Well, it all began when Parrish fell for
Katie
Brown. Yes, that David
Parrish and that Katie Brown. The infamous Katie Brown. Not to be
confused with Kate Heightmeyer, Cate (I'll Eat You If I Get Hungry
Enough) Donner the chemist, Kat (I'm Writing a Novel, Really) Linden in
Ancient Linguistics, Kathy (What's One More Tattoo?) Burns the
anthropologist, or Kitty (I Really Hate My Parents) Katz, the new
supply sergeant. Not Evan Lorne (or Marcus or Will or Nick, either,
though in other universes...but you know how that goes, right?), not
Lindsay (Hic) Novak, Sam (Smartest Woman in Three Galaxies, Thank You
Very Much) Carter, Vala (I've Slept With Men in Three Galaxies, Thank
You Very Much) Mal Doran, not Elizabeth Wier, nor Teyla Emmagen. Katie
Brown. They were both scientists living in the (not so much any more)
Lost City of the Ancients and not getting any younger (barring Wraith
regurgitation). And why shouldn't Parrish fall for the not unattractive
Katie, who shared a deep and abiding love of all things chlorophyllic
with him?
You may ask, dear reader, but you may also have already guessed.
You may ask, as David did, but you are surely thinking of one very (self) important reason. Yes, you guessed it.
Rodney McKay.
Meredith Rodney Ingram McKay of Atlantis Team One, astrophysicist, engineer, multiple PhDs, savior (he said) of Atlantis, smartest man in two galaxies (again, he said), and social dolt.
McKay, of course, had a thing for ZPMs, blondes, redheads, brunettes, breasts, brains, breathing, thigh holsters and Air Force Colonels who exhibited a minimum of two of his other criteria. He'd be quite willing to discount it to one, if that one was a ZPM and came with a good cup of coffee. Rodney's favorite fantasy involved two Air Force Colonels, three ZPMs, and the Nobel Prize, but Katie did buzz on three (four if you count breathing) of the criteria. And she liked him (though that might disqualify her for having brains, but that's just me talking, dear reader).
No, the chief scientist of Atlantis was (when it was convenient and he wanted to avoid certain Air Force Colonels) dating Katie Brown. Or something approximating dating in Katie's mind.
It all would have been moot had it not been for a concatenation of events and dates, beginning with Doctor Weir's declaration that Atlantis would begin following the Earth calendar for dates and thus Valentine's Day approached and Major Lorne's team's mission to PX3-6DD (referred to forever by Corporal Menenger as Planet Thirty-Six Double D. I'll allow you, dear reader, to imagine the natives of said planet yourself).
While Major Lorne was majoring (possibly in art, as there were body paints involved), Corporal Menenger was cavorting (or possibly measuring), and Sergeant Alejandro was demonstrating either the Flamenco or the Macarena (Sergeant Alejandro being both uncoordinated and drunk), David was, it is fair to say, sulking.
He was doing his sulking while sitting, in this case, on a bench before the raging celebratory bonfire. No one (not even the natives) really remembers what was being celebrated. Perhaps it was the bringing in of the latest crop of aphrodisiacs or footwashing day.
But while he was sitting (and sulking) one of the priestesses sat down beside him. She was a typical example of the female of the species of the planet. In other words, busty, and wearing the native costume – which did indeed resemble a reinforced bra and a long, swishy skirt.
David glanced at them – errr, her, glanced again, stared, then sighed gustily and looked back at the fire again.
"What is wrong with you?" the priestess demanded, looking down to make sure she was still presenting her best attributes like the tops of two fresh baked loaves of bread.
"I'm in love," David declared.
"Love," the priestess sighed.
"Love."
"Oh, dear." She glanced across the fire, to where Corporal Menenger was expounding on Victoria's Secret and possibly something about posing for Playboy. "Not with ... him?"
"God, no," David exclaimed, particularly horrified. Menenger was swarthy and wide as a rhinoceros. Not his type at all. Katie was his type: sweet, demure, dim...He smiled fatuously. "She's not here."
"But you cannot be so sad simply because you are separated?" the priestess asked.
"She doesn't love me," David said piteously. (It's true, he may have had more than one – or four – glasses of the ceremonial wine. And those glasses were big.) (Dr. Corrigan might have called them chalices, if he hadn't sprained his ankle of PX4-GHB, on the way back to the stargate, after the incident with the royal iguana thing that he still wouldn't talk about. He just got white around the lips whenever it was mentioned. But that's another story and Elizabeth had asked everyone to stop teasing him, since every time someone did, he typed up a new resignation and she had to talk him out of going back to Earth.)
He added, "She doesn't even see me."
The priestess's mouth formed a perfect, red O. She'd stained her lips with noddi berries, the really ripe ones, even though her mother had always told her only sluts stained their lips. Her mother was as stick in the mud. Also, so?
It should be noted at this point that the priestess had also been indulging in the ceremonial wine. For strictly ceremonial purposes, of course.
"Come on." She wobbled to her feet and grabbed David's arm, pulling him upright too. He nearly face planted into her bread loaves, but recovered at the last second.
"What?"
"Come on. I have just the thing."
"What?" David asked again. He was still staring at her cleavage. What? He was in love, not blind. They were right there.
"Love Beans!"
The priestess snuck David into the temple (well, it was a tent, but let's not be picky, they called it a temple) through the back...flap. Luckily, all the other priestesses were at the party or already passed out, because the ten—temple was divided by bead curtains and there just wasn't anyway to slip through those silently.
Soon, she'd opened a chest and pulled out a bag that she pressed into David's hands.
"Love Beans," she confided to him.
"Uhm," he said very intelligently.
The priestess gave him a look, the sort of look David had been getting from women all his life, that said: Are you retarded? (Colonel Sheppard received several variants of said look regularly, including but not limited to, Elizabeth's You are retarded, Teyla's Are you from this galax—Oh right. But you're still a dork, and most common of all: You're a dork but I'd like to jump your bones anyway.) So, David opened the bag and checked the contents.
Beans.
Dark brown beans. Coffee brown. Chocolate brown. He raised them to his nose and sniffed. Mocha, he thought. He may have made a squeak of excitement. He started to taste one (I said he'd been drinking, don't talk to me about eating alien foods without testing them, Parrish is a botanist, Rodney will tell you they're all idiots.) only to have his hand slapped away by the priestess.
"Are you retarded?" she asked.
"What? No," David said.
"They're Love Beans," she hissed. "You eat them with your Beloved and they will love you."
"The beans?" David asked, wondering if this meant they'd finally found a legume that didn't cause gas.
Several of the passed out priestesses groaned and one of them threw a pillow in their direction.
"No! Your Beloved," the priestess said. She crossed her arms under her bread loaves, boosting them even higher and rounder. David was pretty sure he'd never bake again without getting a hard-on. He didn't even want to think about how he'd explain that to his mother – since his family owned a bakery. God, she'd think that he'd been working for one of those erotic bakeries.
"Oh. That good, hunh."
The priestess rolled her eyes.
"You must be sure to eat them with her, otherwise it won't work," she said.
David hefted the sack of beans, thought about Katie and her sweet, squeaky voice, her dyed red hair, and the way her hands always smelled like fertilizer.
"Okay, thanks," he said.
David wasn't a complete idiot, despite what Rodney McKay or Major Lorne might tell everyone. Before he exposed his beloved Katie or himself to an alien foodstuff, he had a sample of the Love Beans analyzed by Doctors Leary, Hofmann, and Burroughs in the Biochem department. All three agreed that the beans were perfectly harmless, contained no recognizable harmful compounds, allergens, or even any interesting hallucinogens. (Doctor Hofmann was sanguine. Doctor Leary was disappointed. Doctor Burroughs was even more disappointed, opining that he'd thought a new galaxy would offer more kickass highs. Parrish got out of the chem lab as soon as he could after that.)
He arranged to share lunch alone with Katie the next day, on Atlantis' mandatory Rest Day. (Sunday having been retired from the local vocabulary by Weir fiat.) In the greenhouse, among the ferns and feezle plants – the ones with the leaves that smelled like lavender and the flowers that smelled a lot like armpits. Luckily the feezle weren't flowering. And the sap did taste pretty good on cereal, though it was pink.
In the meantime, though, he had roast beast sandwiches, pickles (Real! From Earth! Pickles!), pret tortilla chips and Athosian salsa (don't ask), plus two bottles of cider.
And the Love Beans.
Unfortunately, they both still had their radios on, too.
David had just handed Katie the bag of beans after taking one out. He held it up and smiled. "You have to try these," he said.
Katie looked at the beans doubtfully. "Really?"
"Really," David assured her.
Despite her inexplicable belief that she understood the 'true' Rodney McKay, Katie hadn't fallen off the turnip truck the day before. "Maybe you better eat one first," she said.
Remembering that the priestess had said to eat one bean, too, David nodded and popped the bean into his mouth. It was delicious. For just one second he thought he was in love with the bean and not Katie, it was that good. Then it was gone and he opened his eyes.
Katie was the most gorgeous, brilliant, fascinating, entertaining, sexy, soothing, delightful, wonderful person ever. She was better than finding prehistoric fossil ferns on PX4-9HA. She was still a little dim and he didn't care much for her taste in casual clothes – pink? – but she was utterly perfect.
"Wow, that looks like it must have tasted good," Kate said and picked up the bag of beans.
And their radios squawled into their ears.
"All personal unless otherwise notified please return to your quarters, Atlantis is about to go under lock down. Repeat, all personal return to your quarters, thank you."
Katie gave David a sad smile and headed for the door. "We'd better get back to our quarters," she said. "I'll just take these in case I get hungry later."
