![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Title: Let's Get Astrophysical
Author: Lobelia;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321
Category: Cross-over crack bonanza. AU.
Fandoms: SGA; football/soccer; Lotrps; 007; HP.
Pairing: Rodnaldo.
Rating: R.
Spoilers: None.
Characters: Dr Rodney McKay (Stargate Atlantis fictional person fandom); Mr Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (football real person fandom); Mr Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings real person fandom); Miss Moneypenny (Ian Fleming's James Bond + the 007 movies fictional person fandoms); Dr Radek Zelenka (Stargate Atlantis fictional person fandom); Eldon (Stargate Atlantis fictional person fandom); Colin Creevey (Harry Potter fictional person fandom).
Who are these people? See icon for the heroes. :-)
Inspiration: Said icon says it all.
Length: 4,387 words.
Style: 3rd person fixed-character focalisation.
Thanks to:junalele, for persistent badgering since July 2006. :-) And many thanks to sheldrake for a lovely beta.
I offer this up to you all on the occasion of Valentine's Day 2008. *spreads the lurv*
Let's get astrophysical
by Lobelia
1.
The phone rang.
Dr Rodney McKay, Director of Research at the Astrophysics Division of Starspite Enterprises with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, snatched up the receiver.
"Yes, yes?" he snapped into its grey bakelite mouth. (It was an original retro handset, manufactured in Germany in 1964, purchased from the Director's private funds on e-bay for the sum of 132 euros in a fierce, early-morning bidding battle.)
"Mr Mortensen here to see you. With a Mr... hang on a mo." Miss Moneypenny's muffled voice ruffled the intercom. She was quite clearly talking to someone while covering up her mouthpiece, and someone else was talking back, and Rodney McKay was left impatiently tapping his beech wood table-top with one hand while the other hovered over the touchpad of his laptop.
This was the best fringe benefit of the bakelite phone: its banana-shaped, curvaceous mouthpiece which could be effortlessly tucked into the crook of one's neck, leaving both hands free to do whatever.
There was only the minor discomfort of the spiralling telephone cord getting in the way of one's keyboard fingers.
"With a Mr..." Miss Moneypenny pronounced the words with exaggeration. "A Mister dos Santos Aveiro."
"Dos Who Who? What do they want?"
"It's your ten o'clock appointment. It's on your calendar; didn't you check?"
Oh crap. The sponsoring people. "Can't you put them off? I'm busy with important things!"
"We've already put them off fourteen times, Dr M," fluted Miss Moneypenny. Rodney had no idea why she insisted on addressing him as 'Dr M', or sometimes even just as 'M'. He suspected some elaborate receptionist's insider joke.
"Okay, okay," he said, annoyed but resigned, and clipped his laptop shut. Wouldn't do to leave sensitive information displayed for all and sundry to peruse. "Send him in. But why's he got this Mr Who de Who with him? Can't that one wait outside?"
"Oh," crooned Miss Moneypenny and giggled. "I'd love to detain him out here with me. But I'm afraid that won't be feasible. He's here for the photo shoot with you. The ad campaign."
Oh double crap. "They have until 10.20!" Rodney barked. "Max!"
"Wait until you see him," gurgled Miss Moneypenny.
2.
In walked Mr Mortensen with a startlingly handsome young man.
Tanned epidermis, Osmond-sibling teeth, muscles threatening to pop the seams of his casual yet sporty knitwear...: Dr Rodney McKay, temporarily distracted from his Bakelite phone, said, "Huh?"
"Rodney!" drawled Mr Mortensen and grasped Rodney's forearm and hand in an expansive gesture of masculine camaraderie.
"Mr Mortensen," said Rodney, shaking his arm to dislodge the man's digits.
The unknown youth hovered near the office display board, right in between Rodney's prize for Outstanding Innovator of the Year (2004) and Rodney's award for Excellence in the Field of Applied Quantum Engineering (2005). The boy wore a cotton knit sports shirt, a beige stone-washed leather jacket and pressed dark-blue denim pants. He was very tall.
"Meet Cristiano Ronaldo!" cried Mr Mortensen and propelled the ephebe forwards by means of jolly claps on the boy's back. It made Rodney flinch, to see the apparition's flesh pummelled in this manner. "The new spring face of Starspite!"
"Hello," said the young man and broke into a boyish smile. There was something foreign about the way he pronounced the 'll' and the 'o'.
Rodney found his hand clasped yet again and pumped up and down in short, forceful shakes.
"Who? Hello," said Rodney.
"We're here for the photo shoot!" beamed Mr Mortensen.
"The what?" said Rodney. His hand felt warm from the prolonged skin contact. "Oh, yes. Of course!"
3.
Flashback to November 2005:
It is a dark and stormy day. Rain lashes the bullet-proof glazing of Dr Rodney McKay's 45th-floor office in the Sunswound Corporate Building, downtown Toronto. Flying hailstones obscure the view of CN Tower, tallest spire in the world.
Dr Rodney McKay is busy calculating the binomial algoqueries cubed over the retromeme of bipolarity which, in a pressing three minutes, he wants to take down to the extensive labs in the basement for pushing tests on the unilateral dimension rotovator.
The phone rings.
"Yes, yes?"
"Dr M? It's Mr Mortensen on the phone. From marketing."
"I'm not taking phone calls right now. Can't you see there's an electrical storm?"
"It's an internal call, M."
"I have to be at the basement labs in three minutes. No: two-and-three-quarter minutes! Tell him to email! What century do these people live in?"
*
To: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
From: vm4@starspite.com.ca
Subject: spring ad campaign
Rodney
PR Marketing and Advertising want to propose you as the new Face of Spring. Well, one of the new faces. The other new face is that of famous soccer star Christian Ronaldo from Manchester, England. Our new campaign will be launched in the spring of next year, in time for the 2006 soccer World Bowl.
Don't know much about soccer myself but marketing research tell me he's a big shot in the world of soccer, and seeing there's that soccer world championship next year and 43 per cent of our client base resides in soccer-playing nations of the European Union, it's important to plug into that market. It's going to be one great campaign.
You on for drinks Thurs nite with the gang?
Vig
Viggo Mortensen
Starspite Enterprises
Marketing Division
x 2471
To: vm4@starligh.com.ca
From: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
Subject: Re: spring ad campaign
Mr Mortensen
I'm not going to be the 'face' of spring or any other season. I am a scientist, not a supermodel.
