"Hey, buddy, how're ya doin'?" Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard asked as he sat beside Dr. Rodney McKay, the spare chair positioned right near the physicist's seat in his lab. The scientist had silently, privately labeled it 'Sheppard's chair'. Next, he was going to give it a name. After that, maybe he'd place a dark wig in fashionable disarray on top of the back of the seat - for when he got lonely - not that there was much chance of that happening these days.
It had only been an hour, barely an hour, since McKay had seen Sheppard at lunch. Of course, before that, the Air Force officer had stopped by to bring Atlantis' chief of science a mid-morning coffee. And it had been like this since Carson had released Rodney from observation after the whole 'ascension' episode.
Three days ago.
Rodney turned to face his friend. He smiled indulgently and started to talk, at least he'd opened his mouth to begin to tell John exactly how he was doing, but he bit his tongue, figuratively, needless to say, McKay not being much for self-inflicted pain. It was pretty obvious what this was about. It was about loss, and fear of loss. Some people may think that Rodney McKay, genius Canadian astrophysicist – the man with an ego that could stretch across two galaxies - was clueless when it came to emotions, be it feeling them, showing them or recognizing them.
But that would really mean, especially in this case, with Sheppard being so pathetically obvious, that Rodney was blind as a bat. And anybody who really thought that of Rodney McKay didn't know him very well at all, and he would be happy to be the person to tell them so. He would also proceed to tell said person that bats are not really blind, that rather, they use echolocation to bounce high frequency sound waves off of an object in order to maneuver in the dark, and also to find a tasty meal of, say, mosquito tartar.
Yes. Echolocation. Just like the whales.
Rodney looked around the room, finally spotting Radek in the far corner, staring numbly at a computer screen. McKay put his index finger up, pointed it at John and said, "Hold that thought."
John smiled, a big smile, a huge smile that was becoming more embarrassing as the days rolled along.
"You bet."
Rodney smiled and then shook his head as he jogged over to Radek Zelenka, and then leaned in close to converse with the Czech scientist. After a couple of moments, Zelenka leaned back in his chair and took a peek around Rodney to look at the colonel. The slap that McKay laid up the side of Radek's head reverberated in the room. Louder conversation between the two men could now be heard, though it wasn't loud enough to be understood by anyone but the speakers. If anybody else in the room had been paying attention they would have seen Sheppard turn his headset down and point his ear in the direction of the two scientists.
For all of the good it did him.
A 'Sorry' could be heard from McKay, followed by 'Thank you'. Rodney pressed his hand affectionately into Radek's shoulder: John Sheppard wasn't the only one feeling the lingering effects of what had transpired earlier in the week.
Rodney walked up to John. "Let's go."
"Where to?" Sheppard asked, walking in lockstep with his friend.
"Get some snacks. We're taking the rest of the day off."
"Cool."
The End.