Katie was tempted to eat the beans while she was in her quarters, but it seemed rather self-indulgent. Besides, the lock down only lasted two hours, while the public corridors were flooded with an unpleasant cleaning gas. Apparently, Atlantis was a bit like a self-cleaning oven. When she ventured out later, everything was shining and clean.
Hurrying down the corridor toward the botany labs, she noticed how anything that wasn't Atlantis in the corridor had disappeared. The pots with new plants (replacing the ten thousand year old dead ones) were now just pots. Even the dirt was gone. With a squeak, she ran for the labs, fearing for all her baby ferns and everything else. Suddenly, the starkness of all the rooms, even the personal quarters, made sense. No doubt all of the city could be cleaned in the same way and Atlantis had done a post evacuation cleaning after the Ancients bugged out.
Which made way more sense, because no bunch of hominids, no matter how advanced, could clean up behind them as well as the Ancients had seemed to, especially considering their penchant for leaving lethal experiments just lying around the various labs.
She breathed a breath of stunned relief when she got to her lab. Like the personal quarters, it was untouched and her precious green things were fine.
To sooth her nerves, Katie snatched up a mister and began dampening the ferns anyway. She was so intent, she didn't notice Nancy Simpson until she bumped into her.
"Oh!"
"Sorry," Simpson replied.
"What are you doing down here?" Katie asked. She may have sounded a bit more snippy than that, because Simpson really had no reason at all to be in a botany lab. She worked out of engineering and physics and had been known to sneer at the 'soft' sciences.
"Nothing. Well, no. McKay ordered me to make sure the automatic cleaners didn't activate down here," Simpson said. And, yes, that was so very definitely a sneer, Kate saw. She tightened her hand on the mister, resisting the urge to squirt it at Simpson's face. She set the mister down and groped for something else, like the pleasant thought that Rodney of all people had actually considered her, if not enough to come himself, then to at least dispatch a minion. Thinking of Simpson, so sneering and self satisfied, as a minion made Katie feel better.
She tucked her hands in her pockets and found the bag of beans Parrish had given her. Hah. Simpson had no beans. She pulled the bag out, took a bean and popped it in her mouth.
Bliss. It wasn't hard or crunchy. It melted and coated her tongue and the roof of her mouth and slid down the back of her throat like thick whipped cream.
When Katie opened her eyes, all she could see was Nancy, lovely, wonderful Nancy, frowning at her silly ferns. The lights along the walls gleamed off Nancy's blond hair, the top neatly pulled back, the rest swinging forward over her cheek.
"Oooooh," Katie moaned.
Simpson gave her the fish eye.
"What have you got there?" she asked suspiciously.
Katie offered her the bag. "They're wonderful. Here, take them, please," she said eagerly. Nancy deserved the wonderfulness that was the beans. She didn't understand how she'd ever thought that obnoxious prat Rodney McKay was anything more than a loud annoyance when there was Nancy. She was in love.
Simpson gave her another odd look, but took the bag. "Are these safe?"
"As if I would ever give you something that wasn't safe!" Katie replied. "Go ahead, have one, Parrish brought them back and gave them to me."
Simpson studied the beans. "Okay." She started to take one out of the bag, then growled and slapped at her radio earpiece. "I'm on my way back, McKay. Your girlfriend's little plants are fine."
"Oh, Rodney's not my boyfriend," Katie blurted out. How horrible if Nancy (exquisite, brilliant, sarcastic, impatient – actually, she was rather like Rodney, come to think of it – not that Katie was thinking much) felt she couldn't approach Katie because that nasty McKay was in the way. Perhaps she could feed him to one of the carnivorous plants in Lab D4. The one's they'd brought back from P14-ME2 and had to cut Dr. Munch out of once.
Simpson lifted the bag and nodded to Katie (Katie nearly swooned). "At least you know how to be properly grateful."
Before Katie could say anything else, Simpson had stalked out of the botany lab.
Katie could have cried. If only she was the type of person to pounce on someone, she thought sadly.
Simpson was the pouncing kind. Possibly this was a result of growing up with four sisters and five cats and a mother who treated all ten of them the same. Her father had tended to bring home his paycheck like a dead impala, drop it and retreat into his den. She hadn't even been certain of his first name until she was in high school. She'd learned early to grab what she wanted and defend it tooth and claw. So to speak.
Still, she wasn't thinking about pouncing on anyone when she walked into the physics lab. She was thinking in an unordered jumble that Rodney McKay was a dick, she'd missed lunch because of the cleaning lock down, who to pawn the assignment to track down where Atlantis stored the cleaning gas onto, what in God's name did Katie Brown see in McKay and for that matter what he could see in a botanist, whether she should put ten dollars into the betting pool on whether McKay or Sheppard would return from their next mission with their skivvies showing, wondering exactly where her green satin bra had disappeared to (she suspected Bryce, that slut, had nicked it from the laundry), hoping the mess would be serving fricasseed almost-a-lope and not the deep fried giant bug legs (which did not taste like prawns, no matter what the cooks said).
So she was a little hungry and she had the beans Katie had pushed on her.
"Simpson, good, come here and look at this," Zelenka said, as she came in.
"Where's McKay?"
Zelenka waved one hand. "Colonel Sheppard came around, distracted him. They have gone off to newly opened lab on West Pier to – "
"Oh," Simpson said knowingly.
"Not that," Zelenka snapped.
Simpson snickered and ate a bean.
A perfectly wonderful bean that tasted exactly like her grandmother's pumpkin pie. It was so good she moaned and Zelenka looked up from his computer screen, blinking rapidly behind the walls of his glasses. Simpson barely stopped her hand from reaching out to play with the wisps of hair floating around his face.
Then she thought: I want.
And pounced.
Zelenka let out a rather unmanly squeal.
"Oh, my God, my eyes," Rodney was heard to exclaim later, backing out of the main lab and into Colonel Sheppard, who was ambling behind him. Sheppard peered past him, snickered, and said, "Way to go, Doctor Z." The two of them reversed away, deciding that even the paperwork Elizabeth kept demanding would be a better choice of occupations than trying to detach Simpson from Zelenka, even if that hand wave had looked suspiciously like someone grasping for a lifeline.
Several hours later, fearing that Simpson might be part Praying Mantis and vowing to check on whatever the genetics labs had been brewing up lately, because no woman who doesn't work out should have such unnaturally strong thighs, Zelenka slipped out of the lab while Simpson was in the washroom.
He didn't really want to explain why his pants were on inside out and missing a button or that he had his jacket zipped all the way up to hide that he'd never found his shirt and the bite marks Simpson had left. A hickey was one thing, he felt, rather pleasant if discreetly placed, but his chest looked more like she'd been trying to eat him alive (and not in the good way, though she'd done that too). So he headed for his quarters and since he didn't have any sustenance stashed there, he grabbed up Simpson's bag of beans to snack on. After the afternoon she'd just subjected him to, he figured he deserved them. Besides, if he left them, McKay would find them and then – poof! – they would be all gone, the way all snack foods went when exposed to McKay. He had considered at one time writing up a paper on the McKay Effect, but valued his hot showers a little too much to commit it to a network McKay regularly hacked.
He was, quite naturally, not at his best and so did not notice Major Lorne loitering down the corridor until he'd encountered him – that is, walked right into him, and stumbled back, ending up on the floor. At least, he thought philosophically, it was a very clean floor.
As did the bag of beans.
Major Lorne, that zmrd, stood there and laughed. Zelenka thought resentfully that the major might benefit from some cold showers.
Lorne finally offered him a hand up. Zelenka grabbed the bag with his other hand.
"Looks like you almost spilled the beans, Doc," Lorne chortled. (Yes, chortled. He'd had an unfortunate giggle as a boy and been teased about it, so he'd trained himself to chortle instead. Long after his voice stopped breaking, Lorne still chortled.) Colonel Sheppard found it somewhat creepy and had ordered Lorne to refrain from chortling around him or off-planet after the unfortunate incident on PCG-R17, where chortling was a deathly insult and AR-1 had been forced to rescue Lorne and the rest of his team from a ritual beheading. It was unnatural, Sheppard had insisted, reminding the major that it was his job to rescue them not the other way around. McKay had complained that something in the air irritated his eyes and he was going to go blind, Teyla had smiled mysteriously and tugged her top down, and Ronon had grunted.
Zelenka glared and muttered about assholes and telling McKay that Lorne had waylaid the case of Snickers bars he'd ordered from Earth. Lorne backed off at that. It wasn't that he was so very afraid of anything McKay might do, but Colonel Sheppard had to work with McKay, and if the Colonel had to suffer...well, shit rolls down hill is an old military aphorism for a reason.
For a somewhat similar reason (Sheppard unhappy equals McKay unhappy, McKay unhappy equals science staff very unhappy, it was simple math, really.), Zelenka decided it would be best not to freeze Lorne's nuts off. He would save that for something worse than being knocked ass over tea kettle. But he wouldn't forget. Zelenka kept a list. He had recently arranged the humiliation and utter destruction of a sixth grade bully back in Prague. He peered at Lorne and considered how he would look dyed permanent purple and hairless. It soothed his temper enough he decided to save that treatment for another time.
This decision left Zelenka feeling altruistic and beneficent, so he scooped a handful of beans from the bag and gave them to Lorne.
"What are they?" Lorne asked as he poked at them with one finger. He was frowning. Hadn't there been something on one of those planets last week? Something about ceremonial beans... He couldn't remember, though. The hangover had been too crippling and the embarrassment at his post-mission exam when the nurse found paint on his balls had just wiped away everything else. With a shrug, Lorne pocketed the beans. Couldn't be too important.
"Something Simpson gave me. Maybe from Earth? Who knows?" (It is entirely possible that if Zelenka had known about the beans he would still have given them to Lorne. But he wouldn't have eaten them himself.)