P.S. Marketing research is a misnomer. What you people do down there on whatever floor can, by no stretch of the definition, be labelled as 'research'.
P.P.S. Can't make drinks Thursday with the 'gang'. Have got a lab booked 6-11.30 pm.
R. McKay
Dr R.M. McKay
ScD, PhD, CPhys, FInstP, FRSC, FRS
Director of Research
Astrophysics Division
Starspite Enterprises
To: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
From: vm4@starspite.com.ca
Subject: Re: Re: spring ad campaign
Great, old chum. I knew you wouldn't let me down.
I've attached the brief and the schedule for the principal photo shoot in Feb. This won't take longer than 1/2 hour max. Just stand around next to this soccer dude and look scientific. Wear your lab coat. He'll be wearing whatever they wear in soccer.
And btw, he's not from Manchester after all. He bats for a team called Manchester United States Club! But he's actually Spanish. Aloha! Isn't that what they say over there for Hello?
Great to have you on board, Rod.
Vig
Viggo Mortensen
Starspite Enterprises
Marketing Division
x 2471
From: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
To: am@starspite.com.ca
Subject: Forward: Re: Re: spring ad campaign
Attachments
Miss Moneypenny, could you deal with this and keep that Mortensen guy off my back? I do NOT have time for his trivia!!!
R.
4.
As he strode down the hall, in front of Mr Mortensen and in front of the sports star, along the corridor, down the escalator, along the hallway to the special non-stop basement direct-to-the-labs elevator, always up ahead because the world just walked too slow for Dr Rodney McKay, -- he tried to remember everything he knew about soccer. Indeed, anything he knew about soccer.
Wasn't it the game with the round ball and the square net? Nets? The one that got the Italians down on College Street all excited? Rodney remembered them honking like maniacs all night and driving their cars up downtown and down uptown, waving their green-white-and-red flags and roaring, "Viva azzurri!" or some such.
They'd clearly won something or other. Rodney had still been in elementary school. The cars had kept him awake, so he'd solved Fermat's theorem in his head.
En route, Mortensen was making small talk with the Spanish athlete. He was good at making small talk, dimpling his chin and baring his teeth. The youth kept quiet and smiled the smile of the 'face of spring'.
"Right, folks," said Mortensen. "Here we are. Direct route all the way down. Love ya and leave ya and all that. But I'll see you, I'll see you." Rodney crossed his hands behind his back just in time to avoid Mortensen's farewell clasp.
You couldn't walk fast in an elevator. You had to stand still and face the shiny bronze-plated doors and the number-button panel and the bronze-plated reflection of the soccer jock next to you.
The youth's arm brushed Rodney's body because the elevator was too small for the both of them. Or this guy was just really large and his body parts went everywhere.
A pungent odour permeated the rectangular space.
"So," said Rodney and folded his arms.
"Ah yes," said the youth and folded his arms in a symmetrical echo of Rodney's.
Rodney dropped his hands. He watched the illuminated dial change from 44 to 43 to 42. "So you're Spanish?" he ventured.
"Spanish? Oh no." The boy sounded positively shocked. "No, no. I'm from Portugal." He pronounced it to rhyme with the Caribbean port of Tortuga.
"Portugal! Right!" Rodney had sourced the origins of the pungent odour. It was the kid's aftershave, citrussy and penetrating.
Rodney sneezed prophylactically. "I'm allergic." He waved his hand vaguely in the air.
Actually, Rodney had absolutely no idea about what to talk to this guy. The boy was preternaturally good-looking, this was true, and preternaturally good-looking people tended to make Rodney somewhat weary if they were in too close proximity. Scientists tended not to be preternaturally good-looking. They were mostly just your common or garden variety of good-looking.
Excepting himself, of course. Dr Rodney McKay knew that he himself was a fine specimen of a man.
And youth. Youth, too, tended to render Rodney reluctant. The very young were rarely able to rise above a basic level of calculus and triangulated equations, and even if they could cube a root to the power of n (because math geniuses often revealed themselves young), they had no idea of application; they could do the math but could they build the machine? Could they screw together the nuts and bolts? Could they make things fly?
And finally, athletes.
Athletes were the kinds of guys that had used to get on Rodney's nerves in a big almighty way, all the way back at play school, and then at high school, and then at college until, thankfully and reliefedly, they had dropped off Rodney's mental map when he hit grad school and the more elevated echelons of intellectual endeavour. Before that, they had been always underfoot: big-voiced, round-muscled, sweat-footed, tipping their shaggy-maned heads backwards to pour high-energy soft drinks down their throats from squeezy-bottles, hailing each other by names like 'Butch!' or 'Mitch!' or 'Wayne!' They liked to slap each other on the back and arm-wrestle. They wore baseball caps the wrong way round and sleeveless vests and sweatbands on their wrists, and they lounged round in the back of class with their legs akimbo, airing their balls through the vents in their shorts.
Their physicality was in no way proportional to their talents in the field of advanced trigonometry.
Rodney never let them peek at his notes. Ever.
5.
"Ah, what club do you support?" said the Spanish -- no, Portuguese -- athlete. Rodney started.
"Huh? Club?"
"Football," prompted the youth. "You know, soccer."
"Uh, no, no," said Rodney. He slapped his hand against his fist impatiently as the numbers drizzled from 14 to 13. "I'm not really into that. I know nothing about soccer. I quite like ice hockey; quite."
"They say you are genius," said the jock. "A bit like Heisenstein?"
"Einstein," said Rodney. "Albert Einstein. And no, my approach is quite different than Einstein's. You see, he had these ideas about relativity that don't correlate at all with my own research into the area of quantum temporal fields." Rodney stopped short. What was he doing, talking shop with an airhead jock?
"Wow," said the boy. Rodney noticed that there was a little mole at the side of the guy's nose. "Eisenstein. Wow."
"Heisenberg," Rodney said. "Einstein. And Heisenberg. Different people."
"He play for Juventus, I think, no?"
5.
The display read 'B' for basement, the speaker pinged, and the doors opened on Rodney's realm.
