Formula for Two Bodies Interacting in Null Space
by Darklady
Rated: PG or maybe R ( will vary with chapter)
Warning: Slash! (Also het and other sorts of adult activities - although referred to in a politely adult way. ) Main pairing is Charlie/Larry. That said, this is not a romance. It is a murder mystery.
Universe: Crossover between Numb3rs, Stargate SG-, and eventually Stargate Atlantis. As soon as Larry Fleinhardt published a paper on zero point energy? I knew I had to do this.
Spoilers: Season three of Numb3rs, three of SGA, ten of SG-1. General knowledge of all three programs will be assumed. Read at your own risk.
Post: Not yet please. Time constraints limit beta review. I will send a final corrected version to Peja as soon as this is finished.
Disclaimer: If I owned even ONE television production company, would I need to work at any OTHER job? Didn't think so! (Not to mention - if I did control the show - they would so be doing it. )
Second Disclaimer: The following fiction is a pastiche and permitted under copyright law as a work of satire. This disclaimer applies to all chapters of this story, weather or not specifically stated.
Third Disclaimer: I know the difference between characters and actors. So do my readers.
Feedback: Yes please
Chapter 1: Life's Little Quarks.
"Ah. The magnificent Dr. Charles 'Speed Demon' Eppes returns from his triumphant conquest of friction and the supposed laws of gravity!" Larry Fleinhardt waved his broom at his visitors general direction. "To what does the Cal-Sci Physics department owe this honor?"
"Other than the Math department's unflagging gratitude?" Charlie hopped over one of the office's stack of books, ducked under the planetary mobile, and snagged a chilled bottle. All in the same motion. " Or the fact that your office has a mini-fridge and mine does not?"
"Other than that."
"I missed you." Not only because his friend's automotive experience had been a major part of the Cal-Sci team's victory.
"I was there for the race. As were, I might add, several photographers from the local press. And may I say that you should expect to be the cover boy for the Scion Sentinel?" Larry smiled over his shoulder but kept on sweeping. "What ever inspired you to wear... " Words failed, but his gesture finished the sentence.
Charles Eppes was still in his racing suit- or rather racing lack-of-suit. Between the sweat stained 'Extreme Gravity Challenge" tee shirt and a pair of well-worn track shoes, the legal requirements were covered ( tightly ) by what once might have been a pair of bike shorts but was now a web of lycra connecting a network of tiny holes.
"Other than today's hundred-plus heat wave? Minimizing mass - and thus drag. I actually got the idea from the Gossamer Albatross experiments.
"I'm sure albatrii every where are duly thankful."
Charles pulled off his tee-shirt, using it to mop at his curls. Snipping bits from his pants may have reduced weight, but it had not improved the inside of the mathematically meticulous metal coffin - code number 5350 - that before today Charlie would have sworn Larry cared about as much as the rest of the team. Making his attitude now all the stranger.
He considered just leaving. Letting things work themselves out. But...? This wasn't Larry. Wasn't anything like Larry's usual cheerful distraction. The man was distracted - yes. But those lines in Larry's forehead were deeper then Charlie could remember - stark grooves that looked painful.
"Problem?" Not the best line, but a step up from 'do you want to talk' on the girlyness meter. He hoped.
"Busy. As you can see."
Right. Because the piles of books that had lived long and productive lives on Larry's office floor needed to migrate to bookshelves right now.
Larry was acting like that - yes. But... Charlie was pretty sure that Larry was acting. Or something. Something non-Larry-like in the extreme.
Larry was his friend. His best ( and sometimes in the darker times Charlie might have added his only ) friend. Larry had been the one person who had been there from Princeton on. In good times and... the very very not good times when Don dropped them into death and destruction a la law enforcement. Even during the dirty bomb case, when any physicist with a care for his own skin would have been consulting from somewhere on the far side of the San Bernadinos. So? Now? Whatever the cause, Charlie had to be here for him.
Charles sniffed his shirt. Pew! Not conducive to conversation. Unless you wanted to hear 'take a shower'.
Shrugging, he dropped it on a pile of last year's Physics Weekly and settled in to wait.
"Could you watch where you put that?"
Larry clutched the magazines to his chest, flinging the trespassing rag back at his visitor.
"Sorry." He spun the offending garment towards the trash can. It caught on the edge but... not on the floor. Charlie counted that as close enough. "I thought you'd be at the victory party. It was so much your design and..."
"I hated to miss the revel, but I got a call and... as you can see..." One hand indicated the rare square feet of now empty office floor.
"Someone called you and told you to clean your office? I heard the new administration was cracking down , but this seems..."
"Not from the Dean. Although I suspect she would like us to take over housekeeping duties. Anything to reduce expenses."