"Hunh," Lorne said. Maybe he was wrong and these weren't the beans from Planet Thirty-six Double D. He couldn't remember what those beans had done anyway. "I'm heading for the mess."
"Yes, yes," Zelenka said. "I am returning to my quarters."
"You might want to catch a shower, Doc," Lorne added cheerfully.
Zelenka glared after him, then sniffed.
Definitely a shower.
A hot shower. What thighs that woman had!
The mess was more crowded than usual, what with the Daedalus being in orbit. Most of the tables were occupied by a mixture of Atlanteans catching up on news from Earth and Daedalus crew catching some fresh air after a month in a big metal box. Lorne grabbed a sandwich made with real lettuce and tomatoes, a pudding cup, and an apple, then looked around for a place to sit.
The best opening was opposite Colonel Caldwell, who was absently eating a hamburger and fries, and reading something from his laptop, totally without appreciating how rare and wondrous fries were. (It was a good thing McKay wasn't there or Caldwell would have been subjected to a lecture on the subject of fries and, of course, if Ronon had been there, would have lost said fries.) He gave Lorne a nod when he asked, "Sir, mind some company?"
"Major. Sit down."
Lorne set his tray down and proceeded to savor his lunch. Novak joined them and they exchanged desultory conversation. When he was done, he pulled out the handful of beans Zelenka had pressed on him and decided to try one. If Simpson had ordered them from Earth, they must be pretty special. There were weight and volume limits on personal items the Daedalus would carry.
He ate a bean.
The sun caressed Colonel Caldwell's pointy bald head, illuminating the great man, and Lorne caught his breath. How had he never seen...? Look how that flight suit strained over Caldwell's shoulders, the way his wings gleamed on that broad and manly chest, the way his eyes squinted suspiciously at him! (Lorne wanted to compose a poem or better yet paint Colonel Caldwell, but still couldn't quite figure out what color those eyes were.)
"Hey, can I have one of those?" Novak asked.
Lorne couldn't take his eyes off the Colonel. "Sure," he said. "Here," and dumped the rest into her hands. "Colonel Caldwell? Would you like one?"
"Hunh?" said Caldwell, looking up again. (Really, what color were his eyes? Lorne couldn't tell, but they were beautiful enough to make his heart go thumpity-thump in his chest.)
Lorne sighed. Those eyes, those shoulders, the way he held his coffee cup... he wanted to close his hands over Colonel Caldwell's and just hold them there. Oh, if only Caldwell – Steven, he thought dreamily – could see Lorne the way he saw him.
And he really wished Novak would chew so noisily. Didn't she see that they needed to be alone together?
"Major?"
"Oh, sir, have one," Novak said, pressing a bean into Caldwell's hand. At the same time, her hand dropped onto Lorne's thigh and moved up. "Evan's right. They're good." Hic.
Caldwell ate a bean.
Things got strange after that.
Hic.
"Oh, my God, my eyes," Sheppard was heard to exclaim later, backing away from the mess hall doors and slapping his hand over said eyes. McKay caught and steadied him. He held onto Sheppard's shoulders with both hands and peered around him. "We should get video," he remarked. "Blackmail is always a valid insurance policy." And added, "Wow. I think that's Hermiod in there, too."
Sheppard just whimpered, hands still over his eyes, until McKay guided him away, whispering promises of Valium and hypnotherapy to help him forget Caldwell's bare and shining... bottom, while happily calculating exactly how much extra cargo space Caldwell would be willing to devote to candy bars after this.
"Dr. Zelenka, report to the control room, please. Dr. Zelenka, report to the control room, please."
Zelenka staggered out of the shower, limping slightly, and picked up his radio earpiece, attaching it and switching it to the command channel. How embarrassing to force Control to page him city wide. The one time he took out his earpiece. No wonder McKay refused to discuss subcutaneous throat mics and ear canal radio bugs. McKay was lucky to get an hour free without interruption.
"This is Zelenka," he said, as he began dressing. "I am on my way. What is the problem?"
He recognized the voice that answered over the radio as Chuck. "The stargate is acting...wonky."
Wonky. Zelenka rolled his eyes. "And you have not notified Dr. McKay?"
"Can't get him on the radio, either, and, well, the last time we did a city wide page for him, he ran into the control room with no pants." (Though you might think it was Dr. McKay who instituted the moratorium on paging him off the radio because of this incident, you would be mistaken. McKay actually had no shame and had pointed out that his ass, whether bare or not, took no part in calculating how to save it and everyone else's. It wasn't even Dr. Weir, who had looked rather thoughtful and retired to her quarters after the incident. It was Colonel Sheppard, who muttered darkly about scientists and peaches and told Chuck that if that ever happened again, he would personally see that Chuck got to accompany Lt. Cadman's squad and Ronon on a survival skills tune-up to PXG-U55 – the one with the methane-snorting giant swamp lizards and the leeches. Not that Chuck wanted to see Dr. McKay's package swinging in the wind so to speak. Though it turned out Cadman was right. McKay did kind of bend to the left.)
Was probably showering, Zelenka thought sympathetically. He tucked his shirt into his pants, shoved his feet into his shoes without socks, and remembering that he still hadn't had anything to eat, grabbed up the beans to take with him.
Absently, Zelenka ate a bean as he finished straightening out the glitch that had the stargate starting to dial and aborting spontaneously – a mismatch between a cable leading from one of the new laptops delivered by the Daedalus and the dialing console. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he singsonged to himself, anyone could have found the problem. Ancient connectors weren't exactly like Earth's designs, oh no, and he didn't want to think about what it meant that Earth had 'male' and 'female' connectors, while the Ancients had prongs going both ways. It made his head hurt. What if the Ancients really had had prongs going both ways? (This question had forced at least one engineer into therapy with Kate Heightmeyer. Eventually, she sent him home, after he inquired with the medical department about what would be involved in becoming a hermaphrodite. Rodney had complained about losing him, speculating whether it would be gender reassignment or addition and whether it really would have allowed Rupe to understand the equipment better, but Weir had sided with Heightmeyer.)
The bean tasted exactly like his grandmother's cardamom cookies, the memory so clear and immediate, he stopped chewing for an instant. It even had the same consistency. (That wasn't exactly a selling point. His grandmother's cookies had had the consistency of hardened glue.)
"Hey, I thought you told us to never eat anything around the ten thousand year old machinery?" Chuck said.
Zelenka froze, then wriggled out from underneath the console. "Yes, yes, yes, I did," he said, blinking up at Chuck. Who had remembered. How had he never noticed what a noble brow Chuck possessed? The strength and grace of his eyebrows, the way he sat at the console, the way the mic on his radio earpiece seemed to yearn toward his mouth or how his hands moved over the console? He had once considered Elizabeth Weir to be the pinnacle of beauty and intelligence, his very ideal, while somehow he had missed the diamond before him. What a fool he had been!
"Chuck," he said. Such a impressive name. So strong. So monosyllabic.
Do prdele, if only he could remember the man's last name! But no. Chuck needed no last name. Chuck was like Madonna or Prince or The Rock. (Zelenka liked 80s music and pro-wrestling. He had been known to hum Like a Virgin while working on the jumpers. McKay would have mocked him for this unmercifully if he hadn't known about the purple depilatory and Prague.)
Chuck's marvelous dark eyes widened and he licked his lips. Zelenka positively shivered.
"Want a bean?"
"Ah, Radek, have you made any progress?" Elizabeth asked, making both of them jump.
"All done," Zelenka exclaimed and scrambled to his feet. He ignored her and leaned in close to Chuck, setting one hand on his shoulder. "Have you had dinner? Would you join me? I have good vodka and Snickers bars Major Lorne gave me to keep me quiet."
Chuck twitched his shoulder loose and rolled his chair as far away from Zelenka as he could, right into the front of Elizabeth's legs. His eyes were rolling like a spooked horse's. Elizabeth steadied him with one hand on his shoulder, the same shoulder Zelenka had just so lovingly squeezed.
Zelenka growled. Kurva! She was touching his Chuck!
"Dr. Zelenka, are you feeling well?" Elizabeth asked.
With a glare, he set down the stupid beans and stalked away. He did not want to be getting into a cat fight with Elizabeth. She looked like a hair puller, just like his sister and his horrible, horrible nephew. The last time he had visited, the little monster had put peanut butter and gum in his hair. Zelenka smoothed at his hair, already plotting (and reminding himself to send his sister 'special' shampoo for his nephew). Yes, he would let himself into Chuck's room and set up a romantic dinner with vodka and candy and candles.
He would steal the candles from the Colonel's room.
Chuck and Elizabeth shared a glance.
"Weird," Chuck commented.
"Perhaps he's in a bad mood," Elizabeth said diplomatically, though she was feeling rather put out. Zelenka hadn't even stuttered or fawned on her at all. Just because she was never going to put out for him was no reason for him to stop groveling around her. She was the Queen Bee of Atlantis, after all. (Not that she'd ever let anyone hear her call herself that. There would be accusations of tyranny and Colonel Sheppard would start in about how he hated bugs and McKay would point out that he was absolutely vital to the running of the city and allergic to bee stings and the next thing she knew she'd be covered in insect repellent and headed back to Earth.)
Without really thinking about it, she picked up the bag of beans, took one, and handed it to Chuck.
"Hey, these are really good," Chuck exclaimed a moment later.
He looked up and met the predatory gleam in his beloved's eyes and smiled.
Elizabeth tapped her radio on.
"Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, please report to the control room immediately," she said. Then she grabbed Chuck's hand and dragged him out of his chair to her office.
"I still don't see why we had to come to the control room," McKay was saying as he dragged a still somewhat wan looking Sheppard out of a transporter. "Hey, where is, uhm," he snapped his fingers, "Chuck?"
