"Then why aren't you laughing?"

"Because I said it 'looks' funny, not that it was funny. Do you speak English?" Rodney McKay asked as he pulled apart more of the tangled lights.

"Oh, now THAT…that's funny. Ha-ha-HA-ha-ha," John Sheppard replied, the fake laugh provided in a deliberate and unabashedly sardonic manner.

"Shut up," McKay tossed back to his Christmas decorating partner in crime. "Answer me this: why am I stuck doing this part?"

"Because you said you were good at lights," John answered. "Oh wait. You told me to shut up."

"Sh…never mind. And again, I ask: Sprechen Sie English? I said I was good at stringing the lights, not untangling them. If I have to keep doing this much longer I'm going to want to hurt someone, and you're the only one around."

"I'm shaking in my boots."

"And another thing – why are we the only two here working on this?"

"I don't know. That seems wrong," Sheppard agreed.

"Didn't we have a committee of twelve? How does twelve become two?" Rodney asked as he pulled and shook the lights, and pulled and shook, and pulled and shook some more.

"New math?" John asked.

"Hm."

"How's your foot?"

"It's fine," Rodney answered, short and clipped and not sounding like it was all that fine. "What are you doing?"

"Rodney, it's an artificial tree. I have no idea what I'm doing. And don't they make these trees now with the lights already strung?"

"Apparently," McKay started to answer, followed by, "Grrrr. Aaaach! Shit!" and then, "It's not in the budget this year to get a new tree."

"When will it be in the budget?" John asked as he heaved the top section up onto the center of the metal pole.

"Never? I think, sad as it is to say, that someone brought this with them as their personal item."

"They did not."

"Did, too."

"Now that's kind of disturbing. One of mine?"

"What do you think?" Rodney stopped fussing with the lights. "You know, you don't need to be a colonel in the Air Force to know that you need to fluff those branches in order to make it look like it didn't just get out of bed."

"I guess it helps to be an astrophysicist?" Sheppard asked wryly.

"That always helps," McKay replied smugly.

"But it doesn't help much with untangling lights, from the looks of it."

"You'd think it would, but it doesn't." Rodney plugged the strand into the power cord. "Strand's out." He tossed the entire strand behind him. The clicks and clacks of the tiny lights hitting the hard surface foretold the likelihood of those lights ever working again.

"It could just be a fuse," John suggested helpfully.

"Is that so? Care to take a guess at how many I tried that trick on so far?"

"Not really." The large pile of discarded lights lying behind McKay told that story.

Rodney looked around again. "Where is everybody?"

"I don't know, Rodney," the colonel answered. Sheppard was pretty sure they'd been over this territory once or twice or five times already.

Rodney tapped his headset. "Elizabeth?"

"Yes, Rodney."

"Where is everyone? Where are you?"

"The Daedalus has been called back early. I'm with Colonel Caldwell. I'm going to be a while."

"Do you know where everyone else is? It's been two hours."

"I'm sorry, Rodney. Can you check with Colonel Sheppard? I'll be down as soon as I can. Weir out."

"Great."

"What'd she say?"

"She said I should check with you."

John smiled. "Cool," he said as he stepped down from the step-ladder. "Now that's something I can help with. I'm going to go round up some elves."

"No, no, no. You're not leaving me here alone."

"Just for a while. We're not gonna make any progress with just the two of us."

McKay looked at the disheveled tree. "You got that right."

"I'll be back in a bit," Sheppard said as he jogged away. Eagerly.

"Bring back a snack!" Rodney yelled to his friend's back. "And coffee!"

"You bet!"

McKay looked up at the tree. "Crap," he said as he extricated his foot from the chair it had been resting on, stood up carefully and limped toward the tall fake greenery. "If you want something done right," he mumbled under his breath, "you have to do it yourself."

About a half an hour later, the bottom six feet of the tree actually had the shape of a real tree rather than, well, what Sheppard had left. Where was he anyway? McKay had accomplished more in thirty minutes, alone, than he had in two hours with the colonel. Hm. His foot hurt like hell, but he definitely didn't want to go back to the lights. Teyla could work on the lights, she was a patient person. He looked around the area. The only other thing to work on was fixing the top three feet of the tree, to try to make it look like it hadn't been slept on by Ronon Dex.

