![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Let's Be Bad Guys
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Rating: PG13 (for language)
Category: SGA McKay/Sheppard, Team (SGA, Firefly fusion)
Warnings: None
Wordcount: 2,438
Summary: Captain John Sheppard and his crew.
--Before--
“What was that?”
John turned in his seat and glanced at Teyla, looking harried and standing with her arms crossed in the hatchway. He was guessing she was referring to the large shudder that had just run through the whole of the ship.
“Nothing, coupling panel just came away,” John dismissed, turning back to the vast field of stars outside the front view port. He was hoping the confidence and ease he had injected into his tone would placate Teyla enough to get her heading back to bed but it was an empty hope.
“Don’t we need that?” she demanded.
“Only if we don’t want to break apart and die upon re-entry. No big.”
“Only…?” Teyla blinked hard and then threw up her hands. “You mean we can’t land?”
“Not technically at the moment in the purest sense… no,” John admitted, hunching his shoulders up around his ears. He knew what was coming next.
“You hire an engineer at the Faeir space port or I am not getting back on this death trap.”
“You don’t mean that,” John said, turning back around and trying his most winning smile. Teyla just raised an eyebrow.
“I know you hate strangers on your ship, but all of us were strangers at some point,” Teyla said, her tone gentle now that she’d gotten John’s attention. “You hired Cadman while she was holding a gun on us.”
“We’ll get someone at Faeir, I swear,” John promised, knowing that the whole inability to land on a planet was going to cause some problems in the near future. Faeir was the closest space port and there were always people looking for work. The possibility of finding a decent engineer was remote, but they had a chance of finding one who was at least halfway decent who could keep Serenity in the air just long enough for them to put down on a big enough planet to hire someone good.
Teyla still looked wary but she backed out the hatchway, grumbling. John supposed he was lucky he’d saved Teyla’s life during the war. He was pretty sure it was the only reason she hadn’t strangled him in his sleep yet.
000
The hope of someone half decent vanished when John stepped into the Hiring Hall and found nothing but a couple of hookers and a boy who looked barely twelve and was trying to pass himself off as a ship’s cook. Teyla, standing just behind him, gave him a little nudge forward in the shoulder.
“How about you wait here while Cadman and I organise the resupply?”
“Sure,” John nodded, planning on disappearing to the bar as soon as Teyla was out of sight. He supposed the glare she was giving him was supposed to glue him in place but it only made him run faster when she’d turned the corner and disappeared with Cadman.
John pulled himself up onto a stool at the bar a section down and flagged the tender-bot. The little machine took his order and handed over a vibrant green drink that John swallowed in one go.
“How can you handle that stomach rot?” a voice enquired beside him and John looked to his left, seeing a man sitting slumped halfway onto the bar. John had a moment of thinking maybe the man hadn’t spoken at all when he turned his head, forehead still firmly attached to the bar top and sighed. “I had one and I think I’ve lost the use of my legs.”
“Firewater’s an acquired taste,” John said. He did a quick inventory of the man, noting the way his clothes looked expensive but dishevelled, like he’d been in the same outfit for days. He was pale with a slightly crooked mouth and a sour expression. John pegged him as either someone who’d picked the wrong ship to buy passage on and had been left stranded or the victim of a fairly elaborate prank.
In short, he didn’t look like he belonged on a place like Faeir at all.
“I’m sure,” the man said with a grimace and turned his head so his nose was mashed flat on the bar. “Just let me know if my ears start to bleed would you?”
“Here,” John said, waving the tender-bot over again and getting a thick, purple liquid this time in a long flute. “Drink this. It’ll negate the affects of the Firewater.” John could feel the liquor he’d just imbibed burning through his own system, warming his extremities and making him feel loose and happy. He didn’t often indulge but he was treating himself. He’d had a hard week.
“And I’m just supposed to believe you?” the man demanded, sounding petulant and John rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t have anything worth stealing and I’ll stay perfectly still while you search my pockets if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not going to mug you,” John snapped, getting a hand on the man’s forehead and levering his head up, sticking the purple drink under his nose. “Drink.”
