A/N: Hi, everyone! Ok: this story is one stubborn son of a gun. I started writing it LAST YEAR for Christmas 07, but it didn't want to get writ in time, so I figured it could wait a year and I'd publish it for this Christmas...then I got 30 pages' worth of essays to write for finals this year. So it's not quite done yet. But I'm FINISHED with my finals, and I'm hoping that publishing this half of the story will encourage me to write the back half. Expect one or two more chapters; perhaps I'll be done in a week, perhaps two. If I'm not done by then, kick me and hit me until I finish, because I'm bad and evil and I WILL have free time to finish, really, I'm just lazy. Hope you enjoy!
Full title is "Hiding from the mistletoe: Rodney McKay's Guide on How to Deck the Halls without Dying," but that wouldn't fit... :)
HIDING FROM THE MISTLETOE: Rodney McKay's Guide on How to Deck the Halls Without Dying.
Christmas doesn't like Rodney McKay.
Some people think it's the other way around; they call me 'Scrooge' and tell me, "How can you not like presents? Who doesn't like presents?" Okay—just for the record, I like presents. I love presents, in fact. I also love the smell of pine trees dying in people's living rooms, and I love Christmas carols, as long as they aren't sung by Britney Spears or whatever fifteen-year-old pop star is popular this year, and most of all, I love the food: turkey, and mashed potatoes, and stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and best of all, dessert. Cakes, pies, puddings, strudels, cookies. Fruitcake, even. I love Christmas, in much the same way I suspect I'd love the taste of lemons if they didn't make it impossible for me to breathe—a pure love, a chaste love, involving not getting too near for fear I'd get very badly hurt. I learned my lessons about chaste love in eighth grade, when Betty Harper's big brother beat me up: you don't let on you're in love, you don't even get near the thing, unless you want a broken nose. And I like my nose just as it is, thank you. It's too near my brain, and injuring that would be a huge blow to the human race.
This year, though, I was going to try. Maybe, I thought, I've gotten over my jinx. Anyway, jinxes don't really exist. Do they?
It was way back in mid-October when Sheppard approached me to ask if I wanted to be on the list of 'elves.' I don't know who thought the name up—it's pretty stupid, but being an 'elf' (and I shuddered when I typed that, let me tell you) looked like it might be fun. Mostly it involved tree-decorating and organizing of carolers, that sort of thing. So I signed up, and we got to work right away. First order of business was finding an appropriate Christmas tree on the mainland, since our fake one had burned down last year in a freak accident involving a geologist's underpants, some tomatoes, and a halogen lamp. (I won't go into details; it was pretty messy.) So we packed up, Sheppard and me and a botanist and some marine, and flew over to the mainland to go Christmas tree shopping. On the mainland, we discovered three things. One, there was a perfect fake-tree substitute in the form of a real tree, which the botanist told us was a little like a balsam fir, whatever that means. The Christmas-tree-size ones could be placed in strategic places—the mess hall, for instance, or the gate room. We figured about five would do it. The marine-guy said we could take the branches from some unused tree and 'deck the halls,' so to speak. Sheppard liked that idea—he's a kid about this whole thing, I swear—and jotted it down in his little notebook.
The second thing we discovered was that I was allergic to the trees. By about ten minutes into our little Christmas tree farm, I couldn't breathe out my nose anymore, and had not only used up all my tissues but Sheppard's as well, and was making inroads on the botanist's. I think Sheppard was getting kind of fed up with my manly complaints, and was going to suggest heading back anyway, when we discovered the third thing: lions.
No, really. They had manes, and they were yellow-ish. They were bigger than earth-lions, though. And their big, pointy teeth stuck out of their mouths, like the saber-tooth tiger's did at the local museum where I grew up.
After another incident I won't go into details about, we were heading back towards Atlantis. Suffice it to say, however, that it involved handguns and girlish screaming (NOT ME) and running very fast, and Sheppard said something about bringing hand grenades when we came back. That was fine with me.