"You've known the man three years, McKay, are you telling me you still don't know his name?"
"What? Like you do? Come on, Colonel Get-to-Know-You, what's his last name?"
Sheppard frowned, shrugged, and then wisely retreated by looking around and noticing the control room was completely empty. When he peered over a balcony railing, there were still some marines guarding the gate room, at least. That was good. He'd had the feeling that something was going on in Atlantis ever since noticing the orgy in the mess hall. He'd almost been afraid of what he might see on the gate room floor. (It never occurred to him that not everyone shared his own fantasy about doing it in the stargate.)
"Oh, look, snacks!" McKay exclaimed, scooping up the bag and pouring several beans into his mouth before sitting down at the dialing console.
Sheppard gave him a look, half exasperation, half fondness. "Aren't you and Zelenka always yelling at everyone not to eat in here?"
"That's everyone else," McKay replied. He was already intent.
Sheppard rolled his eyes, but let it go and leaned over the overlook railing, shouting down to the marines. "Hey, Perkins! Did you see where Weir and everyone else went?"
Perkins pointed at Weir's office. He was looking a bit wall-eyed and kept shifting like he needed to pee. Sheppard shrugged. Marines were strange creatures in his experience. That whole high and tight thing with their hair? Insane. He patted his own hair lovingly. "I'd never do that to you," he whispered.
"Sheppard, are you talking to your hair again?" McKay asked.
"What? No," Sheppard lied.
He turned and looked at Weir's office, then staggered back. McKay shot out a hand to steady him, without looking up from the laptop in front of him. "I don't see why I had to come up here. Zelenka obviously already fixed this. It's fine –"
Sheppard gave out a little, wordless sound of pain, much as he did whenever Ronon tossed him to the floor of the gym. Or Teyla did. Or when he ran out of hair gel. (Which reminded him he needed to pick up his personal item from the stores that had been beamed down from the Daedalus earlier.)
"What is it?" McKay asked.
Sheppard flailed his hand in a McKay-ish fashion, then pointed at Elizabeth's office. The windows were all clear, providing an unobstructed view of the interior.
McKay's mouth fell open. "Oh, that's – that's – too disturbing to actually be hot, you know?" He shoveled in another handful of beans. "Say, these aren't bad. Have some."
Sheppard had turned his back to the office. He shook his head. "I'm feeling sort of nauseous."
"Oh."
"How can you eat when they're – you know – in front anyone who walks by?"
"I eat when I get nervous."
Sheppard tapped his radio. "Ronon, this is Sheppard. Report."
"What?" Ronon snarled, punctuating it with a loud grunt. He was either in the mess hall or beating up the marines again. Unless he was in the mess hall beating up the marines again. (Sheppard knew that Ronon didn't trust them not to gang up and give him a hair cut in his sleep unless he kept them in their place. Sheppard hadn't tried too hard to dissuade him of his dreadlock-related paranoia, since he'd spotted Sgt. Gilmore eyeing his own head of hair and talking about regulations a few weeks back.)
"Can you get up to the control room? Something's...off."
Grunt.
Sheppard slouched against the dialing console, looked over Rodney's shoulder, and asked, "Whatcha up to?"
"My God, do you know how much I hate it when you do that?" McKay snapped back. "Can't you sit in a normal chair like a normal person?" He tipped his head up and glared at Sheppard. Sheppard smirked back, until motion in Elizabeth's office drew his gaze, making him wince. McKay swiveled his chair, absently ate some more beans, and then cocked his head. "I had no idea Chuck was so flexible."
"McKay..."
"Do you think you could do that?"
"What? With Elizabeth?" Sheppard asked. "No."
"Just theoretically. You look pretty bendy."
Sheppard clapped his hands over his eyes.
"No, McKay, I couldn't."
"What about that?"
Sheppard spread his fingers to peer through them, despite his better instincts. "Hunh."
"So you could?"
Sheppard blinked.
"Uh, maybe. With the right per—incentive."
McKay rocked his chair back a little. "You know, Elizabeth is going to kill us."
"Probably," Sheppard agreed.
"What do you think has come over everyone, anyway?"
"I don't know. It isn't everyone. Though I'm pretty sure I saw Teyla in the mess hall, before the traumatic blindness set in."
"And you didn't tell me?" McKay demanded.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I was a little distracted by wanting to spork my eyes out!"
"Hmn."
The transporter opened and Ronon strolled in, glistening with sweat and glowering. "What?"
Silently, McKay pointed.
Ronon stared, then folded his arms over his chest and began pouting. "Him?"
McKay and Sheppard both shrugged. "You should have seen the mess hall. We've got no idea how many people are affected or what's going on," Sheppard said.
Ronon glanced down at the much depleted bag of beans sitting on the dialing console and laughed.
Sheppard straightened up, afraid whatever it was had got to Ronon, too. His hand went automatically to his holstered pistol. McKay's eyes got big and he wheeled his chair around behind Sheppard.
"You okay, big guy?" Sheppard asked in that special, talking-to-crazy people voice he'd really perfected in his time in Pegasus. It never worked, of course, because – duh! – crazy people, but he kept hoping. And carried a loaded gun.
"He's not about to attack, is he?" McKay asked. He probably thought he was whispering, when actually the marines down in the gate room could hear him, too. (Elizabeth and Chuck probably heard him, but they were preoccupied. Who knew that you could do that with an alien fertility idol, anyway?)
"Uhm," Sheppard replied.
Ronon pointed at the sack.
"Love Beans."
"Uh?"
"Hunh?"
Ronon rolled his eyes. (There was so much eye-rolling in Atlantis a league should have been set up, except McKay would have always won.) "Love Beans." He stared at McKay.
"What?"
"You ate them?"
"Why? Oh my God, I've been poisoned! I'm going to die some gruesome, incurable death after losing my mind and attacking Miko, aren't I?"
"Don't think so," Ronon said mildly.
McKay was busy trying to take his own pulse. "It's fast. It's much, much too fast – "
"Quit panicking," Sheppard said and thwapped the back of McKay's head lightly.
"Yes, all right. Since the Man Mountain doesn't seem too worried, but you'll be sorry when you only have three minutes to save the city from eating itself or something else insane and I'm dead!" (Somewhere there were dogs howling in protest at the note McKay hit and there weren't even any dogs in the Pegasus Galaxy.)
"Is everything about food with you?" Sheppard asked, sounding annoyed.
"No, sometimes it's all about fear of dying!"
"McKay!"
Ronon pointed at the beans. "These grow on a lot of worlds. Most places call them Love Beans."
Sheppard glanced toward Elizabeth's office, then resolutely turned his back. Chuck was really limber.
"And?"
"And you eat them and think you're in love with whoever you look at next," Ronon said with another shrug, muscles writhing under his skin like mating pythons (Dr. Cole had described them that way after binging on historical romances one Rest Day. Ronon didn't know about pythons, but it sounded good, so he made a point of flexing around her and the rest of the medical staff. He never did it around Teyla. The only time he did, she burst out in shrieks of laughter that startled Sheppard and McKay so much they both drew their guns and aimed them at him.)
"But, but, but – I've been eating them since we got here and I don't feel any different," McKay said.
"I had no idea I was so unlovable," Sheppard remarked, pouting.
"Of course you're lov—oh, stop it!"
"Rawdneeey."
"Cold showers, Colonel."
Ronon just looked at McKay, then grunted and shrugged again.
"I must be immune. I hope this doesn't mean I'll have an allergic reaction."
"Is it permanent?" Sheppard asked. He tucked his hands behind him and crossed his fingers. They had to get tired some time, didn't they? He never, ever wanted to see anything like the mess hall orgy again.
"Sure. Give it another hour or so, as long as no one eats any more of the beans," Ronon told them. He grinned at McKay (okay, he bared his teeth at McKay), then nodded and headed for the transporter again.
"Why'd he look at me like that?" McKay asked.
Sheppard sighed and scooped up the beans. "These are getting locked up. Once everyone is in their right minds again, we'll have to find out who brought these back and explain about never doing it again."
He shoved the bag of beans into his pocket.
"That's it?" McKay asked.
"Well, we better find out because if Caldwell or Elizabeth or Teyla find out, I wouldn't give two figs for whoever it was surviving long enough to get sent back to Earth, would you?"
McKay glanced at Elizabeth's office, winced, and nodded. A frown wrinkled his brow though as he went back to manning the control room until shift change.
Sheppard hung out with him, shooting odd looks McKay's way, and looking thoughtful, in a slouchy, slightly vacant way, until McKay snapped and told him to, "Get out, get out, get out! I can't get anything done with you looming over my shoulder or leaning on things!"
Sheppard straightened up and pulled out the bag of Love Beans. "I've been thinking."
McKay opened his mouth to snap back with oh-so-easy gibe, then stared as Sheppard took out a bean and ate it.
"What? What are you doing? Have you lost your itty-bitty mind? Hit your head? What?"
"Well, I've got a theory," Sheppard said. "See, we sat around and you ate all of those beans and I was the only one here, but you didn't act any different at all."
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest, lifted his chest, and sneered. "So?"
"So, I figure either you really are immune to these things or...you didn't act any different because they didn't make you feel any different," Sheppard said.
"No bean is going to make me think I love you," McKay said.
"No, probably not," Sheppard agreed. "You're too obstinate for that."
McKay shifted impatiently. "So? Do you feel – " he waved his hands, " – gooey and filled with the need to bring me flowers and chocolates? Not that I'd object to chocolates. Just – You don't look any different."
Sheppard rocked back on his heels. "Nope. Don't feel any different at all."
"Oh." McKay looked disappointed.
"I pretty much feel like I already felt," Sheppard finished and smiled a particularly flirtatious and dorky smile at McKay, who fell back into his chair and grinned back.