Gleaming counter tops. Blue flames fizzing underneath Bunsen tripods. The smell of ethane and methane and polypropylene. Rodney charged ahead just as they kid stepped out of the elevator and stepped onto Rodney's foot, and Rodney said "ow", and the kid said, "Sorry" and touched Rodney's arm, and Rodney said, "What was your name again?"
At which the guy actually looked a little surprised, and then a little confused, and then a little shy, and finally came out with a name but he pronounced it in such a mumbled elided manner that Rodney's aural receptors zoned out and he had to snatch the clipboard from one of the assistants' hands to glance at the name: Cristiano Ronaldo Something Something.
"Hey, Rod!" effused Mortensen, popping up from behind a maximised centrifuge like Jack in the box. His arms were spread wide and he had that false grin plastered to his visage, the kind that was designed to negotiate Very Important Persons, Places and Situations. It made the dimple in Mortensen's chin quiver. "Glad you made it down, buddy." As if riding the elevator from 45th to basement was a feat worthy of Lawrence of Arabia. "The crew's all set to shoot!"
They'd set up lights and reflectors and umbrellas and cameras and whatnot in a corner of the Unit 4 lab, right near the magnetoscope. Rodney had a minor spasm because some idiot had stepped on the connector cable, and another moron had placed a styrofoam cup on top of the touchpad accelerator, and "that will leave marks, do you understand, marks? This is supposed to be a dust free zone! Radek! Where's Radek? Eldon!!" He tripped over some sort of photographer's cable that had materialised out of nowhere, hit his chin on a halogen lamp, swore, and knocked his head against a camera crane.
"They have been here for one hour," Radek whispered in Rodney's ear. "I have had to seclude the occito-oscillograph in Lab 3."
"Get me a band-aid," snapped Rodney. "And get me a coffee. And what are these calculations you've got there?" He seized the clipboard from Radek's hands." Are they the algorithms for tomorrow's trial? Let me check these." He drew forth a pencil from the array in his left chest pocket.
Dr Radek Zelenka was Rodney's chief laboratory assistant, and Dr Eldon whose-surname-Rodney-could-never-remember was the principal technician, and they both now hovered around Rodney like solicitous bees.
Mortensen shouldered his way in. "Coffee? We'll deal with the coffee. No problem at all." He proffered a lukewarm, foamy travesty that Rodney swept at once into the nearest aluminum pedal bin.
On a lab stool, lit up by one of the halogen lamps, sat the Portuguese athlete. He'd taken off his leather jacket and folded his bare forearms across his chest.
There was a sheen of sweat on the boy's sultry upper lip.
6.
A short excitable man who immediately got 99 per cent on Rodney's already frayed nerves, introduced himself as "Colin Creevey, photographer", and proceeded to bustle about in an officious manner.
'Oh to work away from the private sector,' Rodney thought, for the 59th time in only three days. 'To be spared the tedium of sponsorship drives!'
The young sportsman started to shed his clothes.
They'd rigged up a makeshift changing booth out of what looked like clothesline and bits of tent but the guy ignored this and just stripped off his shirt there and then, button by button, and underneath he had on nothing, not even the tiniest of vests, just a hairless expanse of shimmering muscle, and Rodney hadn't realised that real people could even look like this, all pecs and six-pack, and two round flat nipples, and in between the nipples a long gold chain with a pendant at the end of it.
"Huh," said Rodney and dropped his rubber-head pencil.
The T-shirt they then made the boy put on, some sort of red affair with a little stand-up collar, was as tight as a condom on an erection. The T-shirt was more like a sheath than like any item of clothing Rodney had ever seen, and the nipples formed twin penny mounds against the fabric.
Rodney crossed his arms over his own chest as if to protect whatever might be budding into hardness there.
And then the soccer boy peeled off his pants, belt first, then top button, then zip, then all of it off, and underneath he wasn't wearing anything. Not a thread.
Half the lab stopped and stared.
The guy didn't seem to care at all, as if he undressed in front of a bunch of other people every day. In fact, he looked around himself, and then looked at Rodney and actually gave a half-smile of acknowledgement as he unself-consciously reached down and adjusted his Continental tackle.
Rodney, all of a sudden, felt very Canadian.
"Here, sir." Eldon materialised at his elbow. "Band-aid. Coffee from Dr Zelenka. Algorithms."
Rodney took what was provided without even looking at it. His eyes seemed thumb-tacked to the sight of bare-groined soccer boy. His bruised chin was forgotten.
Rodney lifted his cup to his mouth and sipped the americano, strong, hot, two sugars, ah, Radek.
The coffee was so strong it made Rodney's heart race in quite an erratic manner. It didn't normally have this effect.
When Rodney looked up again, the Portuguese athlete had covered up and wore a pair of baggy shorts with the number '17' appliquéd in the corner. he was doing little hops and exercises in the space between magnetoscope and chronometer. Someone had given him a round ball and he was doing stuff with this ball: hopping over it, hopping around it, lobbing it onto his chest and his head and along the tops of his thighs.
Colin Creevey thrust a lab coat at Rodney and said, "Here, wear this. Shoot starts in five."
"I've got my own coat," snapped Rodney.
"This one's got our logo on it, in big letters," interjected Mortensen, smoothly accentuating his 'r's. "Just wear it, Rod, old buddy."
Rodney strangled into the coat. It was absurdly baggy and bore a lurid inscription. He swigged the dregs of his coffee, swore because he'd singed his tongue, and took up position next to Man from the Land of Gym.
7.
Something exploded with a loud bang.
The roof caved in; the halogen lamps toppled and set alight the connector cables; the centrifuge burst into flames; the sprinklers sprang into action and doused everyone and everything. The alarm started ringing; the mice escaped from their test maze and scuttled across the floor; fourteen people screamed at the same time; plaster fell from the walls. The fluorescent tubing flickered, fluttered, flopped. Then everything was plunged into window-less darkness.
"Shivers," said Radek's voice not far from Rodney.
"Get out of my way," said Rodney and pushed forward.
He pulled his light pen from his shirt pocket and wove a path across mice and debris to the wall. There, he opened the panel of the fuse plate, tugged at the rescue fuses, connected the router cables, wound his way back across debris and mice, yanked the direct-line fire station phone out of its socket, radioed for help, lurched back into the lab, stuffed algorithms, cables and protractor kits into his ridiculously oversized lab coat, and yelled, "Right! Everybody exit! Emergency stairs, back of the lab!"
