Author: otter
Summary: She'd spent so much time on other planets, she wasn't sure she had a great grasp of social norms anymore.
SGA | McKay/Sheppard/Carter | R | Nov 2005 
- ex gratia - done as a favor -
Sam stood in the shower for a good twenty minutes, head down and hands against the wall while the water, set as hot as she could stand it, washed the mud and grime away. P9X-725 had been cold and wet and completely demoralizing, and she felt like she was still there, crouched in a wickedly thorny bush and biting her own lip to stay quiet, waiting for the mob to pass her by.
When she finally turned the water off, she still felt cold, but at least she was clean. She skimmed on the ointment they'd given her in the infirmary, one swipe of her finger over each stinging scrape, and then she pulled on her civvies, loose jeans and sweater and the warmest socks she could find in her locker. She'd left her coat in her lab, but she almost abandoned the idea of fetching it when each step rubbed clothes against cuts. She ended up walking out of the locker room and to the elevator with slow, shuffling steps, and between the pain in her flesh and the aches in her bones she felt about a million years old, halfway dead and gone.
When she got to her lab, she wished that she'd foregone the coat; there was a man sitting in her chair, jeans low on his hips and his thermal shirt bunched at his elbows, doodling on a notepad and one leg bouncing impatiently. He looked up when she shuffled in, then clattered to his feet, the chair rolling away behind him. "Colonel Carter," he said, in that tone of voice that usually came before, 'let me tell you what I need from you.'
"Yes," she said, pausing for a moment of blessed relief, leaning against her lab table.
"Colonel John Sheppard," her visitor said, and held out his hand.
She took it, a little gingerly in consideration of the long line line of red arcing around her thumb, and said, "Oh, Colonel Sheppard." His face was familiar, come to think of it; she hadn't actually met him before, but she'd reviewed all the personnel files, seen his jagged signature across the bottom of a hundred reports. "I hadn't heard that the Daedalus was back again. How are things on Atlantis?"
"Oh, they're fine," Sheppard said, with a look on his face that said his standard of 'fine' was considerably lower than most people's. "You look like you've had a hell of a day."
Sam smiled, but she felt it lacked her typical cheer. She supposed all her good nature had washed away in that color-leeching rain. "Same old, same old," she said. "But I'm sure you're not here to talk about that. I was just on my way home, Colonel; was there something you needed?"
Sheppard's expression was reluctant, and he looked at the floor, so she was desperately hoping that he'd say no, that whatever it was he wanted, somebody else could handle it and she could go home and turn the heater way up, curl up in bed and dream about never coming out again.
"I could use your help," Sheppard finally said, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand and burying the other deep in his pocket. "But it's not-- this isn't official."
Sam's hair was still damp, curling at the base of her neck and dripping freezing little drops of water down the back of her sweater. She said, "I don't suppose it can wait. I have forty-eight hours down time to start on," and somewhere at the back of her mind she wondered when the SGC had become such a job, someplace to go home from on the weekends. She was beginning to feel old, and so unexpectedly bone-deep tired.
Sheppard grimaced and looked away, uncomfortable with whatever he wanted to ask but obviously unwilling to abandon it. "It's Rodney," he finally said. "Doctor McKay."
Sam tapped her fingers against the tabletop, looked down at the floor, sighed very heavily and said, "Hand me my coat, will you?" She waved a hand in the general direction of her chair and the coat slung across the back. Sheppard retrieved it, fingers hooked in the collar and an obvious reluctance in him when he offered the garment up. Sam put the coat on slowly, one sleeve at a time, and said, "I need to get some dinner, anyway. You can drive."
+++
They stopped at a restaurant Sam had never been to before, a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place with wood paneling and lime green tiles and a whiteboard menu written in neither English nor Italian. Sheppard ordered enough carry-out to feed a hockey team and then leaned back against the counter, looked at her and said, "You cold?"
She couldn't seem to stop shivering, but at least she had an excuse; it was deep winter outside, a foot of snow on the ground and too cold to get any more. She shrugged, distracted by the scents coming from the kitchen, and managed not to reach for the gun she wasn't carrying when Sheppard suddenly leaned over and draped his scarf over the rise of her shoulders. It was warm from his body and felt good against the back of her neck, so she didn't give it back; she wrapped it once around her neck and said, "Thanks," even though she was pretty sure that giving somebody your clothes was a little odd.
