![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grammarwomanTitle: Corporate Spin
Fandom/Characters: Stargate: Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard
Rating, Setting: PG, an Atlantis AU
Word count: 2100
Author's Notes: I posted this in![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
mcsmooch just a few weeks back, totally indulging myself in "write what you know" and perhaps over-indulging in the meta. What can I say, I still have Issues with SGA's cancellation.
Corporate Spin
It was the last day – strictly speaking, what with the setting sun peeking past the window blinds, the last night -- of Atlantis Industrial Laboratory Supplies, a subsidiary of Bridge Company. Rodney had hated the acronym from the first time he heard it, but VP of Administration Woolsey had picked it out himself and refused to care about the potential jinx. (When the time came around for the "I told you so"s, Big Dick was already off to greener pastures, another catalog company that valued his résumé and alliances and couldn't care less about his complete lack of people skills.)
The Phone Sales department had been shut down a month ago, and Shipping had sent out the last of the pending orders over the following few weeks. The ranks of essential personnel had been whittled down until all that was left in the office were the remaining department heads -- with their termination agreements held hostage to their continued attendance -- and the larger pieces of furniture that were promised to the next tenants of the building.
Rodney's sulky perusal of the empty parking lot was interrupted by the squeaking of wheels and then Radek's appearance at his door. A few battered laptops huddled together on his cart.
"Rodney, you have yet to turn your equipment," Radek scolded, waving a clipboard at him.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "A perfectly functional computer with my inventory tag was surrendered last week, along with all the matching paperwork. This…" he said, laying a possessive hand on his laptop, "is all mine."
Radek sighed. "Fine, steal company property, I do not care, as long as my numbers to Corporate are in order."
"Oh, and you can check off Sheppard's, Teyla's, and Ronon's as well," Rodney said. He offset the slight waver in his voice with a defiant lift of his chin.
"Of course," Radek answered resignedly. "I expect nothing less." He ran down the checklist. "What about Keller's?"
"Jennifer –" Rodney coughed around the sudden catch in his throat. "She decided she didn't need any old equipment to hold her back in her new position."
Radek blinked at him, then nodded in sudden understanding. "Oh. I'm sorry."
Rodney grimaced. "Yes, well, nothing like a clean break, hm?"
Radek nodded quickly again and ran a hand through his hair. Judging by its wild disarray, it was not the first time. "I believe there is a gathering of your comrades in the break room – John mentioned something of a bottle of Scotch left by Mr. Woolsey."
"And by left, he means stolen from," Rodney snorted.
Radek chuckled in agreement and waved as he moved on to the next office. "Good luck to you, Rodney."
Rodney watched Radek wheel his cart down the hall and out of sight before he slid the laptop into his bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. He took a last look around his office as he slipped his nameplate out of its sleeve beside his door. He tapped "Rodney McKay – Head of Development" on his hand a few times, then shoved it in his bag. It remained to be seen if he wanted to preserve it or ceremonially set it ablaze.
As usual, he was the last one to the party. He walked into the tail end of Ronon doing a filthy impression of Big Dick, as Amelia ducked her head, Carson blushed, Teyla grinned widely, and Sheppard laughed with the approximate range and volume of a barnyard animal. The Scotch held court in the middle of the table, surrounded by old coffee mugs with the logos of a variety of vendors.
"Rodney, you made it!" Sheppard waved him to a seat. "Lemme get you something to drink."
He poured with drunken intensity and handed the cup to Rodney. Sheppard grabbed up his own and held it aloft. "To the head honchos at Bridge and their infinite wisdom. May they choke on their latest endeavor!"
The group cheered and clinked their mugs. Rodney sipped. Sheppard slammed his drink.
"John!" said Carson, scandalized. "That's nae way to treat a good Scotch!"
"That's not what Laura said," Teyla offered, setting the crowd laughing again as Carson blushed even more fiercely.
The level in the bottle dropped as they traded stories and jokes. They razzed Sheppard for his reputation for charming the office managers at the client sites on his sales trips, always surprised when they slipped him their phone numbers along with their orders.
"Never see it coming, my ass!" Rodney scoffed. Sheppard shook his head and looked down in his cup, mumbling something Rodney couldn't hear.
"Do you remember the time the Genii asked for Rodney personally to install their laboratory upgrades, then tried to hire him away from us?" Carson grinned.
"I have rarely seen John so angry as when Rodney called him with the news." Teyla saluted him with her mug. Sheppard frowned.