Noise erupted. Legs stumbled over one another. Unidentified objects crashed. Pinpoints of lights made crazy patterns: light pens, laser pointers, cell phones, ipod display panels.
Rodney himself was going to exit by the other egress because he wanted to a) shut off the rotovator, b) unplug the oscillograph, c) activate the recording system, and d) reboot the internal network.
"You," he said to the black silhouette in his way. "Come with me." It was the Portuguese sports jock.
They ended up stuck in the emergency elevator.
8.
The lights were out. Everything smelled acrid. An electrical fire started in the floor-button panel but Rodney put it out, using his lab coat and the ink from his biro, frothed up with the help of goodly glops of saliva. Another fire burst out at the rear and Rodney remembered Gulliver and yelled, "Piss!" The Portuguese fellow said, "What?" Rodney shouted, "Piss! Piss!" and demonstrated, and they put that fire out just in time to drop to the floor with their hands across their heads (Rodney literally having to clamp the kid's knuckles in place) to protect themselves from the ceiling caving in but Rodney erected a makeshift scaffold from mangled aluminum elevator bars, and then nothing much happened for quite some time, just the sing-song of far-off sirens and the rustling of two mice that had got into the elevator with them, and the sound of someone weeping.
"Who's that crying?" Rodney said sharply.
"Is..." The kid next to him sniffed. "Is me. Sorry."
"Huh," said Rodney.
"Sorry. I'm not use to this explosions," said the kid. "And I'm afraid for mouses. And for dark."
"Well," said Rodney and waved his unseen hand. He coughed up ash.
"You are very brave," said the kid.
"Yes, well," said Rodney. "We can't all be track stars."
"What is track star?"
"Huh," said Rodney. "It's a type of satellite."
And then he kissed the kid on his wide, frightened mouth until the kid stopped sniffing, and then he pulled the kid's tight sheath-shirt off, all the while telling him things like, "You really shouldn't use this brand of aftershave, it smells incredibly vulgar", and "What is that stuff you've got in your hair? It may make my fingers come out in a rash", and "Mice? You're kidding me, right?", and "What's your name again?" But he never waited long enough for an answer because he found he had to keep kissing the kid who let him, who let him do everything, everything and anything.
Who put his hands, warm, clammy, unexpectedly slim, on him, on Rodney's thighs, and Rodney was pleased because he had good thighs, very well-developed thighs, thank you Mr Jock Sportsman, -- and then on his shoulder, and Rodney was pleased with that, too, because he had well-developed shoulders, -- and yes, he put his hands there, no surprise, the kid was very young after all, and Rodney was particularly pleased because that part of his anatomy was exceptionally well-endowed, if he said so himself, and he did say so, though it wasn't clear how much the kid understood.
Later, Rodney could not have explained with absolute certainty why precisely he had started making out with a virtual stranger on the floor of a broken-down elevator. Perhaps it was the thrill of imminent death. Or maybe the situation had set free some sort of hormonal attractant in his happenstance mate, and in himself, some sort of 'Danger, Danger, Will Robinson' temporary insanity, or sanity, or clarity, or purity of desire.
At any rate, whatever the cause, for twenty minutes on that fourteenth of February 2006, Dr Rodney McKay felt positively un-Canadian.
And Mr Cristiano Ronaldo, Player of the Year, Portugal's most recognised face and most celebrated right foot, heart beating with the adrenaline of peril, head dizzy with acrid fumes, pulse unsteady and leaping with every tiptoe of little naked paws across his naked thighs -- Mr Cristiano Ronaldo sighed his anonymity into the dark mouth of his science genius saviour's passion.
The next day, Cristiano went down to the drugstore of the Mount Sinai Hospital where he was being kept in for 'tests' (smoke inhalation? chemical infection?) and bought himself a new brand of aftershave. Nobody paid much heed to the slight limp in his gait. It was put down to the aftershock of explosion trauma.
Dr Rodney McKay had a jaunty swagger in his step throughout March, April, May and June. His countenance grinned from inane billboards, the 'scientific face of spring' opposite the tanned 'dynamic face of spring' of his youthful sidekick, all assembled days later in a studio got up to look like a research lab. Down on the tenth floor, Mr Viggo Mortensen was commended for promotion on the strength of his marketing flair.
"Soccer!" Rodney announced to Miss Moneypenny. "I'm on leave during July. Paid leave! Good for the image of the company, you know." (And since when had Dr McKay ever cared for the image of the company?) "To be seen in Germany for the World Cup. The two faces of spring. And, before I forget..." Rodney turned around in the door and lifted his finger. "What was that kid's name again?"
The End.
Written in July 2006.
Typed up February 2008.
Posted.
4,318 words.
All original material © Lobelia.
Any feedback is much appreciated, even if it's only one line, one word!
Author: Lobelia;
lobelia321Category: Cross-over crack bonanza. AU.
Fandoms: SGA; football/soccer; Lotrps; 007; HP.
Pairing: Rodnaldo.
Rating: R.
Spoilers: None.
Characters: Dr Rodney McKay (Stargate Atlantis fictional person fandom); Mr Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (football real person fandom); Mr Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings real person fandom); Miss Moneypenny (Ian Fleming's James Bond + the 007 movies fictional person fandoms); Dr Radek Zelenka (Stargate Atlantis fictional person fandom); Eldon (Stargate Atlantis fictional person fandom); Colin Creevey (Harry Potter fictional person fandom).
Who are these people? See icon for the heroes. :-)
Inspiration: Said icon says it all.
Length: 4,387 words.
Style: 3rd person fixed-character focalisation.
Thanks to:
junalele, for persistent badgering since July 2006. :-) And many thanks to sheldrake for a lovely beta.I offer this up to you all on the occasion of Valentine's Day 2008. *spreads the lurv*
by Lobelia
1.
The phone rang.
Dr Rodney McKay, Director of Research at the Astrophysics Division of Starspite Enterprises with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, snatched up the receiver.
"Yes, yes?" he snapped into its grey bakelite mouth. (It was an original retro handset, manufactured in Germany in 1964, purchased from the Director's private funds on e-bay for the sum of 132 euros in a fierce, early-morning bidding battle.)