“Okay,” the man said, still looking put out and then actually held his nose while he downed the concoction. He sat, looking pensive for a few moments before he straightened slowly and blinked. “Oh, hey!” he said with a grin.
“Yeah, Muddock’s great but it makes you swell to about three times your size in half an hour,” John said and grinned when the man looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. “I’m kidding.”
“Not funny!” the man nearly screeched and other patrons of the bar, a sad looking lot by anyone’s standards, looked their way with interest for a few minutes, probably hoping for a fight of some kind. When punches weren’t thrown within thirty seconds, most lost interest.
“I’m John Sheppard, Captain,” John introduced, offering his hand.
“I’m Rodney McKay, brilliant,” Rodney replied, accepting the offered hand. He was looking a lot brighter but still tired, deep maroon smudges under his eyes. John was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the drinks.
“Brilliant huh? Useful brilliant or the lounge around and mooch off your parents brilliant?”
“Are you always this rude?” Rodney demanded, turning his gaze back to the glass in front of him and rotating it with his fingers.
“Last guy that shot me thought so,” John admitted. “I was just asking because I’m looking for an engineer.”
“Really?” Rodney asked, visibly perking up. “What I don’t know about ships isn’t worth knowing,” he added with a smug look.
“You’re kidding,” John said, not believing his luck. It was possible Rodney was lying through his teeth to secure a free trip but there were ways to know for sure. “Know anything about Firefly class ships?”
“Ugh,” Rodney said with a grimace. “Bad design, handles like a pregnant cow in atmo and parts of the engine just randomly explode for no reason if you don’t keep an eye on them.”
“Oh, well, sounds like you wouldn’t be caught dead in one,” John said, feeling miffed. Rodney was talking about his home, the one place he’d felt he truly belonged where religion, the Independents and two marriages had failed him.
“No, wait!” Rodney exclaimed, eyes bright with desperation. “I’m sure yours is great and has none of the design faults found commonly amongst them. I’d have to see it to be sure, perhaps be flown to the nearest planet with a civilian hub to be one hundred percent sure.”
“Okay,” John said, lopsided grin in place. “You find a way to replace a coupling panel for free and I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
Rodney hopped up and clapped John on the shoulder. “Easy,” he said, nodding.
000
“Where did you find him?” Teyla asked, eyeing Rodney with suspicion who was dangling from a harness and already yelling orders at Cadman, which John thought was either very stupid or particularly fantastic.
“Hiring Hall, where I stayed like you wanted.”
Teyla leaned forward and poked John in the shoulder. “I went back two minutes after I left you and you were gone already,” she snapped. “You are honestly going to tell me you found a good engineer in a bar?”
“Who says I was in a bar? I might’ve been in a library,” John said, scowling.
“This port does not have a library,” Teyla said, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, I think you keep forgetting who is the boss of who here,” John said, turning on her and crossing his arms.
“Sir, you are entrusting our lives to a man you scraped off the floor of a drinking establishment. I think I have grounds to lodge an appeal.”
“Fine, go do that. Your appeal will be heard by the Captain in roughly four to six weeks.”
“Who’s the pale guy messing with the ship?” Ronon asked, coming down the cargo ramp.
“Someone who is hopefully not going to get us all killed,” Teyla said, tossing her hair and pushing past them both back into the ship.
--During--
“I was all kinds of noble once,” John comments. Rodney half-turns to him and raises an eyebrow.
“When was this?” he asks, a little distracted.
“I’m sure I was. I remember having ideals and not breaking the law on a regular basis.”
“Really?” Rodney’s lip turns up in a half-smirk and he reaches over and gives John a gentle pat on the hip. Rodney then steps back quickly to avoid being squashed by the dozen cows filing by.
“Don’t get me wrong,” John says. “I enjoy being a bad guy immensely. I can wear black all the time and no one gives me grief about it.”
“I do.”