Rodney limped to the ladder, positioned it up close, and started to step up.

"Ow," he said. "Oh, that hurts." But he continued up two more steps. "Once I'm up, it'll be fine," he said encouragingly. He went about bending and fluffing the branches on the top third of the tree. He figured it would take two re-positionings of the ladder to get the tree ready, finally, for the lights, which were nowhere near ready as they sat in a large, tangled heap. Several large, tangled heaps. All of his efforts in the previous two hours had resulted in only four good strands. Four strands of lights was going look pretty lame on a nine foot tree.

McKay took one step down. "Ow." Then another. "Double ow." One more. "Where is everyone?" he asked the empty lounge. The room was just down the hall from the cafeteria, a central place of relaxation and a common gathering place for end of the day chats, a place to have a cup of coffee and just chill. Sometimes they showed movies there.

And it was large enough to host the nine foot Christmas tree.

Rodney made it up the step-ladder one final time, primping and positioning the branches just so. He couldn't imagine why Sheppard was having such a hard time with the concept. Wait a second. Son-of-a-bitch. He didn't want to do it, so he'd feigned ignorance.

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard was a dead man.

The scientist stood tall, his head level with the nine foot tippy-top of the fake pine.

"Not a soul in sight," he said as he started to make his way down.

"That's because you're lookin' in the wrong direction."

"Well, it's about time," McKay said as he tried to turn to look in the direction of Sheppard's familiar drawl. That was harder than he'd planned, so he just headed back down.

"Rodney, what do you think you're doin'?" Dr. Carson Beckett asked worriedly.

"Uh-ah!" Rodney shouted as the second to last step tripped him up, sending him tumbling, his arms flapping helplessly in an effort to gain his balance, but it was a sad waste of effort: he fell from his precarious perch – all of about two feet from the very hard floor.

"Rodney!" John shouted as he ran interference in an effort to buffer the inevitable crash.

"Shit!" McKay yelled. "Ow! Damn it!" Rodney's bad foot banged hard, really hard, on the bottom rung. The rest of him fell into Sheppard, the physicist's sharp elbow landing smack into John's face.

"Ow!" they whined together.

"Good god," Beckett said. "Infirmary," he called into his radio, "bring a wheelchair to the lounge. And an ice pack."

"The ice pack is for me, I hope," John said, his words coming out a little muffled as he talked through the pain, the impending swelling, and the blood.

"Yes, colonel. Help me get Rodney seated." Sheppard frowned at Carson's seeming disinterest in his injury, until he got a good look at his friend.

John kneeled next to McKay, rubbing his jaw gingerly. "Hey Rocky, what's up?"

McKay had his eyes shut tight, his forehead quickly growing shiny with sweat. He opened his eyes and grinned at the Rocky reference.

"You mean like Rocky Balboa or Rocky and Bullwinkle?"

Sheppard cocked his head and squinted. He asked, "Why? It's not obvious?"

Rodney snorted slightly. "Sometimes you do have a hint of Bullwinkle about you."

"Rodney, I'm going to unwrap your foot. I thought I told you to keep the brace on at all times?"

"Gee, thanks McKay."

"Hey, everybody likes Bullwinkle. You could be compared to worse," Rodney noted.

"Rodney?" Carson asked, trying to grab his patient's attention.

"I have been," John replied with a grin, and then a grimace. Smiling seemed to aggravate his injury.

"This I can imagine," McKay shot back easily, not quite hiding the pain in his voice.

"Boys!" Dr. Carson Beckett admonished. They both quieted down. "Rodney, the brace?"

"Carson, don't think I don't regret not having it."

"I don't understand why you refuse to follow my instructions," Beckett complained as he took the last of the wrap and gauze from McKay's injured foot. "Bloody hell," the chief medical officer said. "Your foot is swollen, and the wound is beet red." He took a piece of the gauze that hadn't been touching the injury and dabbed Rodney's foot with it. "And weeping. How long have you been on this foot?"