"Mr Mortensen here to see you. With a Mr... hang on a mo." Miss Moneypenny's muffled voice ruffled the intercom. She was quite clearly talking to someone while covering up her mouthpiece, and someone else was talking back, and Rodney McKay was left impatiently tapping his beech wood table-top with one hand while the other hovered over the touchpad of his laptop.
This was the best fringe benefit of the bakelite phone: its banana-shaped, curvaceous mouthpiece which could be effortlessly tucked into the crook of one's neck, leaving both hands free to do whatever.
There was only the minor discomfort of the spiralling telephone cord getting in the way of one's keyboard fingers.
"With a Mr..." Miss Moneypenny pronounced the words with exaggeration. "A Mister dos Santos Aveiro."
"Dos Who Who? What do they want?"
"It's your ten o'clock appointment. It's on your calendar; didn't you check?"
Oh crap. The sponsoring people. "Can't you put them off? I'm busy with important things!"
"We've already put them off fourteen times, Dr M," fluted Miss Moneypenny. Rodney had no idea why she insisted on addressing him as 'Dr M', or sometimes even just as 'M'. He suspected some elaborate receptionist's insider joke.
"Okay, okay," he said, annoyed but resigned, and clipped his laptop shut. Wouldn't do to leave sensitive information displayed for all and sundry to peruse. "Send him in. But why's he got this Mr Who de Who with him? Can't that one wait outside?"
"Oh," crooned Miss Moneypenny and giggled. "I'd love to detain him out here with me. But I'm afraid that won't be feasible. He's here for the photo shoot with you. The ad campaign."
Oh double crap. "They have until 10.20!" Rodney barked. "Max!"
"Wait until you see him," gurgled Miss Moneypenny.
2.
In walked Mr Mortensen with a startlingly handsome young man.
Tanned epidermis, Osmond-sibling teeth, muscles threatening to pop the seams of his casual yet sporty knitwear...: Dr Rodney McKay, temporarily distracted from his Bakelite phone, said, "Huh?"
"Rodney!" drawled Mr Mortensen and grasped Rodney's forearm and hand in an expansive gesture of masculine camaraderie.
"Mr Mortensen," said Rodney, shaking his arm to dislodge the man's digits.
The unknown youth hovered near the office display board, right in between Rodney's prize for Outstanding Innovator of the Year (2004) and Rodney's award for Excellence in the Field of Applied Quantum Engineering (2005). The boy wore a cotton knit sports shirt, a beige stone-washed leather jacket and pressed dark-blue denim pants. He was very tall.
"Meet Cristiano Ronaldo!" cried Mr Mortensen and propelled the ephebe forwards by means of jolly claps on the boy's back. It made Rodney flinch, to see the apparition's flesh pummelled in this manner. "The new spring face of Starspite!"
"Hello," said the young man and broke into a boyish smile. There was something foreign about the way he pronounced the 'll' and the 'o'.
Rodney found his hand clasped yet again and pumped up and down in short, forceful shakes.
"Who? Hello," said Rodney.
"We're here for the photo shoot!" beamed Mr Mortensen.
"The what?" said Rodney. His hand felt warm from the prolonged skin contact. "Oh, yes. Of course!"
3.
Flashback to November 2005:
It is a dark and stormy day. Rain lashes the bullet-proof glazing of Dr Rodney McKay's 45th-floor office in the Sunswound Corporate Building, downtown Toronto. Flying hailstones obscure the view of CN Tower, tallest spire in the world.
Dr Rodney McKay is busy calculating the binomial algoqueries cubed over the retromeme of bipolarity which, in a pressing three minutes, he wants to take down to the extensive labs in the basement for pushing tests on the unilateral dimension rotovator.
The phone rings.
"Yes, yes?"
"Dr M? It's Mr Mortensen on the phone. From marketing."
"I'm not taking phone calls right now. Can't you see there's an electrical storm?"
"It's an internal call, M."
"I have to be at the basement labs in three minutes. No: two-and-three-quarter minutes! Tell him to email! What century do these people live in?"
*
To: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
From: vm4@starspite.com.ca
Subject: spring ad campaign
Rodney
PR Marketing and Advertising want to propose you as the new Face of Spring. Well, one of the new faces. The other new face is that of famous soccer star Christian Ronaldo from Manchester, England. Our new campaign will be launched in the spring of next year, in time for the 2006 soccer World Bowl.
Don't know much about soccer myself but marketing research tell me he's a big shot in the world of soccer, and seeing there's that soccer world championship next year and 43 per cent of our client base resides in soccer-playing nations of the European Union, it's important to plug into that market. It's going to be one great campaign.
You on for drinks Thurs nite with the gang?
Vig
Viggo Mortensen
Starspite Enterprises
Marketing Division
x 2471
To: vm4@starligh.com.ca
From: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
Subject: Re: spring ad campaign
Mr Mortensen
I'm not going to be the 'face' of spring or any other season. I am a scientist, not a supermodel.
P.S. Marketing research is a misnomer. What you people do down there on whatever floor can, by no stretch of the definition, be labelled as 'research'.
P.P.S. Can't make drinks Thursday with the 'gang'. Have got a lab booked 6-11.30 pm.
R. McKay
Dr R.M. McKay
ScD, PhD, CPhys, FInstP, FRSC, FRS
Director of Research
Astrophysics Division
Starspite Enterprises
To: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
From: vm4@starspite.com.ca
Subject: Re: Re: spring ad campaign
Great, old chum. I knew you wouldn't let me down.
I've attached the brief and the schedule for the principal photo shoot in Feb. This won't take longer than 1/2 hour max. Just stand around next to this soccer dude and look scientific. Wear your lab coat. He'll be wearing whatever they wear in soccer.
And btw, he's not from Manchester after all. He bats for a team called Manchester United States Club! But he's actually Spanish. Aloha! Isn't that what they say over there for Hello?
Great to have you on board, Rod.
Vig
Viggo Mortensen
Starspite Enterprises
Marketing Division
x 2471
From: rmmck@starspite.com.ca
To: am@starspite.com.ca
Subject: Forward: Re: Re: spring ad campaign
Attachments
Miss Moneypenny, could you deal with this and keep that Mortensen guy off my back? I do NOT have time for his trivia!!!
R.
4.