"Oh, my God, my eyes," Chuck was heard to say much later, when he staggered out of Elizabeth's office in search of water and a taser gun.
Elizabeth stumbled after him, propped herself against the doorway, and exclaimed, "God damn it, I owe O'Neill fifty bucks now."
And that's how it ended.
You may ask, dear reader, but you may also have already guessed.
You may ask, as David did, but you are surely thinking of one very (self) important reason. Yes, you guessed it.
Rodney McKay.
Meredith Rodney Ingram McKay of Atlantis Team One, astrophysicist, engineer, multiple PhDs, savior (he said) of Atlantis, smartest man in two galaxies (again, he said), and social dolt.
McKay, of course, had a thing for ZPMs, blondes, redheads, brunettes, breasts, brains, breathing, thigh holsters and Air Force Colonels who exhibited a minimum of two of his other criteria. He'd be quite willing to discount it to one, if that one was a ZPM and came with a good cup of coffee. Rodney's favorite fantasy involved two Air Force Colonels, three ZPMs, and the Nobel Prize, but Katie did buzz on three (four if you count breathing) of the criteria. And she liked him (though that might disqualify her for having brains, but that's just me talking, dear reader).
No, the chief scientist of Atlantis was (when it was convenient and he wanted to avoid certain Air Force Colonels) dating Katie Brown. Or something approximating dating in Katie's mind.
It all would have been moot had it not been for a concatenation of events and dates, beginning with Doctor Weir's declaration that Atlantis would begin following the Earth calendar for dates and thus Valentine's Day approached and Major Lorne's team's mission to PX3-6DD (referred to forever by Corporal Menenger as Planet Thirty-Six Double D. I'll allow you, dear reader, to imagine the natives of said planet yourself).
While Major Lorne was majoring (possibly in art, as there were body paints involved), Corporal Menenger was cavorting (or possibly measuring), and Sergeant Alejandro was demonstrating either the Flamenco or the Macarena (Sergeant Alejandro being both uncoordinated and drunk), David was, it is fair to say, sulking.
He was doing his sulking while sitting, in this case, on a bench before the raging celebratory bonfire. No one (not even the natives) really remembers what was being celebrated. Perhaps it was the bringing in of the latest crop of aphrodisiacs or footwashing day.
But while he was sitting (and sulking) one of the priestesses sat down beside him. She was a typical example of the female of the species of the planet. In other words, busty, and wearing the native costume – which did indeed resemble a reinforced bra and a long, swishy skirt.
David glanced at them – errr, her, glanced again, stared, then sighed gustily and looked back at the fire again.
"What is wrong with you?" the priestess demanded, looking down to make sure she was still presenting her best attributes like the tops of two fresh baked loaves of bread.
"I'm in love," David declared.
"Love," the priestess sighed.
"Love."
"Oh, dear." She glanced across the fire, to where Corporal Menenger was expounding on Victoria's Secret and possibly something about posing for Playboy. "Not with ... him?"
"God, no," David exclaimed, particularly horrified. Menenger was swarthy and wide as a rhinoceros. Not his type at all. Katie was his type: sweet, demure, dim...He smiled fatuously. "She's not here."
"But you cannot be so sad simply because you are separated?" the priestess asked.
"She doesn't love me," David said piteously. (It's true, he may have had more than one – or four – glasses of the ceremonial wine. And those glasses were big.) (Dr. Corrigan might have called them chalices, if he hadn't sprained his ankle of PX4-GHB, on the way back to the stargate, after the incident with the royal iguana thing that he still wouldn't talk about. He just got white around the lips whenever it was mentioned. But that's another story and Elizabeth had asked everyone to stop teasing him, since every time someone did, he typed up a new resignation and she had to talk him out of going back to Earth.)
He added, "She doesn't even see me."
The priestess's mouth formed a perfect, red O. She'd stained her lips with noddi berries, the really ripe ones, even though her mother had always told her only sluts stained their lips. Her mother was as stick in the mud. Also, so?
It should be noted at this point that the priestess had also been indulging in the ceremonial wine. For strictly ceremonial purposes, of course.
"Come on." She wobbled to her feet and grabbed David's arm, pulling him upright too. He nearly face planted into her bread loaves, but recovered at the last second.
"What?"
"Come on. I have just the thing."
"What?" David asked again. He was still staring at her cleavage. What? He was in love, not blind. They were right there.
"Love Beans!"
~*~
The priestess snuck David into the temple (well, it was a tent, but let's not be picky, they called it a temple) through the back...flap. Luckily, all the other priestesses were at the party or already passed out, because the ten—temple was divided by bead curtains and there just wasn't anyway to slip through those silently.
Soon, she'd opened a chest and pulled out a bag that she pressed into David's hands.
"Love Beans," she confided to him.
"Uhm," he said very intelligently.
The priestess gave him a look, the sort of look David had been getting from women all his life, that said: Are you retarded? (Colonel Sheppard received several variants of said look regularly, including but not limited to, Elizabeth's You are retarded, Teyla's Are you from this galax—Oh right. But you're still a dork, and most common of all: You're a dork but I'd like to jump your bones anyway.) So, David opened the bag and checked the contents.
Beans.
Dark brown beans. Coffee brown. Chocolate brown. He raised them to his nose and sniffed. Mocha, he thought. He may have made a squeak of excitement. He started to taste one (I said he'd been drinking, don't talk to me about eating alien foods without testing them, Parrish is a botanist, Rodney will tell you they're all idiots.) only to have his hand slapped away by the priestess.
"Are you retarded?" she asked.
"What? No," David said.
"They're Love Beans," she hissed. "You eat them with your Beloved and they will love you."
"The beans?" David asked, wondering if this meant they'd finally found a legume that didn't cause gas.
Several of the passed out priestesses groaned and one of them threw a pillow in their direction.
"No! Your Beloved," the priestess said. She crossed her arms under her bread loaves, boosting them even higher and rounder. David was pretty sure he'd never bake again without getting a hard-on. He didn't even want to think about how he'd explain that to his mother – since his family owned a bakery. God, she'd think that he'd been working for one of those erotic bakeries.
"Oh. That good, hunh."
The priestess rolled her eyes.
"You must be sure to eat them with her, otherwise it won't work," she said.
David hefted the sack of beans, thought about Katie and her sweet, squeaky voice, her dyed red hair, and the way her hands always smelled like fertilizer.
"Okay, thanks," he said.
~*~
David wasn't a complete idiot, despite what Rodney McKay or Major Lorne might tell everyone. Before he exposed his beloved Katie or himself to an alien foodstuff, he had a sample of the Love Beans analyzed by Doctors Leary, Hofmann, and Burroughs in the Biochem department. All three agreed that the beans were perfectly harmless, contained no recognizable harmful compounds, allergens, or even any interesting hallucinogens. (Doctor Hofmann was sanguine. Doctor Leary was disappointed. Doctor Burroughs was even more disappointed, opining that he'd thought a new galaxy would offer more kickass highs. Parrish got out of the chem lab as soon as he could after that.)
He arranged to share lunch alone with Katie the next day, on Atlantis' mandatory Rest Day. (Sunday having been retired from the local vocabulary by Weir fiat.) In the greenhouse, among the ferns and feezle plants – the ones with the leaves that smelled like lavender and the flowers that smelled a lot like armpits. Luckily the feezle weren't flowering. And the sap did taste pretty good on cereal, though it was pink.
In the meantime, though, he had roast beast sandwiches, pickles (Real! From Earth! Pickles!), pret tortilla chips and Athosian salsa (don't ask), plus two bottles of cider.
And the Love Beans.
Unfortunately, they both still had their radios on, too.
David had just handed Katie the bag of beans after taking one out. He held it up and smiled. "You have to try these," he said.
Katie looked at the beans doubtfully. "Really?"
"Really," David assured her.
Despite her inexplicable belief that she understood the 'true' Rodney McKay, Katie hadn't fallen off the turnip truck the day before. "Maybe you better eat one first," she said.
Remembering that the priestess had said to eat one bean, too, David nodded and popped the bean into his mouth. It was delicious. For just one second he thought he was in love with the bean and not Katie, it was that good. Then it was gone and he opened his eyes.
Katie was the most gorgeous, brilliant, fascinating, entertaining, sexy, soothing, delightful, wonderful person ever. She was better than finding prehistoric fossil ferns on PX4-9HA. She was still a little dim and he didn't care much for her taste in casual clothes – pink? – but she was utterly perfect.
"Wow, that looks like it must have tasted good," Kate said and picked up the bag of beans.
And their radios squawled into their ears.
"All personal unless otherwise notified please return to your quarters, Atlantis is about to go under lock down. Repeat, all personal return to your quarters, thank you."
Katie gave David a sad smile and headed for the door. "We'd better get back to our quarters," she said. "I'll just take these in case I get hungry later."
~*~
Katie was tempted to eat the beans while she was in her quarters, but it seemed rather self-indulgent. Besides, the lock down only lasted two hours, while the public corridors were flooded with an unpleasant cleaning gas. Apparently, Atlantis was a bit like a self-cleaning oven. When she ventured out later, everything was shining and clean.
Hurrying down the corridor toward the botany labs, she noticed how anything that wasn't Atlantis in the corridor had disappeared. The pots with new plants (replacing the ten thousand year old dead ones) were now just pots. Even the dirt was gone. With a squeak, she ran for the labs, fearing for all her baby ferns and everything else. Suddenly, the starkness of all the rooms, even the personal quarters, made sense. No doubt all of the city could be cleaned in the same way and Atlantis had done a post evacuation cleaning after the Ancients bugged out.
Which made way more sense, because no bunch of hominids, no matter how advanced, could clean up behind them as well as the Ancients had seemed to, especially considering their penchant for leaving lethal experiments just lying around the various labs.