Rodney said with a shudder, "They couldn't pay me enough to work there! Those fanatics had no idea of the proper safety protocols. And the creeps they had running the place – absolutely NOT."
"Better them than the Wraith Corporation," growled Ronon.
Sheppard clapped his shoulder as the group nodded in sympathy. Ronon had come to them after the Wraith had acquired and gutted his company in a hostile takeover. Atlantis and the Wraith had battled for market share ever since. Fending off their competitor's latest salvos had left Atlantis victorious but vulnerable, enough so that the parent corporation was closing them down and rolling their business -- but not their personnel -- into the new division.
Amelia tried her best to lighten the mood with tales of the worst customers her phone bank operators had encountered. Ronon chuckled and encouraged her for more; the rest of them smiled into their mugs.
Quitting time came and went, but it seemed that no one wanted to be the first to leave. Finally Carson yawned and looked at his watch.
"I give up, lads. I'm off to my bed. Any of you drunkards care for a ride?"
Teyla stretched and pondered the remnants of her cup. "I believe I will take you up on your offer, Carson. Kanaan will be worrying if I do not get home sometime soon."
"Amelia, lass, how about you?" Carson stood up to go.
Before she could answer, Ronon said, "I could give you a lift. If you want. It's no trouble." Without the ducking of his head, his offer would have come off as completely casual.
Amelia smiled. "I'd like that, thanks." Ronon grinned back at her.
A flurry of hugs and handshakes were exchanged all around, and vague promises were made to meet up sometime in the next month. Rodney found himself shoulder to shoulder with Sheppard, watching as Ronon and Amelia, hand-in-hand, and the others exited. He collapsed back in his chair with a sigh.
"I can't believe that it took Ronon until the last day to make a move on her. I mean, even I could see he had a thing for her."
"You mean, as oblivious as you usually are?" Sheppard said.
Rodney frowned at him. "I'm not oblivious. I'm an astute observer—"
Sheppard fake-coughed a clear "Bullshit!" into his hand.
"Oh, that was smooth. What are you, a frat rat?"
Sheppard grinned unrepentantly. Rodney continued, "OK, so maybe I miss some of the finer details."
"Yeah, harassing Carter until she had you sent to Siberia was quite the fine detail."
"It wasn't Siberia, it was a sensitivity training seminar in Wisconsin, and I still say she overreacted. Her loss, anyway." Rodney washed down the bitterness with another swig from his cup.
"Yeah, her loss," Sheppard said, an odd twist in his voice.
"Anyway, I was just about ready to suggest something utterly juvenile like Seven Minutes in the Closet for those two, if he wasn't going to say anything."
"Or Spin the Bottle?" Sheppard waggled his eyebrows at him.
"With this crowd? I don't think so. Ronon would have kicked my ass, Teyla would have laughed and then kicked my ass, and I certainly didn't need a repeat of that…incident with Carson."
Sheppard grinned. "I never knew you could actually trip and catch yourself on someone else's lips."
"Tripped? Try shoved, by that demon Cadman. And then he got a date out of the deal!"
Sheppard raised his drink. "To bringing people together, however it happens."
Rodney grumbled, but clinked his cup against Sheppard's and drank.
Sheppard looked at Rodney for a moment over the rim of his mug and took a long sip. "So," he said, "what about me?"
"What about you what?"
"Me and Spin the Bottle." His eyes wouldn't meet Rodney's.
Rodney snorted. "Somehow, I don't think I'm your type."
"Really. What's my type, then?"
"Well, for starters, women," Rodney huffed. "Beyond that, Sheppard, I have no idea."
"You really don't," Sheppard said. "I mean, five years working together, and you still call me Sheppard, like we barely know each other."
"I don't –"
"Just try it out. John."
"Sheppard, what are you—"
"John," he carefully enunciated.
Rodney sighed. "Fine. John. Better?"
John grinned. "It's a start." He picked up the Scotch and divided the remains between their two cups, then set the bottle on its side in the middle of the table.
Rodney gaped at the bottle and then at him. "What are you doing?"
"You gonna spin?" John said.
"What?" Rodney's brain stuttered and halted, fixated on John's wicked half-grin.
"Fine, I'll take a turn." He spun the bottle around. It wobbled to a stop, pointing directly at Rodney.
"Well, look at that." John smiled. "I was hoping it would be you." He leaned forward. Rodney startled back frantically and almost fell out of his chair.
"If this is some kind of joke, John…" Rodney babbled, an accusing finger waving at John.
