look, I'm sure they were just... you know, just talking or something."
Is he trying to make me feel better or does he actually believe his own bullshit?
"Talking!" I burst out. "Who are you kidding? You don't think they were doing it?"
"Well, all right. If you must put it so crudely. Yes, actually. I do think they were 'doing' it. But then, if things had gone my way, I would have been 'doing' it. So."
"How could she do this to me?" I yell. "How could she do this to you? Who'd make a date with one guy and then go and screw another guy within minutes? I thought she was supposed to like you! You ate her salad!"
"Well, I can hardly say I am happy about this but, after all, it's only sex."
"Yeah!"
"It's not as if it matters. What is it with you women? If it had been me in Carson's place, I'm sure I would have done just the same. "
"Oh, now who's kidding who?"
"I would! I may well have. I could certainly have been tempted. She was, after all, if you care to recall, abandoned by me. I as good as left her there for Carson."
I don't believe a word he's saying. It's all a load of bull crap. I bet he's as cut up about this as I am. And what he's saying is just spinning the bull, that's what it is. But somehow that's not so bad, it doesn't make me feel so bad, he's not all that pissed at me, after all, and he's trying to make us feel better, I can see that he is, it's a bit like zebra food.
And what does that Katie Brown see in Dr Beckett, anyway? I mean, talk about fickle or what.
Continued in Part Two.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 02:56 am (UTC)And Lobelia, I'm glad you fixed it up and got it posted.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 09:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 09:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 05:18 am (UTC)I appreciate the Zelenka role. And I like how not-perfect Beckett is. He isn't the smoothest fellow socially; he just looks that way compared to Rodney.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 09:07 pm (UTC)