Of course, she'd spent so much time on other planets, she wasn't sure she had a great grasp of social norms anymore.
When they were back in her SUV, him behind the wheel and her in the passenger seat, holding the big bag of carry-out containers and soaking up the heat through her lap, she said, "So what exactly is the problem with McKay? He came back with you, I assume."
Sheppard nodded, starting up the engine, and the console started blasting out heat again, a warm rush of air against their faces. "We're on leave," Sheppard said. "Just a couple of days. I needed to make some reports to the brass and Doctor Heightmeyer -- she's Atlantis' shrink -- wanted Rodney to get away from the city for awhile."
Sam smiled -- kind of fondly, in spite of herself -- looked out the window at the whitewashed world, and said, "Well, who wouldn't want McKay to get away from them for awhile?"
Sheppard's face, reflected in the window, was cold and frowning, etched in glass and shadows. He coughed, like he was having trouble swallowing down a sharp response, and said, "Frankly, Rodney's been through some shit lately. And while it's fair to say that we've all been through some shit lately, I think Rodney's cracking up a little."
Sam looked at his face, but couldn't tell much from it; she didn't know Sheppard at all, didn't know why he was driving her car or why she was holding his carry-out or why they were turning into a hotel parking structure. He pulled the SUV into guest parking, turned off the engine and just sat for a moment, staring ahead like he wasn't sure he could keep moving.
"And how do you think I can help?" Sam asked, careful of the jagged edges Sheppard was clearly trying to smooth over with his blank face and his disheveled hair.
"I don't know," Sheppard said, and he ran a hand through his hair, then down over his face, the way people do when they're trying to keep themselves awake. "He thinks a lot of you. I know you aren't--" He looked at her kind of sideways, then away again. "I know you were never as involved with Rodney as he'd like people to believe, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the fact that you're here at all means you care at least a little bit." He looked down at his lap, sighed, and said, "I really don't know what I'm trying to accomplish, here. But I thought maybe if you came in for awhile, just... hung out, had dinner, maybe it'd cheer him up some."
Sam nodded and tried to smile, but she felt as worn as Sheppard looked, so she just took off her seatbelt instead, looped one hand into the handle of the carry-out bag and used the other to open the door. "That sounds doable," she said, and did him another favor by ignoring the look of relief on his face.
+++
The lights were out in the suite when Sheppard opened the door, but the TV was on, washing the room with flickering blue. It looked like reflection, refraction, the same way an active event horizon would paint a dark room, and just stepping through the door felt a little bit like stepping outside her own planet, into some crazy world where it was perfectly normal for her to see McKay sprawled face-down on a hotel bed, looking strangely small and breakable.
Then Sheppard flipped the lights on, and McKay rolled over and said, "Huh? What?" and things were pretty normal again, from there on out.
Sheppard said, "Hey, Rodney. Colonel Carter wanted to drop by; hope you don't mind," and he gave Sam this crazy desperate look like he'd do anything, anything at all, if she'd just play along.
So Sam said, "Hey, McKay. You're in town from another galaxy and you don't call me?" Then she held up the carry-out bag and said, "I even brought dinner," because if coming over here was her idea, then the food was too.
McKay said, "Oh. Um," and then, "Of course. I'm sorry, I should've--" He stopped himself, looked around the room: dirty clothes tossed over the back of the desk chair, file folders spread across the desk, his suitcase open and rifled through, boxers lying out on top. He said, "Um," again, but didn't stand to tidy up, as if he really cared that things were messy but didn't have the energy to do much about it.
Sheppard, thankfully, took things in his stride; he scooped up the dirty clothes and tossed them in the suitcase, then kicked it shut and nudged it under the bed. "You want a drink, Colonel?" he asked, waving a hand at the little hotel refrigerator. "We've got some Canadian beer and some Californian wine."
"I wouldn't mind some wine," Sam said, and she put the bag down on the coffee table so she could shrug out of her coat, because McKay was keeping his hotel room at the kind of blistering temperatures she was after, as if he'd read her mind. "And you can call me Sam, if you don't mind. We're off-duty, after all."
Sheppard nodded and said, "John, then." He poked at McKay's shoulder as he walked past and hissed, "Rodney. Pants."
McKay looked down at himself, said, "Oh," again, and stumbled out of bed. He picked up a pair of jeans that had been abandoned on the floor, then disappeared into the bathroom, as if he needed privacy to get dressed, when his boxers had already exposed his legs to God and everybody.