Larry had been going head-to-head with Administration over the new budget. Some of which might be the new... financial awareness ... that had landed on the professor in the wake of the Sin-Tel collapse. Not that Charlie had ever heard a word of complaint, but he was aware that the hours formerly spent on shared auto-restoration were now expended... elsewhere. On projects that did not include the math department. Not that Charlie was resentful but...
" I can't talk about details, but I am expecting a visitor who..." Larry paused, both hands full of crumpled papers. " I would prefer to present myself with a certain... gravitas. To which end a couch full of sleeping bag does not make a positive impression."
"Yes. I can see where... " Charlie picked at a cushion lump, fishing out a pair of plaid boxers.
"Bottom drawer." Larry directed - focused on relocating a desktop of clutter into a single drawer. With the expected results - given the laws of mass. "Damn. Full."
He spun the pages towards the trash can. The majority caught on Charlie's shirt and slid to the floor.
Larry buried his head in his hands. " It seems a professional office is a cosmological impossibility."
Charlie stood, collecting the underwear. "Perhaps you could convince them that you are experimenting...?"
"NOT a word to use in this context."
"Relax, will you?" Charlie tied a knot into the tee shirt neck, then used the body to bag up more desk litter. "Whoever this person is, they'll be here to see you. Not your office."
"It is all one. Rather like..."
"Socks?" Charlie held out a pair that had been tucked under the boxers.
"Thank you." Larry kicked off his shoes. "Which reminds me. Tie."
"Pluto." Where it had dangled since Larry had tossed it up the year before. An ex-fashion for an ex-planet.
Larry stood on the spare chair. It was just tall enough to let him pull down the tie.
"Shirt." Larry shed his usual Hawaiian model, dropping it into Charlie's makeshift trash bag. "I need a better shirt." He stopped rummaging though books, but only to start pawing though file boxes." Where did I put the white shirts?
Charlie moved a planet model in Styrofoam. "Here's one."
"Good - no - bad." Larry picked at the off-white spots spattered down the front. Remains of a pint of Vanilla Pecan. "Oh dear - these stains."
"Heat-transfer via ice-cream." Charlie smiled over the other man's shoulder. " One of your more inspired lectures." They had dressed up as classic Good Humor men to demonstrate the melting levels of various semisolids. Including, naturally, Ben and Jerry's.
"So it appeared at the time. Now it appears... oh dear. Charles. Look at the carpet!"
Several more of the white/clear blotches flattened the shag where the shirt had been.
Abandoning the shirt, Larry pointed at the couch. "Help me move this over so... "
The furniture would cover the marks. Understood. Charlie turned to help.
His heart was in the right place, as were his hands, but his feet landed on the slick nylon of the sleeping bag Larry had stuffed under the couch that morning. The sleeping bag went flying. Momentum insisted that Charlie follow. He landed on the couch. On his back.
The couch back hit Larry in the knees. On consideration of the fulcrum function, and also the laws of reaction, it was only logical that he also land on the couch.
On Charlie.
"Sorry. Let me..." Larry tried to lever himself up. Not easy, given the way he had landed. Almost any place he pressed would be... uncomfortable. Given that he would inevitably be pressing on Charlie. Slick, sweaty, mostly naked Charlie.
"Ouch."
"Sorry." Larry repeated. Apparently that was not a good place to press. Make that... evidently. "Although how one could get one's knee out from between some other one's thighs without pressing..."
"It's OK." Charlie grunted. From the weight. That was what was behind the rapid rise in heart rate. And other things. Larry on his chest was doing nothing for his lung expansion. Other expansions, however? Better to move quickly. Pain passed faster then embarrassment. "Just let me get a hand free and..." He crunched, wiggled, and slid. Closer. "Ooops!"
"Err...!"
ahem The sound came from the now-open door.
Both heads turned.
Framed in that door was a forty-young blonde in Air Force blue. She was looking spectacularly well tailored. She was also looking at Larry - wearing only jeans - and Charlie - wearing less than that.
She smiled. Politely, if not sincerely. "Is this a bad time?"
"Oh!.." Dr. Lawrence Fleinhardt B.Sc., M.S., Ph.D.,Ph.D., slid to the floor. "Hello, Colonel Carter."
Note: Cal-Sci is cannon - but it offends me. Well- at least it bugs me. California State University campuses are named after their locations, not their subject matter. Therefore I have decided that the campus is located in the micro-township of Scion, California. Thus the name of the local paper
(I have decided the name is a misspelling of Zion. Like so of these many little California ex- towns, this one was founded by utopians from the East who came to California to establish their own earthly paradise. The residents have long faded, but the school they began has been absorbed into the CSU system.)
There are any number of these 'ex' cities incorporated into the City of Los Angeles. I live in one which is ( going by the 'welcome' sign) four blocks long and five wide.