"In the sense that waiting for five years to say something is a bad joke, yeah. Otherwise, it's just being stupid for a long time."
Feeling lightheaded but unsure of the exact cause, Rodney's words ran away from him. "In comparison to the lifespan of the universe, five years is not even a drop in the bucket. It's like an infinitesimal electron in an atom in a drop in a grossly oversized bucket –"
"Rodney. A simple no would suffice." John settled back in his chair. The grin was gone, replaced by a carefully neutral expression.
"Five years? Really?" Rodney winced at the squeak in his voice.
"Look, it's no big deal," John muttered. "Just a drunken, stupid comment, that we can pretend I never said." He stood up and turned to the door. "I should go."
"John, wait!" In Rodney's head, certain events twisted, turned, and snapped into place like a jigsaw puzzle coming together. John had never brought a woman to any of the office parties. He'd never joined in the Monday morning review of weekend date successes or failures. He'd never even mentioned calling any of those stupid office managers back. He had, in fact, spent a lot of time bugging Rodney about the latest cool gadgets to be added to the catalog, or pushing Rodney to join him in catching the newest Hollywood attempts at sci-fi entertainment, or challenging Rodney to marathon video game sessions.
And judging by the klaxon of interior responses screaming at him not to let John walk out the door, Rodney realized that at some point he had stopped thinking of John as just a good office buddy. He desperately searched for the right words to put to his new-found awareness, but his brain seemed locked in a loop. So with a deep breath, he reached and spun the bottle on the table.
John twisted around at the sound. His eyes widened. The bottle, however, had no appreciation for Rodney's plight and skewed off to the side.
Rodney growled, "Oh, fuck that!" and leaped forward to grab John's face in his hands.
As first kisses went, it wouldn't win any awards. Rodney's lips landed somewhat sideways of John's, but the friction as he dragged them back into alignment was delightful. Then John's hands were suddenly gripping Rodney around his waist and pulling him in closer, and Rodney's internal critic flashed "This is Good!" and abruptly went offline. Then all Rodney knew was lips, and tongue, and hey there, teeth!
He pulled back, breathless. John looked dazed and unsure.
"Five years?" questioned Rodney.
John nodded.
Rodney grabbed him by the wrist and tugged him towards the door. "I think they left a couch in Woolsey's office. Let's go see if we can't make up for lost time."
Fandom/Characters: Stargate: Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard
Rating, Setting: PG, an Atlantis AU
Word count: 2100
Author's Notes: I posted this in
mcsmooch just a few weeks back, totally indulging myself in "write what you know" and perhaps over-indulging in the meta. What can I say, I still have Issues with SGA's cancellation.Corporate Spin
It was the last day – strictly speaking, what with the setting sun peeking past the window blinds, the last night -- of Atlantis Industrial Laboratory Supplies, a subsidiary of Bridge Company. Rodney had hated the acronym from the first time he heard it, but VP of Administration Woolsey had picked it out himself and refused to care about the potential jinx. (When the time came around for the "I told you so"s, Big Dick was already off to greener pastures, another catalog company that valued his résumé and alliances and couldn't care less about his complete lack of people skills.)
The Phone Sales department had been shut down a month ago, and Shipping had sent out the last of the pending orders over the following few weeks. The ranks of essential personnel had been whittled down until all that was left in the office were the remaining department heads -- with their termination agreements held hostage to their continued attendance -- and the larger pieces of furniture that were promised to the next tenants of the building.
Rodney's sulky perusal of the empty parking lot was interrupted by the squeaking of wheels and then Radek's appearance at his door. A few battered laptops huddled together on his cart.
"Rodney, you have yet to turn your equipment," Radek scolded, waving a clipboard at him.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "A perfectly functional computer with my inventory tag was surrendered last week, along with all the matching paperwork. This…" he said, laying a possessive hand on his laptop, "is all mine."
Radek sighed. "Fine, steal company property, I do not care, as long as my numbers to Corporate are in order."
"Oh, and you can check off Sheppard's, Teyla's, and Ronon's as well," Rodney said. He offset the slight waver in his voice with a defiant lift of his chin.
"Of course," Radek answered resignedly. "I expect nothing less." He ran down the checklist. "What about Keller's?"
"Jennifer –" Rodney coughed around the sudden catch in his throat. "She decided she didn't need any old equipment to hold her back in her new position."
Radek blinked at him, then nodded in sudden understanding. "Oh. I'm sorry."
Rodney grimaced. "Yes, well, nothing like a clean break, hm?"