Sam said, "Thanks," when Sheppard pressed the wine into her hand -- cheap plastic hotel cup, but the drink smelled good -- and she stole one of the pillows from the bed, dropped it onto the floor and settled carefully down with her legs stretched out, the coffee table in front of her and the bed at her back. It felt good to finally be still, letting all her burning wounds settle until the pain of them was just another kind of warmth.
Sheppard sat on the other side of the table, on the bare floor with his long legs folded, and sipped slowly at his beer, looking awkward and unsure. Sam thought she should maybe say something reassuring, but she wasn't sure what she could say, because she wasn't quite sure what he wanted, either.
"Do me a favor," Sheppard finally said, sotte voce, as if she hadn't done him a handful already. "Talk about physics or math or whatever you want, but don't ask about the Wraith. In fact, it's probably best to avoid discussing Atlantis entirely."
"I think he'd notice if I completely failed to ask him about the amazing alien city," Sam whispered back, already unpacking the food. "But I'll do my best."
McKay came back out of the bathroom right about then, jeans in place and his hair slicked down, at least until he pulled a sweater from his suitcase and tugged it over his head. They'd just woken him up, but he somehow looked like he hadn't slept in an age. He joined them at the coffee table, settling in next to Sheppard, and from the look on his face he couldn't seem to decide which was more exciting: Samantha Carter sitting there, sharing dinner with him, or the amazing quantity of food.
"Wow," he said, like he'd forgotten life could be this good, and then he opened up the first container to come to his hands, took the plastic fork Sheppard offered almost without looking, and tucked in like he hadn't eaten in ten thousand years.
"So, McKay," Sam said. "I still haven't managed to make it to Atlantis. You wanna tell me what I'm missing?"
Sheppard gave her a look, like she'd just betrayed her country or killed a puppy. McKay looked considerably brighter though, didn't hesitate as he plunged into story after story, and he wielded his fork like a conductor, punctuating the climax of each tale with a vigorous wave of the tines.
By the time they'd eaten most of the food, Sam knew more about Atlantis than she'd ever learned from reading the official reports. She'd also spilled a few of SG-1's slightly more classified stories, because when she'd talked about the time Daniel had worn a mumu for the sake of intergalactic relations, Sheppard had finally loosened up around the shoulders and the mouth, relaxed, even laughed a little. And that had led them to Marlon Brando, and that to The Island of Dr. Moreau, and that to a spirited discussion of several films and their scientific merits, which was obviously an old and familiar topic with McKay and Sheppard, who took to the Back to the Future debate like they were slipping on well-worn boxing gloves for a choreographed fight.
Sheppard had also spent a good portion of the evening refilling her cup, pressing beer after beer into Rodney's hands, and Sam did him another favor by pretending that she hadn't noticed he was trying to get them drunk.
When Sheppard got up to clear the remains of the meal away, Sam leaned back against the bed, finally warmed belly-out by the food, and the wine settling heavy and comfortable in her gut. McKay had migrated to her side of the table, and was bent intently over a napkin, drawing an absurdly detailed diagram of an Ancient stasis chamber -- they'd have to burn that later, Sam thought -- and talking about artificial environments and lingering consciousness.
Sam stared at the curve of his back and the way his fingers hooked and curled when he was talking, like he was trying to hold on to a particularly slippery concept, and she thought it was maybe possible that she'd always liked him this much, and Atlantis had just scoured away all the parts of him that hadn't been real, distilled him down to the essentials.
"--and just an insane number of automatic functions for maintaining the health of the occupant," McKay was saying. "So theoretically we could use it for diagnosis and... well, that's Beckett's department." He was squinting down at the bottle in his hand, which was somehow full; Sheppard was already turning away with the empty. And McKay started getting a look on his face like he was maybe just figuring it out.
Then he looked at her, like he was hoping she'd find a flaw in his formula, and seemed to notice -- maybe for the first time -- the angry red lines across her shoulders and the back of her neck, just barely not-concealed by her sweater. "Oh," he said, and reached out with one finger to trace the arcing cuts like they were lines in a graph, neatly charted vectors plotting degrees of suffering and maximum thresholds for pain.
Which was why she had to -- had to, there weren't really any other options just then, with his eyes gone soft and his finger on the back of her neck -- lean forward and press her lips to his, gentle but insistent, until he opened his mouth and let her in.