"Um," McKay started as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. "About forty minutes." Beckett looked at him in disbelief. "Or so."

"Rodney, I thought you were going to sit and work on the lights," John said as he stood back up. That was no kind of position to stay in for long, unless you were on the receiving end of a Roger Clemens practice pitch.

"I'm going to put a temporary wrap on this until we get you to the infirmary," Beckett said, knowing that all he really was doing right now was practicing his third wheel act with the conversation going on currently. Two injured men, and the CMO was still not in control of the situation.

His friends could be very frustrating to be around.

"Did you bring my coffee?" McKay asked, followed by, "Wow. Did I do that?" Sheppard's face was growing fat from the hit he'd taken.

"No. And yesh," John said as he tried to talk around the swelling. "Shorry. I wasz goin' to leave Carshon here and go get the shnacks and coffee."

The wheelchair and a med kit arrived. Carson cleaned Rodney's sore foot and put an ointment on it to sooth the burn and additional irritation McKay had caused by standing for so long and then falling on it. 'Stupid sod', Carson thought, though his affection for his friend made it easy to refrain from saying it out loud. Not like Rodney would have heard him anyway.

"Just as well. I don't feel so good," the scientist said. He whimpered a little while Beckett finished the temporary wrap.

"I'm not surprised," Carson muttered under his breath. Out loud he said, "All right. Let's get you lads to the infirmary. Rodney, I'm afraid you'll be spending the night."

McKay's head shot up. "Really?" he asked hopefully, followed by a more reserved and definitely well-acted, 'disappointed', "really?"

"Hey!" John complained. "Wha' abou' me?"

Rodney answered for Carson. "You, too. We got the tree started. It's ready to be decorated. By my estimate, the almost three hours we put into it…we've done our duty. Ow!" he yelped. He slapped Beckett on the arm. "You're supposed to try to heal the foot, you witch doctor."

"I'd 'e careful i' I 'as you," John said, his face growing more distorted by the second, or so it seemed.

"Sorry," Rodney said, squinting and making a face at how painful Sheppard's face looked. "You, too, Carson." Beckett looked at his sitting patient. The man was insufferable sometimes, almost all times as a patient, but surprisingly more in tune to others feelings lately. Well, to his friends' feelings. His impatience with new people, the military, and less effective colleagues was still legendary. His most recent brush with death, and almost losing the foot, seemed to have had a lingering, positive impact in his interactions with those closest to him. To have cheated death so many times, and to have so many lessons shown to him over the years, yet the man remained one of the most frustrating people he'd ever known. But he seemed to realize, just a little after he'd said something offensive to his friends, these days, that he needed to make amends in a timely manner because, and this was something they had all learned, you never really knew when your time would be up.

"My foot hurts really bad," Rodney said worriedly.

"An' ma' facse," John added morosely.

"You're face looks pretty bad," McKay said, still wincing, both from his own pain and the colonel's. "I'm really, really sorry."

"'s okay," John said. He turned to Carson. "Can 'e go?"

Carson grimaced, too, finally getting a good look at John again after working on Rodney.

"You two are quite a pair. It looks like you'll both be spending Christmas Eve with me," he noted as the orderly helped him get Rodney settled in the wheelchair. "Shall we head out, lads?"

John walked and Rodney rolled past the undecorated tree.

"Ow Ch'is'mas chee, Ow Ch'is'mas chee," John sang miserably as he walked by, the 'O Tannenbaum' tune barely recognizable.

Atlantis' chief medical officer shook his head. Even in pain, and barely able to speak, Sheppard still tried to sing. Rodney would have joined him, Carson was sure of it, if he wasn't already using his vocal chords for soft moans and an occasional whimper. 'This was going to be a fun night', he thought as he walked between his two friends back to his sanctuary. Carson Beckett's Christmas wish? Fast-working and long-lasting sedatives for his friends, and it wouldn't be too long before he'd be helping himself to a shot…no, make that a Ronon Dex sized two knuckles-worth, of that single malt his dear mother had sent. He'd planned to open it for the holidays anyhow.

The End.