So, a month and a half later and armed with hand grenades, we took our little axes and chopped down six trees—five, as we'd planned, to put in common areas, and one really big one that we then massacred, chopping all its arms off for the good of the hallways of Atlantis. My antihistamines were going to be my best friends for the next two weeks, I could tell.
We got the trees back to Atlantis—we needed four trips to do it. I suggested tying the trees to the roof of the puddlejumper, like you see on SUVs in the US. It would have cut our trips in half at least, but Sheppard said that wasn't a good idea. Something about aerodynamics. He was right—I did the calculations, and even made a little mock-up to see how it would work, and we probably would have been very dead and underwater and so on if we'd done it in real life. But it took an entire day to haul those trees back to Atlantis, and then get them to the common rooms, which is just more time than the science department can really spare me for. I mentioned this fact to Sheppard, and suggested that maybe, in future years, we should invent some sort of Christmas-tree-carrying ship, so as to maximize our Christmas tree capacity and still be efficient.
"Quit your whining," Sheppard said. He was holding one end of a tree, and I was holding the other end. The pointy end. "You signed up for this. And anyway, I thought you were going to like Christmas this year!"
"I told you," I sniffed. "I like Christmas all the time. It's just that—"
"Christmas doesn't like you, yeah, yeah. I think it's actually impossible for a holiday to hate somebody, McKay. Although if a holiday had to choose somebody, it would be you."
"Ha, ha, very funny—ouch!"
Sheppard sighed. "What now?"
"A needle pricked me—it's sticking in my nail. I think." Holding one end of the tree up, I couldn't look, but it felt like a really big splinter. Needle splinter.
"Well, we're almost there. Once we put the tree down, you can go see Carson about your needle."
"Stop teasing me," I said petulantly, and sneezed.
It wasn't actually sticking out of the nail. It had sort of sidled up next to it and taken a big bite, the result of which: I had a big green splinter. Last time I went to see Carson about a splinter, he laughed at me. So this time I was going to take it out myself. After about twenty minutes, with a sterile knife, a bright light and a lot of cursing, I had gotten most of it out. And then the sanitation chamber broke again, and I had to go deal with other things.
A week later, however, Sheppard had more plans for us: the garland needed hanging. I tried to plead off this time, citing work in the lab that was desperately urgent, but Sheppard said that the garland was urgent, too, and what happened to cheerful Christmas-loving McKay?
"I said I'd help," I grumbled. "I didn't say I'd be cheerful."
My job was to hold the branches onto railings while others tied it there. I think there was talk of bows, too, but that had nothing to do with me—I refused to have anything with bows. We got through three hallways and four staircases when, of course, disaster struck again. I was leaning precariously over the railing, halfway down a flight of
stairs, when Sheppard leaned down and tickled my nose with some of that noxious pine. I sneezed hard, which HURT, by the way, and fell over the railing.
That hurt more. At least, it did when I woke up a few seconds after impact, to see Sheppard hovering over me, looking worried.
"I blame you," I croaked, and closed my eyes.
"Private Matthews is calling the infirmary," he said. "No, don't go to sleep. I don't think you're supposed to do that with a concussion."
"How do you know I have a concussion, Dr. Sheppard?" I griped. "Maybe it was the fact that I was sent sailing over a balcony? And whose fault is that, exactly, can you remind me? I seem to have forgotten. Must be the massive head injury." I frowned at him. "I really do need my brain, you know. It's my biggest asset. You should stop treating it so badly."
Sheppard had a little smile on my face. "You can't be doing that bad, if you're complaining so much. I bet you could even walk to the infirmary, all by yourself. If you feel up to it, that is."
"Well, okay," I griped. "But I still blame you." I grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled myself to my feet, swaying slightly. I was a little dizzy, but wasn't sure I wanted to mention that just yet…
Sheppard sighed, patted my back, and called to Private Matthews, "We're heading to the infirmary on our own—hopefully Dr. McClumsy here won't get into any more accidents."