As he strode down the hall, in front of Mr Mortensen and in front of the sports star, along the corridor, down the escalator, along the hallway to the special non-stop basement direct-to-the-labs elevator, always up ahead because the world just walked too slow for Dr Rodney McKay, -- he tried to remember everything he knew about soccer. Indeed, anything he knew about soccer.
Wasn't it the game with the round ball and the square net? Nets? The one that got the Italians down on College Street all excited? Rodney remembered them honking like maniacs all night and driving their cars up downtown and down uptown, waving their green-white-and-red flags and roaring, "Viva azzurri!" or some such.
They'd clearly won something or other. Rodney had still been in elementary school. The cars had kept him awake, so he'd solved Fermat's theorem in his head.
En route, Mortensen was making small talk with the Spanish athlete. He was good at making small talk, dimpling his chin and baring his teeth. The youth kept quiet and smiled the smile of the 'face of spring'.
"Right, folks," said Mortensen. "Here we are. Direct route all the way down. Love ya and leave ya and all that. But I'll see you, I'll see you." Rodney crossed his hands behind his back just in time to avoid Mortensen's farewell clasp.
You couldn't walk fast in an elevator. You had to stand still and face the shiny bronze-plated doors and the number-button panel and the bronze-plated reflection of the soccer jock next to you.
The youth's arm brushed Rodney's body because the elevator was too small for the both of them. Or this guy was just really large and his body parts went everywhere.
A pungent odour permeated the rectangular space.
"So," said Rodney and folded his arms.
"Ah yes," said the youth and folded his arms in a symmetrical echo of Rodney's.
Rodney dropped his hands. He watched the illuminated dial change from 44 to 43 to 42. "So you're Spanish?" he ventured.
"Spanish? Oh no." The boy sounded positively shocked. "No, no. I'm from Portugal." He pronounced it to rhyme with the Caribbean port of Tortuga.
"Portugal! Right!" Rodney had sourced the origins of the pungent odour. It was the kid's aftershave, citrussy and penetrating.
Rodney sneezed prophylactically. "I'm allergic." He waved his hand vaguely in the air.
Actually, Rodney had absolutely no idea about what to talk to this guy. The boy was preternaturally good-looking, this was true, and preternaturally good-looking people tended to make Rodney somewhat weary if they were in too close proximity. Scientists tended not to be preternaturally good-looking. They were mostly just your common or garden variety of good-looking.
Excepting himself, of course. Dr Rodney McKay knew that he himself was a fine specimen of a man.
And youth. Youth, too, tended to render Rodney reluctant. The very young were rarely able to rise above a basic level of calculus and triangulated equations, and even if they could cube a root to the power of n (because math geniuses often revealed themselves young), they had no idea of application; they could do the math but could they build the machine? Could they screw together the nuts and bolts? Could they make things fly?
And finally, athletes.
Athletes were the kinds of guys that had used to get on Rodney's nerves in a big almighty way, all the way back at play school, and then at high school, and then at college until, thankfully and reliefedly, they had dropped off Rodney's mental map when he hit grad school and the more elevated echelons of intellectual endeavour. Before that, they had been always underfoot: big-voiced, round-muscled, sweat-footed, tipping their shaggy-maned heads backwards to pour high-energy soft drinks down their throats from squeezy-bottles, hailing each other by names like 'Butch!' or 'Mitch!' or 'Wayne!' They liked to slap each other on the back and arm-wrestle. They wore baseball caps the wrong way round and sleeveless vests and sweatbands on their wrists, and they lounged round in the back of class with their legs akimbo, airing their balls through the vents in their shorts.
Their physicality was in no way proportional to their talents in the field of advanced trigonometry.
Rodney never let them peek at his notes. Ever.
5.
"Ah, what club do you support?" said the Spanish -- no, Portuguese -- athlete. Rodney started.
"Huh? Club?"
"Football," prompted the youth. "You know, soccer."
"Uh, no, no," said Rodney. He slapped his hand against his fist impatiently as the numbers drizzled from 14 to 13. "I'm not really into that. I know nothing about soccer. I quite like ice hockey; quite."
"They say you are genius," said the jock. "A bit like Heisenstein?"
"Einstein," said Rodney. "Albert Einstein. And no, my approach is quite different than Einstein's. You see, he had these ideas about relativity that don't correlate at all with my own research into the area of quantum temporal fields." Rodney stopped short. What was he doing, talking shop with an airhead jock?
"Wow," said the boy. Rodney noticed that there was a little mole at the side of the guy's nose. "Eisenstein. Wow."
"Heisenberg," Rodney said. "Einstein. And Heisenberg. Different people."
"He play for Juventus, I think, no?"
5.
The display read 'B' for basement, the speaker pinged, and the doors opened on Rodney's realm.
Gleaming counter tops. Blue flames fizzing underneath Bunsen tripods. The smell of ethane and methane and polypropylene. Rodney charged ahead just as they kid stepped out of the elevator and stepped onto Rodney's foot, and Rodney said "ow", and the kid said, "Sorry" and touched Rodney's arm, and Rodney said, "What was your name again?"
At which the guy actually looked a little surprised, and then a little confused, and then a little shy, and finally came out with a name but he pronounced it in such a mumbled elided manner that Rodney's aural receptors zoned out and he had to snatch the clipboard from one of the assistants' hands to glance at the name: Cristiano Ronaldo Something Something.
"Hey, Rod!" effused Mortensen, popping up from behind a maximised centrifuge like Jack in the box. His arms were spread wide and he had that false grin plastered to his visage, the kind that was designed to negotiate Very Important Persons, Places and Situations. It made the dimple in Mortensen's chin quiver. "Glad you made it down, buddy." As if riding the elevator from 45th to basement was a feat worthy of Lawrence of Arabia. "The crew's all set to shoot!"
They'd set up lights and reflectors and umbrellas and cameras and whatnot in a corner of the Unit 4 lab, right near the magnetoscope. Rodney had a minor spasm because some idiot had stepped on the connector cable, and another moron had placed a styrofoam cup on top of the touchpad accelerator, and "that will leave marks, do you understand, marks? This is supposed to be a dust free zone! Radek! Where's Radek? Eldon!!" He tripped over some sort of photographer's cable that had materialised out of nowhere, hit his chin on a halogen lamp, swore, and knocked his head against a camera crane.
"They have been here for one hour," Radek whispered in Rodney's ear. "I have had to seclude the occito-oscillograph in Lab 3."