“You give me grief about everything,” John muses. “And you should know by now that I exclude you whenever I’m talking about people as a whole.”
“Because I’m exceptional?” Rodney says, able to step forward again, dodging Teyla who takes a swipe at him as she passes. She has a bandana across her mouth and her eyes crinkle which is the only way they can tell she’s smiling.
“Absolutely. You’re the exception to every rule I have,” John agrees.
“You’re not a bad guy,” Rodney says as he stabs the controls to raise the cargo ramp back into the ship. He sneezes a couple of times and rubs the back of his hand over his eyes. The ramp is halfway up when a pair of hands appear at the top and then Cadman pulls herself up and over, sliding down to the deck on her butt. When she gets up she gives Rodney a filthy look.
“You knew I was still outside!” she snaps and Rodney gives her his most innocent look. She huffs and pushes past him, dodging the now aimlessly milling cows to get to the ladder that leads to the upper deck gangway.
“You really like taking your life in your hands?” John prods. “I wouldn’t mess with a girl that can rig practically anything to explode.”
“Yeah well, I can vent her sleeping quarters into space remotely. We’ve got a mutual thing going.”
John laughs but then sobers. “You don’t think we’re bad guys?”
“I said I don’t think you’re a bad guy,” Rodney says. “This,” Rodney adds, waving a hand at the cows that Teyla is trying to coax into the makeshift pen they’ve set up. “Doesn’t touch you. Maybe it’s all that nobility you were talking about.”
“Uhuh,” John says, a little confused but strangely pleased.
John looks up and spots Ronon on the gangway, looking annoyed. “I have a client at our next port and my shuttle smells like a farm,” he grumbles, looking accusingly at the gathered livestock.
“I thought your clients would be used to earthy odours,” John says with a wry grin and Ronon rolls his eyes.
“No more cows!”
“Do you think I wanted to be a cattle rustler when I grew up?” John snaps, flinging his hands up. “I apologise if what we’re currently stealing gets in the way of your man-whoring.”
“Why do you always qualify it like that?” Ronon asks, sounding curious. “You could just say whoring.”
“I could just say your lease is up!” John snaps and Ronon shrugs and disappears.
“What were you saying about me and Cadman?” Rodney asks, looking amused.
“Shut up,” John sighs, without heat and Rodney laughs.
--After--
“So I was thinking,” John says. “I must have done something pretty bad to have you leave us like that.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Rodney says, whole body tense. He turns around in his small apartment, a cliff-side horror that shudders in any breeze and see that John in two years has not changed a bit.
“That’s right, I didn’t. Which leaves me wondering just what the hell you were thinking ditching us on Isera Six.” John has his arms crossed and his face is tense but underneath it all, Rodney can see the hurt which makes everything one hundred times worse that he could’ve possibly imagined.
“The Alliance is always going to have me on their hit list. You’re not safe with me.”
John turns and drags up his shirt. There’s bandaging over his shoulder, a bloom of dark red in the center because he’s probably popped a stitch like usual not being careful. “I was getting shot at before you came along,” John says, turning his face only enough that Rodney can see his profile and the tightness there. “It seems I’m getting shot after. What makes you think my safety has anything particularly to do with your proximity.”
“Maybe if you stopped pissing people off…”
“It’s in my nature. I rub people the wrong way. The only ones I don’t I tend to try and keep all in one place. That includes you, right?”
“You know it does.”
“So we’re back to why you thought it was better to run than tell us what was going on.”
Rodney paces, or paces as much as he can in the small space, made smaller by John leaning in the doorway. “I didn’t want… I liked the way you looked at me and I didn’t want that to change,” Rodney admits and something in John’s face softens.
“There’s nothing you could do that would change my opinion of you.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” Rodney says, mouth a tight line.
“Try me?”
“Can I work up to it?” Rodney asks.
“As long as you come home. There’s no one around to threaten Cadman, Teyla keeps glaring at me and Ronon likes having another crew member that he can blame the disappearing food supply on.”
“What about you?” Rodney asks.