She breathed a breath of stunned relief when she got to her lab. Like the personal quarters, it was untouched and her precious green things were fine.
To sooth her nerves, Katie snatched up a mister and began dampening the ferns anyway. She was so intent, she didn't notice Nancy Simpson until she bumped into her.
"Oh!"
"Sorry," Simpson replied.
"What are you doing down here?" Katie asked. She may have sounded a bit more snippy than that, because Simpson really had no reason at all to be in a botany lab. She worked out of engineering and physics and had been known to sneer at the 'soft' sciences.
"Nothing. Well, no. McKay ordered me to make sure the automatic cleaners didn't activate down here," Simpson said. And, yes, that was so very definitely a sneer, Kate saw. She tightened her hand on the mister, resisting the urge to squirt it at Simpson's face. She set the mister down and groped for something else, like the pleasant thought that Rodney of all people had actually considered her, if not enough to come himself, then to at least dispatch a minion. Thinking of Simpson, so sneering and self satisfied, as a minion made Katie feel better.
She tucked her hands in her pockets and found the bag of beans Parrish had given her. Hah. Simpson had no beans. She pulled the bag out, took a bean and popped it in her mouth.
Bliss. It wasn't hard or crunchy. It melted and coated her tongue and the roof of her mouth and slid down the back of her throat like thick whipped cream.
When Katie opened her eyes, all she could see was Nancy, lovely, wonderful Nancy, frowning at her silly ferns. The lights along the walls gleamed off Nancy's blond hair, the top neatly pulled back, the rest swinging forward over her cheek.
"Oooooh," Katie moaned.
Simpson gave her the fish eye.
"What have you got there?" she asked suspiciously.
Katie offered her the bag. "They're wonderful. Here, take them, please," she said eagerly. Nancy deserved the wonderfulness that was the beans. She didn't understand how she'd ever thought that obnoxious prat Rodney McKay was anything more than a loud annoyance when there was Nancy. She was in love.
Simpson gave her another odd look, but took the bag. "Are these safe?"
"As if I would ever give you something that wasn't safe!" Katie replied. "Go ahead, have one, Parrish brought them back and gave them to me."
Simpson studied the beans. "Okay." She started to take one out of the bag, then growled and slapped at her radio earpiece. "I'm on my way back, McKay. Your girlfriend's little plants are fine."
"Oh, Rodney's not my boyfriend," Katie blurted out. How horrible if Nancy (exquisite, brilliant, sarcastic, impatient – actually, she was rather like Rodney, come to think of it – not that Katie was thinking much) felt she couldn't approach Katie because that nasty McKay was in the way. Perhaps she could feed him to one of the carnivorous plants in Lab D4. The one's they'd brought back from P14-ME2 and had to cut Dr. Munch out of once.
Simpson lifted the bag and nodded to Katie (Katie nearly swooned). "At least you know how to be properly grateful."
Before Katie could say anything else, Simpson had stalked out of the botany lab.
Katie could have cried. If only she was the type of person to pounce on someone, she thought sadly.
~*~
Simpson was the pouncing kind. Possibly this was a result of growing up with four sisters and five cats and a mother who treated all ten of them the same. Her father had tended to bring home his paycheck like a dead impala, drop it and retreat into his den. She hadn't even been certain of his first name until she was in high school. She'd learned early to grab what she wanted and defend it tooth and claw. So to speak.
Still, she wasn't thinking about pouncing on anyone when she walked into the physics lab. She was thinking in an unordered jumble that Rodney McKay was a dick, she'd missed lunch because of the cleaning lock down, who to pawn the assignment to track down where Atlantis stored the cleaning gas onto, what in God's name did Katie Brown see in McKay and for that matter what he could see in a botanist, whether she should put ten dollars into the betting pool on whether McKay or Sheppard would return from their next mission with their skivvies showing, wondering exactly where her green satin bra had disappeared to (she suspected Bryce, that slut, had nicked it from the laundry), hoping the mess would be serving fricasseed almost-a-lope and not the deep fried giant bug legs (which did not taste like prawns, no matter what the cooks said).
So she was a little hungry and she had the beans Katie had pushed on her.
"Simpson, good, come here and look at this," Zelenka said, as she came in.
"Where's McKay?"
Zelenka waved one hand. "Colonel Sheppard came around, distracted him. They have gone off to newly opened lab on West Pier to – "
"Oh," Simpson said knowingly.
"Not that," Zelenka snapped.
Simpson snickered and ate a bean.
A perfectly wonderful bean that tasted exactly like her grandmother's pumpkin pie. It was so good she moaned and Zelenka looked up from his computer screen, blinking rapidly behind the walls of his glasses. Simpson barely stopped her hand from reaching out to play with the wisps of hair floating around his face.
Then she thought: I want.
And pounced.
Zelenka let out a rather unmanly squeal.
~*~
"Oh, my God, my eyes," Rodney was heard to exclaim later, backing out of the main lab and into Colonel Sheppard, who was ambling behind him. Sheppard peered past him, snickered, and said, "Way to go, Doctor Z." The two of them reversed away, deciding that even the paperwork Elizabeth kept demanding would be a better choice of occupations than trying to detach Simpson from Zelenka, even if that hand wave had looked suspiciously like someone grasping for a lifeline.
~*~
Several hours later, fearing that Simpson might be part Praying Mantis and vowing to check on whatever the genetics labs had been brewing up lately, because no woman who doesn't work out should have such unnaturally strong thighs, Zelenka slipped out of the lab while Simpson was in the washroom.
He didn't really want to explain why his pants were on inside out and missing a button or that he had his jacket zipped all the way up to hide that he'd never found his shirt and the bite marks Simpson had left. A hickey was one thing, he felt, rather pleasant if discreetly placed, but his chest looked more like she'd been trying to eat him alive (and not in the good way, though she'd done that too). So he headed for his quarters and since he didn't have any sustenance stashed there, he grabbed up Simpson's bag of beans to snack on. After the afternoon she'd just subjected him to, he figured he deserved them. Besides, if he left them, McKay would find them and then – poof! – they would be all gone, the way all snack foods went when exposed to McKay. He had considered at one time writing up a paper on the McKay Effect, but valued his hot showers a little too much to commit it to a network McKay regularly hacked.
He was, quite naturally, not at his best and so did not notice Major Lorne loitering down the corridor until he'd encountered him – that is, walked right into him, and stumbled back, ending up on the floor. At least, he thought philosophically, it was a very clean floor.
As did the bag of beans.
Major Lorne, that zmrd, stood there and laughed. Zelenka thought resentfully that the major might benefit from some cold showers.
Lorne finally offered him a hand up. Zelenka grabbed the bag with his other hand.
"Looks like you almost spilled the beans, Doc," Lorne chortled. (Yes, chortled. He'd had an unfortunate giggle as a boy and been teased about it, so he'd trained himself to chortle instead. Long after his voice stopped breaking, Lorne still chortled.) Colonel Sheppard found it somewhat creepy and had ordered Lorne to refrain from chortling around him or off-planet after the unfortunate incident on PCG-R17, where chortling was a deathly insult and AR-1 had been forced to rescue Lorne and the rest of his team from a ritual beheading. It was unnatural, Sheppard had insisted, reminding the major that it was his job to rescue them not the other way around. McKay had complained that something in the air irritated his eyes and he was going to go blind, Teyla had smiled mysteriously and tugged her top down, and Ronon had grunted.
Zelenka glared and muttered about assholes and telling McKay that Lorne had waylaid the case of Snickers bars he'd ordered from Earth. Lorne backed off at that. It wasn't that he was so very afraid of anything McKay might do, but Colonel Sheppard had to work with McKay, and if the Colonel had to suffer...well, shit rolls down hill is an old military aphorism for a reason.
For a somewhat similar reason (Sheppard unhappy equals McKay unhappy, McKay unhappy equals science staff very unhappy, it was simple math, really.), Zelenka decided it would be best not to freeze Lorne's nuts off. He would save that for something worse than being knocked ass over tea kettle. But he wouldn't forget. Zelenka kept a list. He had recently arranged the humiliation and utter destruction of a sixth grade bully back in Prague. He peered at Lorne and considered how he would look dyed permanent purple and hairless. It soothed his temper enough he decided to save that treatment for another time.
This decision left Zelenka feeling altruistic and beneficent, so he scooped a handful of beans from the bag and gave them to Lorne.
"What are they?" Lorne asked as he poked at them with one finger. He was frowning. Hadn't there been something on one of those planets last week? Something about ceremonial beans... He couldn't remember, though. The hangover had been too crippling and the embarrassment at his post-mission exam when the nurse found paint on his balls had just wiped away everything else. With a shrug, Lorne pocketed the beans. Couldn't be too important.
"Something Simpson gave me. Maybe from Earth? Who knows?" (It is entirely possible that if Zelenka had known about the beans he would still have given them to Lorne. But he wouldn't have eaten them himself.)
"Hunh," Lorne said. Maybe he was wrong and these weren't the beans from Planet Thirty-six Double D. He couldn't remember what those beans had done anyway. "I'm heading for the mess."
"Yes, yes," Zelenka said. "I am returning to my quarters."
"You might want to catch a shower, Doc," Lorne added cheerfully.
Zelenka glared after him, then sniffed.
Definitely a shower.
A hot shower. What thighs that woman had!
~*~
The mess was more crowded than usual, what with the Daedalus being in orbit. Most of the tables were occupied by a mixture of Atlanteans catching up on news from Earth and Daedalus crew catching some fresh air after a month in a big metal box. Lorne grabbed a sandwich made with real lettuce and tomatoes, a pudding cup, and an apple, then looked around for a place to sit.