When they broke apart, lips wet and McKay's breath puffing against her cheek, his fingers fisted in the hem of her sweater, he said, "God," and shuddered like something inside him had broken loose, and he was trying to shake free of it.
"Hey," Sam said, "it's okay." And it was, really; she put her hand on his cheek, and the other on his arm, and just kept him there, tethered.
McKay laughed, and it was half amused relief and half hysterical panic; he said, "I don't-- I don't know what to-- You're so--" and couldn't seem to get the thought out.
It was Sheppard who saved him, knelt down behind McKay and snugged in close against McKay's back, like he was putting himself between his friend and a bullet. He said, "Jesus, McKay, do I have to teach you everything?" and he was already reaching out, curling his palm around the back of McKay's fist, and then their hands together were curving around Sam's ribs.
McKay said, "Oh yes, thank you, and could we talk about the birds and the bees while we're at it? I was never quite clear on that concept." But he was staring down at their hands, so close to her breasts, and his other hand had set loose of her sweater so he could grip Sheppard's thigh.
Sam said, "Don't you two ever shut up?" and she put her mouth against McKay's again, her hand at the back of his neck to pull him closer, and the other gripping Sheppard in the same place, to keep him with them.
In the early morning, 3:23 by the hotel clock, she pulled herself out of bed, and every thorn-prick on her body was dry and burning. She slipped into her clothes slowly and tried to stay quiet, but when she crouched next to the bed to retrieve her sweater, she looked up and found Sheppard watching her over McKay's still body, his eyes catching light in white and yellow from the nightlight in the bathroom.
"Hey," he whispered, and then said nothing else, like he wasn't sure what he'd intended in the first place.
"Hey," she said, and leaned carefully over McKay to kiss Sheppard's lips, just a short dry hello and goodbye. "I've really got to get home. I intend to sleep for two days straight. When do you head back to Atlantis?"
"Eleven hundred hours," he said. He gingerly removed his hand from McKay's hip and used it to rub the sleep from his eyes, propped himself up on an elbow and watched her pull her sweater on.
"I won't see you, then," Sam said. She had her boots in hand, and she could've put them on at the door, but she sat on the edge of the bed instead.
Sheppard was giving her the eye, maybe a little suspicious. "You're taking this whole thing in stride," he said, kind of cautiously, like he was more afraid of talking about sex than he'd ever been of facing down hive ships.
"Well," Sam said, left boot on and the right tucked between her knees while she threaded the laces that McKay had unraveled in his enthusiasm. "There's no use fretting over the great sex you've just had." She smiled brightly and leaned over to put the right boot on, and when she straightened up Sheppard was smiling a little, too. "You're okay with this, right?" she said. "I mean, I'm sure you and McKay have--"
"No, actually," Sheppard said, and his expression was almost rueful, maybe a little guilty, like he'd gotten away with something. "I might have to deal with a gay-related freakout on the way home."
"Oh," Sam said, standing carefully so she wouldn't jostle the bed. "Well, you probably have it coming to you. You are to blame for this whole thing, the way you cunningly lured me in." She put enough sarcasm in it to let him know that he hadn't been very cunning at all. She squinted at him critically, then said, "I think it must've been the hair. It's kind of hypnotic." She leaned over to ruffle it for good measure, and pressed a kiss to the corner of McKay's mouth while she was there; he snorted in his sleep and rolled over, and Sheppard would've caught an elbow to the face if he hadn't been quick to duck out of the way.
Sam said, "Take care of him, huh?" and looked down at McKay with a large measure of fondness in her heart, God help her. "And be careful out there."
Sheppard nodded and smiled and was giving McKay exactly the same look. "Yeah," he said, turning his face up to her. "You take care of yourself, too."
Sam said, "Nah, that's what Teal'c's for," and grinned, wrapped Sheppard's scarf around her neck and went quietly out the door.
She went straight home, crawled into bed, woke up enough to shower a few hours later, then spent at least ninety percent of her leave curled up under the covers, only waking long enough to rub salve into her skin and forage in the kitchen.
By the time she returned to the SGC, the Daedalus and its cargo were long gone, but Sheppard's scarf was hanging with her coat on the hook, and the notepad he'd been doodling on was crowded with a half-finished equation that begged for a response. Near the bottom of the sheet he'd written thank you and surrounded the words with a thick black box, to protect them from the encroachment of rough-sketched puddlejumpers.
the end