“I just need... you.”
Author:
kellifer_ficRating: PG13 (for language)
Category: SGA McKay/Sheppard, Team (SGA, Firefly fusion)
Warnings: None
Wordcount: 2,438
Summary: Captain John Sheppard and his crew.
“What was that?”
John turned in his seat and glanced at Teyla, looking harried and standing with her arms crossed in the hatchway. He was guessing she was referring to the large shudder that had just run through the whole of the ship.
“Nothing, coupling panel just came away,” John dismissed, turning back to the vast field of stars outside the front view port. He was hoping the confidence and ease he had injected into his tone would placate Teyla enough to get her heading back to bed but it was an empty hope.
“Don’t we need that?” she demanded.
“Only if we don’t want to break apart and die upon re-entry. No big.”
“Only…?” Teyla blinked hard and then threw up her hands. “You mean we can’t land?”
“Not technically at the moment in the purest sense… no,” John admitted, hunching his shoulders up around his ears. He knew what was coming next.
“You hire an engineer at the Faeir space port or I am not getting back on this death trap.”
“You don’t mean that,” John said, turning back around and trying his most winning smile. Teyla just raised an eyebrow.
“I know you hate strangers on your ship, but all of us were strangers at some point,” Teyla said, her tone gentle now that she’d gotten John’s attention. “You hired Cadman while she was holding a gun on us.”
“We’ll get someone at Faeir, I swear,” John promised, knowing that the whole inability to land on a planet was going to cause some problems in the near future. Faeir was the closest space port and there were always people looking for work. The possibility of finding a decent engineer was remote, but they had a chance of finding one who was at least halfway decent who could keep Serenity in the air just long enough for them to put down on a big enough planet to hire someone good.
Teyla still looked wary but she backed out the hatchway, grumbling. John supposed he was lucky he’d saved Teyla’s life during the war. He was pretty sure it was the only reason she hadn’t strangled him in his sleep yet.
The hope of someone half decent vanished when John stepped into the Hiring Hall and found nothing but a couple of hookers and a boy who looked barely twelve and was trying to pass himself off as a ship’s cook. Teyla, standing just behind him, gave him a little nudge forward in the shoulder.
“How about you wait here while Cadman and I organise the resupply?”
“Sure,” John nodded, planning on disappearing to the bar as soon as Teyla was out of sight. He supposed the glare she was giving him was supposed to glue him in place but it only made him run faster when she’d turned the corner and disappeared with Cadman.
John pulled himself up onto a stool at the bar a section down and flagged the tender-bot. The little machine took his order and handed over a vibrant green drink that John swallowed in one go.
“How can you handle that stomach rot?” a voice enquired beside him and John looked to his left, seeing a man sitting slumped halfway onto the bar. John had a moment of thinking maybe the man hadn’t spoken at all when he turned his head, forehead still firmly attached to the bar top and sighed. “I had one and I think I’ve lost the use of my legs.”
“Firewater’s an acquired taste,” John said. He did a quick inventory of the man, noting the way his clothes looked expensive but dishevelled, like he’d been in the same outfit for days. He was pale with a slightly crooked mouth and a sour expression. John pegged him as either someone who’d picked the wrong ship to buy passage on and had been left stranded or the victim of a fairly elaborate prank.
In short, he didn’t look like he belonged on a place like Faeir at all.
“I’m sure,” the man said with a grimace and turned his head so his nose was mashed flat on the bar. “Just let me know if my ears start to bleed would you?”
“Here,” John said, waving the tender-bot over again and getting a thick, purple liquid this time in a long flute. “Drink this. It’ll negate the affects of the Firewater.” John could feel the liquor he’d just imbibed burning through his own system, warming his extremities and making him feel loose and happy. He didn’t often indulge but he was treating himself. He’d had a hard week.
“And I’m just supposed to believe you?” the man demanded, sounding petulant and John rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t have anything worth stealing and I’ll stay perfectly still while you search my pockets if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not going to mug you,” John snapped, getting a hand on the man’s forehead and levering his head up, sticking the purple drink under his nose. “Drink.”