Radek nodded quickly again and ran a hand through his hair. Judging by its wild disarray, it was not the first time. "I believe there is a gathering of your comrades in the break room – John mentioned something of a bottle of Scotch left by Mr. Woolsey."
"And by left, he means stolen from," Rodney snorted.
Radek chuckled in agreement and waved as he moved on to the next office. "Good luck to you, Rodney."
Rodney watched Radek wheel his cart down the hall and out of sight before he slid the laptop into his bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. He took a last look around his office as he slipped his nameplate out of its sleeve beside his door. He tapped "Rodney McKay – Head of Development" on his hand a few times, then shoved it in his bag. It remained to be seen if he wanted to preserve it or ceremonially set it ablaze.
As usual, he was the last one to the party. He walked into the tail end of Ronon doing a filthy impression of Big Dick, as Amelia ducked her head, Carson blushed, Teyla grinned widely, and Sheppard laughed with the approximate range and volume of a barnyard animal. The Scotch held court in the middle of the table, surrounded by old coffee mugs with the logos of a variety of vendors.
"Rodney, you made it!" Sheppard waved him to a seat. "Lemme get you something to drink."
He poured with drunken intensity and handed the cup to Rodney. Sheppard grabbed up his own and held it aloft. "To the head honchos at Bridge and their infinite wisdom. May they choke on their latest endeavor!"
The group cheered and clinked their mugs. Rodney sipped. Sheppard slammed his drink.
"John!" said Carson, scandalized. "That's nae way to treat a good Scotch!"
"That's not what Laura said," Teyla offered, setting the crowd laughing again as Carson blushed even more fiercely.
The level in the bottle dropped as they traded stories and jokes. They razzed Sheppard for his reputation for charming the office managers at the client sites on his sales trips, always surprised when they slipped him their phone numbers along with their orders.
"Never see it coming, my ass!" Rodney scoffed. Sheppard shook his head and looked down in his cup, mumbling something Rodney couldn't hear.
"Do you remember the time the Genii asked for Rodney personally to install their laboratory upgrades, then tried to hire him away from us?" Carson grinned.
"I have rarely seen John so angry as when Rodney called him with the news." Teyla saluted him with her mug. Sheppard frowned.
Rodney said with a shudder, "They couldn't pay me enough to work there! Those fanatics had no idea of the proper safety protocols. And the creeps they had running the place – absolutely NOT."
"Better them than the Wraith Corporation," growled Ronon.
Sheppard clapped his shoulder as the group nodded in sympathy. Ronon had come to them after the Wraith had acquired and gutted his company in a hostile takeover. Atlantis and the Wraith had battled for market share ever since. Fending off their competitor's latest salvos had left Atlantis victorious but vulnerable, enough so that the parent corporation was closing them down and rolling their business -- but not their personnel -- into the new division.
Amelia tried her best to lighten the mood with tales of the worst customers her phone bank operators had encountered. Ronon chuckled and encouraged her for more; the rest of them smiled into their mugs.
Quitting time came and went, but it seemed that no one wanted to be the first to leave. Finally Carson yawned and looked at his watch.
"I give up, lads. I'm off to my bed. Any of you drunkards care for a ride?"
Teyla stretched and pondered the remnants of her cup. "I believe I will take you up on your offer, Carson. Kanaan will be worrying if I do not get home sometime soon."
"Amelia, lass, how about you?" Carson stood up to go.
Before she could answer, Ronon said, "I could give you a lift. If you want. It's no trouble." Without the ducking of his head, his offer would have come off as completely casual.
Amelia smiled. "I'd like that, thanks." Ronon grinned back at her.
A flurry of hugs and handshakes were exchanged all around, and vague promises were made to meet up sometime in the next month. Rodney found himself shoulder to shoulder with Sheppard, watching as Ronon and Amelia, hand-in-hand, and the others exited. He collapsed back in his chair with a sigh.
"I can't believe that it took Ronon until the last day to make a move on her. I mean, even I could see he had a thing for her."
"You mean, as oblivious as you usually are?" Sheppard said.
Rodney frowned at him. "I'm not oblivious. I'm an astute observer—"
Sheppard fake-coughed a clear "Bullshit!" into his hand.
"Oh, that was smooth. What are you, a frat rat?"
Sheppard grinned unrepentantly. Rodney continued, "OK, so maybe I miss some of the finer details."
"Yeah, harassing Carter until she had you sent to Siberia was quite the fine detail."