The best opening was opposite Colonel Caldwell, who was absently eating a hamburger and fries, and reading something from his laptop, totally without appreciating how rare and wondrous fries were. (It was a good thing McKay wasn't there or Caldwell would have been subjected to a lecture on the subject of fries and, of course, if Ronon had been there, would have lost said fries.) He gave Lorne a nod when he asked, "Sir, mind some company?"
"Major. Sit down."
Lorne set his tray down and proceeded to savor his lunch. Novak joined them and they exchanged desultory conversation. When he was done, he pulled out the handful of beans Zelenka had pressed on him and decided to try one. If Simpson had ordered them from Earth, they must be pretty special. There were weight and volume limits on personal items the Daedalus would carry.
He ate a bean.
The sun caressed Colonel Caldwell's pointy bald head, illuminating the great man, and Lorne caught his breath. How had he never seen...? Look how that flight suit strained over Caldwell's shoulders, the way his wings gleamed on that broad and manly chest, the way his eyes squinted suspiciously at him! (Lorne wanted to compose a poem or better yet paint Colonel Caldwell, but still couldn't quite figure out what color those eyes were.)
"Hey, can I have one of those?" Novak asked.
Lorne couldn't take his eyes off the Colonel. "Sure," he said. "Here," and dumped the rest into her hands. "Colonel Caldwell? Would you like one?"
"Hunh?" said Caldwell, looking up again. (Really, what color were his eyes? Lorne couldn't tell, but they were beautiful enough to make his heart go thumpity-thump in his chest.)
Lorne sighed. Those eyes, those shoulders, the way he held his coffee cup... he wanted to close his hands over Colonel Caldwell's and just hold them there. Oh, if only Caldwell – Steven, he thought dreamily – could see Lorne the way he saw him.
And he really wished Novak would chew so noisily. Didn't she see that they needed to be alone together?
"Major?"
"Oh, sir, have one," Novak said, pressing a bean into Caldwell's hand. At the same time, her hand dropped onto Lorne's thigh and moved up. "Evan's right. They're good." Hic.
Caldwell ate a bean.
Things got strange after that.
Hic.
~*~
"Oh, my God, my eyes," Sheppard was heard to exclaim later, backing away from the mess hall doors and slapping his hand over said eyes. McKay caught and steadied him. He held onto Sheppard's shoulders with both hands and peered around him. "We should get video," he remarked. "Blackmail is always a valid insurance policy." And added, "Wow. I think that's Hermiod in there, too."
Sheppard just whimpered, hands still over his eyes, until McKay guided him away, whispering promises of Valium and hypnotherapy to help him forget Caldwell's bare and shining... bottom, while happily calculating exactly how much extra cargo space Caldwell would be willing to devote to candy bars after this.
~*~
"Dr. Zelenka, report to the control room, please. Dr. Zelenka, report to the control room, please."
Zelenka staggered out of the shower, limping slightly, and picked up his radio earpiece, attaching it and switching it to the command channel. How embarrassing to force Control to page him city wide. The one time he took out his earpiece. No wonder McKay refused to discuss subcutaneous throat mics and ear canal radio bugs. McKay was lucky to get an hour free without interruption.
"This is Zelenka," he said, as he began dressing. "I am on my way. What is the problem?"
He recognized the voice that answered over the radio as Chuck. "The stargate is acting...wonky."
Wonky. Zelenka rolled his eyes. "And you have not notified Dr. McKay?"
"Can't get him on the radio, either, and, well, the last time we did a city wide page for him, he ran into the control room with no pants." (Though you might think it was Dr. McKay who instituted the moratorium on paging him off the radio because of this incident, you would be mistaken. McKay actually had no shame and had pointed out that his ass, whether bare or not, took no part in calculating how to save it and everyone else's. It wasn't even Dr. Weir, who had looked rather thoughtful and retired to her quarters after the incident. It was Colonel Sheppard, who muttered darkly about scientists and peaches and told Chuck that if that ever happened again, he would personally see that Chuck got to accompany Lt. Cadman's squad and Ronon on a survival skills tune-up to PXG-U55 – the one with the methane-snorting giant swamp lizards and the leeches. Not that Chuck wanted to see Dr. McKay's package swinging in the wind so to speak. Though it turned out Cadman was right. McKay did kind of bend to the left.)
Was probably showering, Zelenka thought sympathetically. He tucked his shirt into his pants, shoved his feet into his shoes without socks, and remembering that he still hadn't had anything to eat, grabbed up the beans to take with him.
~*~
Absently, Zelenka ate a bean as he finished straightening out the glitch that had the stargate starting to dial and aborting spontaneously – a mismatch between a cable leading from one of the new laptops delivered by the Daedalus and the dialing console. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he singsonged to himself, anyone could have found the problem. Ancient connectors weren't exactly like Earth's designs, oh no, and he didn't want to think about what it meant that Earth had 'male' and 'female' connectors, while the Ancients had prongs going both ways. It made his head hurt. What if the Ancients really had had prongs going both ways? (This question had forced at least one engineer into therapy with Kate Heightmeyer. Eventually, she sent him home, after he inquired with the medical department about what would be involved in becoming a hermaphrodite. Rodney had complained about losing him, speculating whether it would be gender reassignment or addition and whether it really would have allowed Rupe to understand the equipment better, but Weir had sided with Heightmeyer.)
The bean tasted exactly like his grandmother's cardamom cookies, the memory so clear and immediate, he stopped chewing for an instant. It even had the same consistency. (That wasn't exactly a selling point. His grandmother's cookies had had the consistency of hardened glue.)
"Hey, I thought you told us to never eat anything around the ten thousand year old machinery?" Chuck said.
Zelenka froze, then wriggled out from underneath the console. "Yes, yes, yes, I did," he said, blinking up at Chuck. Who had remembered. How had he never noticed what a noble brow Chuck possessed? The strength and grace of his eyebrows, the way he sat at the console, the way the mic on his radio earpiece seemed to yearn toward his mouth or how his hands moved over the console? He had once considered Elizabeth Weir to be the pinnacle of beauty and intelligence, his very ideal, while somehow he had missed the diamond before him. What a fool he had been!
"Chuck," he said. Such a impressive name. So strong. So monosyllabic.
Do prdele, if only he could remember the man's last name! But no. Chuck needed no last name. Chuck was like Madonna or Prince or The Rock. (Zelenka liked 80s music and pro-wrestling. He had been known to hum Like a Virgin while working on the jumpers. McKay would have mocked him for this unmercifully if he hadn't known about the purple depilatory and Prague.)
Chuck's marvelous dark eyes widened and he licked his lips. Zelenka positively shivered.
"Want a bean?"
"Ah, Radek, have you made any progress?" Elizabeth asked, making both of them jump.
"All done," Zelenka exclaimed and scrambled to his feet. He ignored her and leaned in close to Chuck, setting one hand on his shoulder. "Have you had dinner? Would you join me? I have good vodka and Snickers bars Major Lorne gave me to keep me quiet."
Chuck twitched his shoulder loose and rolled his chair as far away from Zelenka as he could, right into the front of Elizabeth's legs. His eyes were rolling like a spooked horse's. Elizabeth steadied him with one hand on his shoulder, the same shoulder Zelenka had just so lovingly squeezed.
Zelenka growled. Kurva! She was touching his Chuck!
"Dr. Zelenka, are you feeling well?" Elizabeth asked.
With a glare, he set down the stupid beans and stalked away. He did not want to be getting into a cat fight with Elizabeth. She looked like a hair puller, just like his sister and his horrible, horrible nephew. The last time he had visited, the little monster had put peanut butter and gum in his hair. Zelenka smoothed at his hair, already plotting (and reminding himself to send his sister 'special' shampoo for his nephew). Yes, he would let himself into Chuck's room and set up a romantic dinner with vodka and candy and candles.
He would steal the candles from the Colonel's room.
~*~
Chuck and Elizabeth shared a glance.
"Weird," Chuck commented.
"Perhaps he's in a bad mood," Elizabeth said diplomatically, though she was feeling rather put out. Zelenka hadn't even stuttered or fawned on her at all. Just because she was never going to put out for him was no reason for him to stop groveling around her. She was the Queen Bee of Atlantis, after all. (Not that she'd ever let anyone hear her call herself that. There would be accusations of tyranny and Colonel Sheppard would start in about how he hated bugs and McKay would point out that he was absolutely vital to the running of the city and allergic to bee stings and the next thing she knew she'd be covered in insect repellent and headed back to Earth.)
Without really thinking about it, she picked up the bag of beans, took one, and handed it to Chuck.
"Hey, these are really good," Chuck exclaimed a moment later.
He looked up and met the predatory gleam in his beloved's eyes and smiled.
Elizabeth tapped her radio on.
"Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, please report to the control room immediately," she said. Then she grabbed Chuck's hand and dragged him out of his chair to her office.
~*~
"I still don't see why we had to come to the control room," McKay was saying as he dragged a still somewhat wan looking Sheppard out of a transporter. "Hey, where is, uhm," he snapped his fingers, "Chuck?"
"You've known the man three years, McKay, are you telling me you still don't know his name?"
"What? Like you do? Come on, Colonel Get-to-Know-You, what's his last name?"
Sheppard frowned, shrugged, and then wisely retreated by looking around and noticing the control room was completely empty. When he peered over a balcony railing, there were still some marines guarding the gate room, at least. That was good. He'd had the feeling that something was going on in Atlantis ever since noticing the orgy in the mess hall. He'd almost been afraid of what he might see on the gate room floor. (It never occurred to him that not everyone shared his own fantasy about doing it in the stargate.)
"Oh, look, snacks!" McKay exclaimed, scooping up the bag and pouring several beans into his mouth before sitting down at the dialing console.
Sheppard gave him a look, half exasperation, half fondness. "Aren't you and Zelenka always yelling at everyone not to eat in here?"