“Okay,” the man said, still looking put out and then actually held his nose while he downed the concoction. He sat, looking pensive for a few moments before he straightened slowly and blinked. “Oh, hey!” he said with a grin.
“Yeah, Muddock’s great but it makes you swell to about three times your size in half an hour,” John said and grinned when the man looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. “I’m kidding.”
“Not funny!” the man nearly screeched and other patrons of the bar, a sad looking lot by anyone’s standards, looked their way with interest for a few minutes, probably hoping for a fight of some kind. When punches weren’t thrown within thirty seconds, most lost interest.
“I’m John Sheppard, Captain,” John introduced, offering his hand.
“I’m Rodney McKay, brilliant,” Rodney replied, accepting the offered hand. He was looking a lot brighter but still tired, deep maroon smudges under his eyes. John was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the drinks.
“Brilliant huh? Useful brilliant or the lounge around and mooch off your parents brilliant?”
“Are you always this rude?” Rodney demanded, turning his gaze back to the glass in front of him and rotating it with his fingers.
“Last guy that shot me thought so,” John admitted. “I was just asking because I’m looking for an engineer.”
“Really?” Rodney asked, visibly perking up. “What I don’t know about ships isn’t worth knowing,” he added with a smug look.
“You’re kidding,” John said, not believing his luck. It was possible Rodney was lying through his teeth to secure a free trip but there were ways to know for sure. “Know anything about Firefly class ships?”
“Ugh,” Rodney said with a grimace. “Bad design, handles like a pregnant cow in atmo and parts of the engine just randomly explode for no reason if you don’t keep an eye on them.”
“Oh, well, sounds like you wouldn’t be caught dead in one,” John said, feeling miffed. Rodney was talking about his home, the one place he’d felt he truly belonged where religion, the Independents and two marriages had failed him.
“No, wait!” Rodney exclaimed, eyes bright with desperation. “I’m sure yours is great and has none of the design faults found commonly amongst them. I’d have to see it to be sure, perhaps be flown to the nearest planet with a civilian hub to be one hundred percent sure.”
“Okay,” John said, lopsided grin in place. “You find a way to replace a coupling panel for free and I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
Rodney hopped up and clapped John on the shoulder. “Easy,” he said, nodding.
“Where did you find him?” Teyla asked, eyeing Rodney with suspicion who was dangling from a harness and already yelling orders at Cadman, which John thought was either very stupid or particularly fantastic.
“Hiring Hall, where I stayed like you wanted.”
Teyla leaned forward and poked John in the shoulder. “I went back two minutes after I left you and you were gone already,” she snapped. “You are honestly going to tell me you found a good engineer in a bar?”
“Who says I was in a bar? I might’ve been in a library,” John said, scowling.
“This port does not have a library,” Teyla said, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, I think you keep forgetting who is the boss of who here,” John said, turning on her and crossing his arms.
“Sir, you are entrusting our lives to a man you scraped off the floor of a drinking establishment. I think I have grounds to lodge an appeal.”
“Fine, go do that. Your appeal will be heard by the Captain in roughly four to six weeks.”
“Who’s the pale guy messing with the ship?” Ronon asked, coming down the cargo ramp.
“Someone who is hopefully not going to get us all killed,” Teyla said, tossing her hair and pushing past them both back into the ship.
“I was all kinds of noble once,” John comments. Rodney half-turns to him and raises an eyebrow.
“When was this?” he asks, a little distracted.
“I’m sure I was. I remember having ideals and not breaking the law on a regular basis.”
“Really?” Rodney’s lip turns up in a half-smirk and he reaches over and gives John a gentle pat on the hip. Rodney then steps back quickly to avoid being squashed by the dozen cows filing by.
“Don’t get me wrong,” John says. “I enjoy being a bad guy immensely. I can wear black all the time and no one gives me grief about it.”
“I do.”