"Get me a band-aid," snapped Rodney. "And get me a coffee. And what are these calculations you've got there?" He seized the clipboard from Radek's hands." Are they the algorithms for tomorrow's trial? Let me check these." He drew forth a pencil from the array in his left chest pocket.
Dr Radek Zelenka was Rodney's chief laboratory assistant, and Dr Eldon whose-surname-Rodney-could-never-remember was the principal technician, and they both now hovered around Rodney like solicitous bees.
Mortensen shouldered his way in. "Coffee? We'll deal with the coffee. No problem at all." He proffered a lukewarm, foamy travesty that Rodney swept at once into the nearest aluminum pedal bin.
On a lab stool, lit up by one of the halogen lamps, sat the Portuguese athlete. He'd taken off his leather jacket and folded his bare forearms across his chest.
There was a sheen of sweat on the boy's sultry upper lip.
6.
A short excitable man who immediately got 99 per cent on Rodney's already frayed nerves, introduced himself as "Colin Creevey, photographer", and proceeded to bustle about in an officious manner.
'Oh to work away from the private sector,' Rodney thought, for the 59th time in only three days. 'To be spared the tedium of sponsorship drives!'
The young sportsman started to shed his clothes.
They'd rigged up a makeshift changing booth out of what looked like clothesline and bits of tent but the guy ignored this and just stripped off his shirt there and then, button by button, and underneath he had on nothing, not even the tiniest of vests, just a hairless expanse of shimmering muscle, and Rodney hadn't realised that real people could even look like this, all pecs and six-pack, and two round flat nipples, and in between the nipples a long gold chain with a pendant at the end of it.
"Huh," said Rodney and dropped his rubber-head pencil.
The T-shirt they then made the boy put on, some sort of red affair with a little stand-up collar, was as tight as a condom on an erection. The T-shirt was more like a sheath than like any item of clothing Rodney had ever seen, and the nipples formed twin penny mounds against the fabric.
Rodney crossed his arms over his own chest as if to protect whatever might be budding into hardness there.
And then the soccer boy peeled off his pants, belt first, then top button, then zip, then all of it off, and underneath he wasn't wearing anything. Not a thread.
Half the lab stopped and stared.
The guy didn't seem to care at all, as if he undressed in front of a bunch of other people every day. In fact, he looked around himself, and then looked at Rodney and actually gave a half-smile of acknowledgement as he unself-consciously reached down and adjusted his Continental tackle.
Rodney, all of a sudden, felt very Canadian.
"Here, sir." Eldon materialised at his elbow. "Band-aid. Coffee from Dr Zelenka. Algorithms."
Rodney took what was provided without even looking at it. His eyes seemed thumb-tacked to the sight of bare-groined soccer boy. His bruised chin was forgotten.
Rodney lifted his cup to his mouth and sipped the americano, strong, hot, two sugars, ah, Radek.
The coffee was so strong it made Rodney's heart race in quite an erratic manner. It didn't normally have this effect.
When Rodney looked up again, the Portuguese athlete had covered up and wore a pair of baggy shorts with the number '17' appliquéd in the corner. he was doing little hops and exercises in the space between magnetoscope and chronometer. Someone had given him a round ball and he was doing stuff with this ball: hopping over it, hopping around it, lobbing it onto his chest and his head and along the tops of his thighs.
Colin Creevey thrust a lab coat at Rodney and said, "Here, wear this. Shoot starts in five."
"I've got my own coat," snapped Rodney.
"This one's got our logo on it, in big letters," interjected Mortensen, smoothly accentuating his 'r's. "Just wear it, Rod, old buddy."
Rodney strangled into the coat. It was absurdly baggy and bore a lurid inscription. He swigged the dregs of his coffee, swore because he'd singed his tongue, and took up position next to Man from the Land of Gym.
7.
Something exploded with a loud bang.
The roof caved in; the halogen lamps toppled and set alight the connector cables; the centrifuge burst into flames; the sprinklers sprang into action and doused everyone and everything. The alarm started ringing; the mice escaped from their test maze and scuttled across the floor; fourteen people screamed at the same time; plaster fell from the walls. The fluorescent tubing flickered, fluttered, flopped. Then everything was plunged into window-less darkness.
"Shivers," said Radek's voice not far from Rodney.
"Get out of my way," said Rodney and pushed forward.
He pulled his light pen from his shirt pocket and wove a path across mice and debris to the wall. There, he opened the panel of the fuse plate, tugged at the rescue fuses, connected the router cables, wound his way back across debris and mice, yanked the direct-line fire station phone out of its socket, radioed for help, lurched back into the lab, stuffed algorithms, cables and protractor kits into his ridiculously oversized lab coat, and yelled, "Right! Everybody exit! Emergency stairs, back of the lab!"
Noise erupted. Legs stumbled over one another. Unidentified objects crashed. Pinpoints of lights made crazy patterns: light pens, laser pointers, cell phones, ipod display panels.
Rodney himself was going to exit by the other egress because he wanted to a) shut off the rotovator, b) unplug the oscillograph, c) activate the recording system, and d) reboot the internal network.
"You," he said to the black silhouette in his way. "Come with me." It was the Portuguese sports jock.
They ended up stuck in the emergency elevator.
8.
The lights were out. Everything smelled acrid. An electrical fire started in the floor-button panel but Rodney put it out, using his lab coat and the ink from his biro, frothed up with the help of goodly glops of saliva. Another fire burst out at the rear and Rodney remembered Gulliver and yelled, "Piss!" The Portuguese fellow said, "What?" Rodney shouted, "Piss! Piss!" and demonstrated, and they put that fire out just in time to drop to the floor with their hands across their heads (Rodney literally having to clamp the kid's knuckles in place) to protect themselves from the ceiling caving in but Rodney erected a makeshift scaffold from mangled aluminum elevator bars, and then nothing much happened for quite some time, just the sing-song of far-off sirens and the rustling of two mice that had got into the elevator with them, and the sound of someone weeping.
"Who's that crying?" Rodney said sharply.
"Is..." The kid next to him sniffed. "Is me. Sorry."
"Huh," said Rodney.
"Sorry. I'm not use to this explosions," said the kid. "And I'm afraid for mouses. And for dark."
"Well," said Rodney and waved his unseen hand. He coughed up ash.