"That's everyone else," McKay replied. He was already intent.
Sheppard rolled his eyes, but let it go and leaned over the overlook railing, shouting down to the marines. "Hey, Perkins! Did you see where Weir and everyone else went?"
Perkins pointed at Weir's office. He was looking a bit wall-eyed and kept shifting like he needed to pee. Sheppard shrugged. Marines were strange creatures in his experience. That whole high and tight thing with their hair? Insane. He patted his own hair lovingly. "I'd never do that to you," he whispered.
"Sheppard, are you talking to your hair again?" McKay asked.
"What? No," Sheppard lied.
He turned and looked at Weir's office, then staggered back. McKay shot out a hand to steady him, without looking up from the laptop in front of him. "I don't see why I had to come up here. Zelenka obviously already fixed this. It's fine –"
Sheppard gave out a little, wordless sound of pain, much as he did whenever Ronon tossed him to the floor of the gym. Or Teyla did. Or when he ran out of hair gel. (Which reminded him he needed to pick up his personal item from the stores that had been beamed down from the Daedalus earlier.)
"What is it?" McKay asked.
Sheppard flailed his hand in a McKay-ish fashion, then pointed at Elizabeth's office. The windows were all clear, providing an unobstructed view of the interior.
McKay's mouth fell open. "Oh, that's – that's – too disturbing to actually be hot, you know?" He shoveled in another handful of beans. "Say, these aren't bad. Have some."
Sheppard had turned his back to the office. He shook his head. "I'm feeling sort of nauseous."
"Oh."
"How can you eat when they're – you know – in front anyone who walks by?"
"I eat when I get nervous."
Sheppard tapped his radio. "Ronon, this is Sheppard. Report."
"What?" Ronon snarled, punctuating it with a loud grunt. He was either in the mess hall or beating up the marines again. Unless he was in the mess hall beating up the marines again. (Sheppard knew that Ronon didn't trust them not to gang up and give him a hair cut in his sleep unless he kept them in their place. Sheppard hadn't tried too hard to dissuade him of his dreadlock-related paranoia, since he'd spotted Sgt. Gilmore eyeing his own head of hair and talking about regulations a few weeks back.)
"Can you get up to the control room? Something's...off."
Grunt.
Sheppard slouched against the dialing console, looked over Rodney's shoulder, and asked, "Whatcha up to?"
"My God, do you know how much I hate it when you do that?" McKay snapped back. "Can't you sit in a normal chair like a normal person?" He tipped his head up and glared at Sheppard. Sheppard smirked back, until motion in Elizabeth's office drew his gaze, making him wince. McKay swiveled his chair, absently ate some more beans, and then cocked his head. "I had no idea Chuck was so flexible."
"McKay..."
"Do you think you could do that?"
"What? With Elizabeth?" Sheppard asked. "No."
"Just theoretically. You look pretty bendy."
Sheppard clapped his hands over his eyes.
"No, McKay, I couldn't."
"What about that?"
Sheppard spread his fingers to peer through them, despite his better instincts. "Hunh."
"So you could?"
Sheppard blinked.
"Uh, maybe. With the right per—incentive."
McKay rocked his chair back a little. "You know, Elizabeth is going to kill us."
"Probably," Sheppard agreed.
"What do you think has come over everyone, anyway?"
"I don't know. It isn't everyone. Though I'm pretty sure I saw Teyla in the mess hall, before the traumatic blindness set in."
"And you didn't tell me?" McKay demanded.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I was a little distracted by wanting to spork my eyes out!"
"Hmn."
The transporter opened and Ronon strolled in, glistening with sweat and glowering. "What?"
Silently, McKay pointed.
Ronon stared, then folded his arms over his chest and began pouting. "Him?"
McKay and Sheppard both shrugged. "You should have seen the mess hall. We've got no idea how many people are affected or what's going on," Sheppard said.
Ronon glanced down at the much depleted bag of beans sitting on the dialing console and laughed.
Sheppard straightened up, afraid whatever it was had got to Ronon, too. His hand went automatically to his holstered pistol. McKay's eyes got big and he wheeled his chair around behind Sheppard.
"You okay, big guy?" Sheppard asked in that special, talking-to-crazy people voice he'd really perfected in his time in Pegasus. It never worked, of course, because – duh! – crazy people, but he kept hoping. And carried a loaded gun.
"He's not about to attack, is he?" McKay asked. He probably thought he was whispering, when actually the marines down in the gate room could hear him, too. (Elizabeth and Chuck probably heard him, but they were preoccupied. Who knew that you could do that with an alien fertility idol, anyway?)
"Uhm," Sheppard replied.
Ronon pointed at the sack.
"Love Beans."
"Uh?"
"Hunh?"
Ronon rolled his eyes. (There was so much eye-rolling in Atlantis a league should have been set up, except McKay would have always won.) "Love Beans." He stared at McKay.
"What?"
"You ate them?"
"Why? Oh my God, I've been poisoned! I'm going to die some gruesome, incurable death after losing my mind and attacking Miko, aren't I?"
"Don't think so," Ronon said mildly.
McKay was busy trying to take his own pulse. "It's fast. It's much, much too fast – "
"Quit panicking," Sheppard said and thwapped the back of McKay's head lightly.
"Yes, all right. Since the Man Mountain doesn't seem too worried, but you'll be sorry when you only have three minutes to save the city from eating itself or something else insane and I'm dead!" (Somewhere there were dogs howling in protest at the note McKay hit and there weren't even any dogs in the Pegasus Galaxy.)
"Is everything about food with you?" Sheppard asked, sounding annoyed.
"No, sometimes it's all about fear of dying!"
"McKay!"
Ronon pointed at the beans. "These grow on a lot of worlds. Most places call them Love Beans."
Sheppard glanced toward Elizabeth's office, then resolutely turned his back. Chuck was really limber.
"And?"
"And you eat them and think you're in love with whoever you look at next," Ronon said with another shrug, muscles writhing under his skin like mating pythons (Dr. Cole had described them that way after binging on historical romances one Rest Day. Ronon didn't know about pythons, but it sounded good, so he made a point of flexing around her and the rest of the medical staff. He never did it around Teyla. The only time he did, she burst out in shrieks of laughter that startled Sheppard and McKay so much they both drew their guns and aimed them at him.)
"But, but, but – I've been eating them since we got here and I don't feel any different," McKay said.
"I had no idea I was so unlovable," Sheppard remarked, pouting.
"Of course you're lov—oh, stop it!"
"Rawdneeey."
"Cold showers, Colonel."
Ronon just looked at McKay, then grunted and shrugged again.
"I must be immune. I hope this doesn't mean I'll have an allergic reaction."
"Is it permanent?" Sheppard asked. He tucked his hands behind him and crossed his fingers. They had to get tired some time, didn't they? He never, ever wanted to see anything like the mess hall orgy again.
"Sure. Give it another hour or so, as long as no one eats any more of the beans," Ronon told them. He grinned at McKay (okay, he bared his teeth at McKay), then nodded and headed for the transporter again.
"Why'd he look at me like that?" McKay asked.
Sheppard sighed and scooped up the beans. "These are getting locked up. Once everyone is in their right minds again, we'll have to find out who brought these back and explain about never doing it again."
He shoved the bag of beans into his pocket.
"That's it?" McKay asked.
"Well, we better find out because if Caldwell or Elizabeth or Teyla find out, I wouldn't give two figs for whoever it was surviving long enough to get sent back to Earth, would you?"
McKay glanced at Elizabeth's office, winced, and nodded. A frown wrinkled his brow though as he went back to manning the control room until shift change.
Sheppard hung out with him, shooting odd looks McKay's way, and looking thoughtful, in a slouchy, slightly vacant way, until McKay snapped and told him to, "Get out, get out, get out! I can't get anything done with you looming over my shoulder or leaning on things!"
Sheppard straightened up and pulled out the bag of Love Beans. "I've been thinking."
McKay opened his mouth to snap back with oh-so-easy gibe, then stared as Sheppard took out a bean and ate it.
"What? What are you doing? Have you lost your itty-bitty mind? Hit your head? What?"
"Well, I've got a theory," Sheppard said. "See, we sat around and you ate all of those beans and I was the only one here, but you didn't act any different at all."
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest, lifted his chest, and sneered. "So?"
"So, I figure either you really are immune to these things or...you didn't act any different because they didn't make you feel any different," Sheppard said.
"No bean is going to make me think I love you," McKay said.
"No, probably not," Sheppard agreed. "You're too obstinate for that."
McKay shifted impatiently. "So? Do you feel – " he waved his hands, " – gooey and filled with the need to bring me flowers and chocolates? Not that I'd object to chocolates. Just – You don't look any different."
Sheppard rocked back on his heels. "Nope. Don't feel any different at all."
"Oh." McKay looked disappointed.
"I pretty much feel like I already felt," Sheppard finished and smiled a particularly flirtatious and dorky smile at McKay, who fell back into his chair and grinned back.
~*~
"Oh, my God, my eyes," Chuck was heard to say much later, when he staggered out of Elizabeth's office in search of water and a taser gun.
Elizabeth stumbled after him, propped herself against the doorway, and exclaimed, "God damn it, I owe O'Neill fifty bucks now."
And that's how it ended.
- Summary: Something is coming over the people of Atlantis. But it might just be gas.
- Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
- Rating: PG-13
- Warnings: None
- Author Notes:
- Date: 2.14.07
- Length: 7642 words
- Genre: m/m, m/f
- Category: humor
- Cast: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Steven Caldwell, Radek Zelenka, Chuck the Gate Technician, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex
- Betas: No one willing to admit to the crime.
- Disclaimer: Not for profit. Transformative work written for private entertainment.