“You give me grief about everything,” John muses. “And you should know by now that I exclude you whenever I’m talking about people as a whole.”
“Because I’m exceptional?” Rodney says, able to step forward again, dodging Teyla who takes a swipe at him as she passes. She has a bandana across her mouth and her eyes crinkle which is the only way they can tell she’s smiling.
“Absolutely. You’re the exception to every rule I have,” John agrees.
“You’re not a bad guy,” Rodney says as he stabs the controls to raise the cargo ramp back into the ship. He sneezes a couple of times and rubs the back of his hand over his eyes. The ramp is halfway up when a pair of hands appear at the top and then Cadman pulls herself up and over, sliding down to the deck on her butt. When she gets up she gives Rodney a filthy look.
“You knew I was still outside!” she snaps and Rodney gives her his most innocent look. She huffs and pushes past him, dodging the now aimlessly milling cows to get to the ladder that leads to the upper deck gangway.
“You really like taking your life in your hands?” John prods. “I wouldn’t mess with a girl that can rig practically anything to explode.”
“Yeah well, I can vent her sleeping quarters into space remotely. We’ve got a mutual thing going.”
John laughs but then sobers. “You don’t think we’re bad guys?”
“I said I don’t think you’re a bad guy,” Rodney says. “This,” Rodney adds, waving a hand at the cows that Teyla is trying to coax into the makeshift pen they’ve set up. “Doesn’t touch you. Maybe it’s all that nobility you were talking about.”
“Uhuh,” John says, a little confused but strangely pleased.
John looks up and spots Ronon on the gangway, looking annoyed. “I have a client at our next port and my shuttle smells like a farm,” he grumbles, looking accusingly at the gathered livestock.
“I thought your clients would be used to earthy odours,” John says with a wry grin and Ronon rolls his eyes.
“No more cows!”
“Do you think I wanted to be a cattle rustler when I grew up?” John snaps, flinging his hands up. “I apologise if what we’re currently stealing gets in the way of your man-whoring.”
“Why do you always qualify it like that?” Ronon asks, sounding curious. “You could just say whoring.”
“I could just say your lease is up!” John snaps and Ronon shrugs and disappears.
“What were you saying about me and Cadman?” Rodney asks, looking amused.
“Shut up,” John sighs, without heat and Rodney laughs.
“So I was thinking,” John says. “I must have done something pretty bad to have you leave us like that.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Rodney says, whole body tense. He turns around in his small apartment, a cliff-side horror that shudders in any breeze and see that John in two years has not changed a bit.
“That’s right, I didn’t. Which leaves me wondering just what the hell you were thinking ditching us on Isera Six.” John has his arms crossed and his face is tense but underneath it all, Rodney can see the hurt which makes everything one hundred times worse that he could’ve possibly imagined.
“The Alliance is always going to have me on their hit list. You’re not safe with me.”
John turns and drags up his shirt. There’s bandaging over his shoulder, a bloom of dark red in the center because he’s probably popped a stitch like usual not being careful. “I was getting shot at before you came along,” John says, turning his face only enough that Rodney can see his profile and the tightness there. “It seems I’m getting shot after. What makes you think my safety has anything particularly to do with your proximity.”
“Maybe if you stopped pissing people off…”
“It’s in my nature. I rub people the wrong way. The only ones I don’t I tend to try and keep all in one place. That includes you, right?”
“You know it does.”
“So we’re back to why you thought it was better to run than tell us what was going on.”
Rodney paces, or paces as much as he can in the small space, made smaller by John leaning in the doorway. “I didn’t want… I liked the way you looked at me and I didn’t want that to change,” Rodney admits and something in John’s face softens.
“There’s nothing you could do that would change my opinion of you.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” Rodney says, mouth a tight line.
“Try me?”
“Can I work up to it?” Rodney asks.
“As long as you come home. There’s no one around to threaten Cadman, Teyla keeps glaring at me and Ronon likes having another crew member that he can blame the disappearing food supply on.”
“What about you?” Rodney asks.
“I just need... you.”