"You are very brave," said the kid.
"Yes, well," said Rodney. "We can't all be track stars."
"What is track star?"
"Huh," said Rodney. "It's a type of satellite."
And then he kissed the kid on his wide, frightened mouth until the kid stopped sniffing, and then he pulled the kid's tight sheath-shirt off, all the while telling him things like, "You really shouldn't use this brand of aftershave, it smells incredibly vulgar", and "What is that stuff you've got in your hair? It may make my fingers come out in a rash", and "Mice? You're kidding me, right?", and "What's your name again?" But he never waited long enough for an answer because he found he had to keep kissing the kid who let him, who let him do everything, everything and anything.
Who put his hands, warm, clammy, unexpectedly slim, on him, on Rodney's thighs, and Rodney was pleased because he had good thighs, very well-developed thighs, thank you Mr Jock Sportsman, -- and then on his shoulder, and Rodney was pleased with that, too, because he had well-developed shoulders, -- and yes, he put his hands there, no surprise, the kid was very young after all, and Rodney was particularly pleased because that part of his anatomy was exceptionally well-endowed, if he said so himself, and he did say so, though it wasn't clear how much the kid understood.
Later, Rodney could not have explained with absolute certainty why precisely he had started making out with a virtual stranger on the floor of a broken-down elevator. Perhaps it was the thrill of imminent death. Or maybe the situation had set free some sort of hormonal attractant in his happenstance mate, and in himself, some sort of 'Danger, Danger, Will Robinson' temporary insanity, or sanity, or clarity, or purity of desire.
At any rate, whatever the cause, for twenty minutes on that fourteenth of February 2006, Dr Rodney McKay felt positively un-Canadian.
And Mr Cristiano Ronaldo, Player of the Year, Portugal's most recognised face and most celebrated right foot, heart beating with the adrenaline of peril, head dizzy with acrid fumes, pulse unsteady and leaping with every tiptoe of little naked paws across his naked thighs -- Mr Cristiano Ronaldo sighed his anonymity into the dark mouth of his science genius saviour's passion.
The next day, Cristiano went down to the drugstore of the Mount Sinai Hospital where he was being kept in for 'tests' (smoke inhalation? chemical infection?) and bought himself a new brand of aftershave. Nobody paid much heed to the slight limp in his gait. It was put down to the aftershock of explosion trauma.
Dr Rodney McKay had a jaunty swagger in his step throughout March, April, May and June. His countenance grinned from inane billboards, the 'scientific face of spring' opposite the tanned 'dynamic face of spring' of his youthful sidekick, all assembled days later in a studio got up to look like a research lab. Down on the tenth floor, Mr Viggo Mortensen was commended for promotion on the strength of his marketing flair.
"Soccer!" Rodney announced to Miss Moneypenny. "I'm on leave during July. Paid leave! Good for the image of the company, you know." (And since when had Dr McKay ever cared for the image of the company?) "To be seen in Germany for the World Cup. The two faces of spring. And, before I forget..." Rodney turned around in the door and lifted his finger. "What was that kid's name again?"
The End.
Written in July 2006.
Typed up February 2008.
Posted.
4,318 words.
All original material © Lobelia.
Any feedback is much appreciated, even if it's only one line, one word!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-15 09:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-15 09:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-15 09:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-15 09:39 am (UTC)I miss bakelite phones because yes, you could just hold them between head and shoulder and have your hands free. Without running the risk of accidentally pushing a button on your cordless and thusly disconnecting the call. *harumph*
Rodney had no idea why she insisted on addressing him as 'Dr M', or sometimes even just as 'M'. He suspected some elaborate receptionist's insider joke.
Heh. Heh. *cackles*
And Viggo Mortensen with the manly arm clasp and the quivering chin dimple and working in PR. Lolz!
"Heisenberg," Rodney said. "Einstein. And Heisenberg. Different people."
"He play for Juventus, I think, no?"
Okay, that one? Made me actually wheeze with laughter. I know, it's mean but... that could totally happen. Especially in 2006 when Cristiano's grasp on the English language... yes. *giggles some more*
I might have zoned out a bit when you made him strip because yeah, the visuals... *cough*
Whee! for Colin Creevey and mice and Cristiano being afraid of them and for Rodney taking a paid vacation to see the WC.
Awesome. Just all around awesome. You did it! Just took 1 1/2 years of nudging and whining but awesome. ;D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-15 10:14 am (UTC)If it hadn't been for your nudging, this probably would never have seen the light of LJ!
I'm so glad you finally got to read it! There it was, trapped inside my notebook, all this time.
And thank you for your generous, detailed feedback. I have a total grudge against the newfangled flat phone because last week I held one between shoulder and chin and it slipped and smashed! Talk about flimsy. You could drop those old phones and they'd be robust! Also, you wouldn't drop them because they were curved!
I can see that the handsfree headset is the only option left me.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-15 03:53 pm (UTC)Most horrible are cellphones. I mean, so tiny. I think chances are, mine would get somehow lost in my ear if I tried to hold it behind ear and shoulder. No, no, the old ones were brilliant. And also - just think of all the paper and pencils they saved because the cord was brilliant to keep your hands busy, you could twirl in thorugh the fingers, wrap the curves around them. Fun to be had and no need to doodle on a piece of papers. Really. If we had stuck with the bakelite phones, who knows how many trees could still be alive?
Okay, and now I'm entering the crazy zone. I really should go back to that horrible article about exotism in German travel reports of the early 20th century. I knew there was a reason why I didn't want to stick with German Literature - horrible, horrible Sekundärliteratur. *le sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-21 04:41 pm (UTC)And, before I forget..." Rodney turned around in the door and lifted his finger. "What was that kid's name again?"
weird because of those two fandoms...
...I think I feel sorry for wayne :p
and christiano cuz rodney never looked hot if you ask me(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 03:14 pm (UTC)I knew I had to Rodnaldo when I saw the photo that made it into my icon. *g*
Thanks for reading and commenting! Cross-over weird things are always difficult to get read... :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 07:04 pm (UTC)And you did it so well. Love the details.
I love a writer with a good, solid imagination.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-24 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-24 11:51 am (UTC)Also, love the icon.
Thank you. It's from a French painter (19th century, if I'm correct)
It was used for the short novel I've published years ago.