"It wasn't Siberia, it was a sensitivity training seminar in Wisconsin, and I still say she overreacted. Her loss, anyway." Rodney washed down the bitterness with another swig from his cup.
"Yeah, her loss," Sheppard said, an odd twist in his voice.
"Anyway, I was just about ready to suggest something utterly juvenile like Seven Minutes in the Closet for those two, if he wasn't going to say anything."
"Or Spin the Bottle?" Sheppard waggled his eyebrows at him.
"With this crowd? I don't think so. Ronon would have kicked my ass, Teyla would have laughed and then kicked my ass, and I certainly didn't need a repeat of that…incident with Carson."
Sheppard grinned. "I never knew you could actually trip and catch yourself on someone else's lips."
"Tripped? Try shoved, by that demon Cadman. And then he got a date out of the deal!"
Sheppard raised his drink. "To bringing people together, however it happens."
Rodney grumbled, but clinked his cup against Sheppard's and drank.
Sheppard looked at Rodney for a moment over the rim of his mug and took a long sip. "So," he said, "what about me?"
"What about you what?"
"Me and Spin the Bottle." His eyes wouldn't meet Rodney's.
Rodney snorted. "Somehow, I don't think I'm your type."
"Really. What's my type, then?"
"Well, for starters, women," Rodney huffed. "Beyond that, Sheppard, I have no idea."
"You really don't," Sheppard said. "I mean, five years working together, and you still call me Sheppard, like we barely know each other."
"I don't –"
"Just try it out. John."
"Sheppard, what are you—"
"John," he carefully enunciated.
Rodney sighed. "Fine. John. Better?"
John grinned. "It's a start." He picked up the Scotch and divided the remains between their two cups, then set the bottle on its side in the middle of the table.
Rodney gaped at the bottle and then at him. "What are you doing?"
"You gonna spin?" John said.
"What?" Rodney's brain stuttered and halted, fixated on John's wicked half-grin.
"Fine, I'll take a turn." He spun the bottle around. It wobbled to a stop, pointing directly at Rodney.
"Well, look at that." John smiled. "I was hoping it would be you." He leaned forward. Rodney startled back frantically and almost fell out of his chair.
"If this is some kind of joke, John…" Rodney babbled, an accusing finger waving at John.
"In the sense that waiting for five years to say something is a bad joke, yeah. Otherwise, it's just being stupid for a long time."
Feeling lightheaded but unsure of the exact cause, Rodney's words ran away from him. "In comparison to the lifespan of the universe, five years is not even a drop in the bucket. It's like an infinitesimal electron in an atom in a drop in a grossly oversized bucket –"
"Rodney. A simple no would suffice." John settled back in his chair. The grin was gone, replaced by a carefully neutral expression.
"Five years? Really?" Rodney winced at the squeak in his voice.
"Look, it's no big deal," John muttered. "Just a drunken, stupid comment, that we can pretend I never said." He stood up and turned to the door. "I should go."
"John, wait!" In Rodney's head, certain events twisted, turned, and snapped into place like a jigsaw puzzle coming together. John had never brought a woman to any of the office parties. He'd never joined in the Monday morning review of weekend date successes or failures. He'd never even mentioned calling any of those stupid office managers back. He had, in fact, spent a lot of time bugging Rodney about the latest cool gadgets to be added to the catalog, or pushing Rodney to join him in catching the newest Hollywood attempts at sci-fi entertainment, or challenging Rodney to marathon video game sessions.
And judging by the klaxon of interior responses screaming at him not to let John walk out the door, Rodney realized that at some point he had stopped thinking of John as just a good office buddy. He desperately searched for the right words to put to his new-found awareness, but his brain seemed locked in a loop. So with a deep breath, he reached and spun the bottle on the table.
John twisted around at the sound. His eyes widened. The bottle, however, had no appreciation for Rodney's plight and skewed off to the side.
Rodney growled, "Oh, fuck that!" and leaped forward to grab John's face in his hands.
As first kisses went, it wouldn't win any awards. Rodney's lips landed somewhat sideways of John's, but the friction as he dragged them back into alignment was delightful. Then John's hands were suddenly gripping Rodney around his waist and pulling him in closer, and Rodney's internal critic flashed "This is Good!" and abruptly went offline. Then all Rodney knew was lips, and tongue, and hey there, teeth!
He pulled back, breathless. John looked dazed and unsure.
"Five years?" questioned Rodney.
John nodded.
Rodney grabbed him by the wrist and tugged him towards the door. "I think they left a couch in Woolsey's office. Let's go see if we can't make up for lost time."