"Ha, ha, very funny," I muttered. "It's your fault, you know. You told me to sign up for the Christmas committee. God, I can't believe I'm on a committee. I feel like a soccer mom. Or one of those women who goes to the weekly PTA meetings at her child's school, and always makes cookies for it. Oh, god, we won't have to make cookies for this Christmas thing, will we? Because I'm a terrible cook. Really awful. I made brownies, once, when I was fifteen, and they turned out grey—it was kind of a disappointment, considering I can deal perfectly well with chemicals. It'd be very difficult for me to burn myself with acid, say, because I'm really good at handling acid, but give me a hot pan and there you go, burns all over—"
"McKay!" Sheppard interrupted me. "We're here."
"Oh," I said, as Beckett came over to us.
"I heard you hit your head," the doctor said.
"The floor hit my head," I sniffed, "as a direct result of this man."
Carson led me to a bed, I sat down, and he started poking at my head. "You hit it here, in the front?"
"Yes."
"Skin isn't broken," he said, "although there'll be a nice bump. Bruise, too, probably. You should be more careful, Rodney."
"Wh—" I sputtered. "I should be more careful? What about this doofus here?" I pointed at said doofus, but Sheppard just grinned.
"Anyway," Beckett interrupted us, "you'll need a scan, although I doubt it's serious. Once you're cleared, you can go—but what's this, Rodney?"
I'd been feeling the bump with my fingers, one of which had been recently de-splintered and had a band-aid on it. Carson grabbed my hand. "What happened to your finger?"
"Oh, you know, just a little splinter," I said breezily. "I got it out, though—ow! Carson, that hurts!"
"And it shouldn't, if you really did get it all out," he said, pulling the band-aid off and twisting my finger around. "It's infected. You'll need to wash it carefully, soak it a few times a day, if possible, but it'll probably be fine. Show it to me again in a few days if it isn't better. What kind of splinter was it, anyway?"
"Pine needle," I grumbled.
Sheppard started to laugh. "Jeez, McKay, you really are jinxed, aren't you?"
I refrained from saying I told you so.
I resolved, after that, to stay as far away from Christmas as I possibly could. It wasn't easy with Sheppard around, though. Mid-December, he decided we needed to get the carolers on their merry way. So he came to my lab one day. "We need a piano," he told me. "For practice."
I was carefully examining a potentially dangerous Ancient device, having stolen a box of rubber gloves from the infirmary for just such an occasion as this. "We don't have a piano," I told Sheppard absently, "and there's not enough time to ship one over on the Daedalus."
"I know," Sheppard said, "but there's got to be something like a piano. Look, I don't expect you to go caroling yourself—I wouldn't inflict you on the other singers. But you're the best we have at going through the database to find things. Can't you just…find one?"
I huffed. "I'll try," I said reluctantly, "but I don't promise anything. The Ancients' music was probably very different from our own." Sheppard went away, satisfied.
Five minutes later, the dangerous Ancient device zapped me. I think it knew I was talking about Christmas.
So I went searching for Ancient instruments. First I found something that was kind of like a harp, but I couldn't play the harp, and I doubted anybody else could, either. Anybody who knows how to play the harp is going to be back on Earth playing the harp, not risking their fingers in another galaxy. Then I found an accordion, but after listening to some synthesized Ancient accordion music, I vowed that I would never tell anybody about this instrument, ever, in case somebody decided to learn how to play it. My ears just couldn't take it.
And then I found an organ. You know, a pipe organ? You find them in churches sometimes. It's my second favorite instrument, after the violin. It's not called the king of instruments for nothing, you know. I needed to check it out first, though, to make sure it wasn't broken or impossible to play, or something. So I set aside a Saturday afternoon to go explore the organ.
It was pretty much all the way on the other side of the city, in an area that had been deemed safe but not gone over by a science team yet—so no wonder nobody had found the organ. Marines have no culture, it seems. I meant to go alone, but Teyla found me while I was gearing up, and insisted on accompanying me. "It is not safe to go about the city alone," she told me, "as Colonel Sheppard has often told you." I think she just wanted my company, though.
Getting to that area was as simple as pressing a button in the transporter—I love those things, by the way. Instantaneous transportation! We should get them installed on Earth, so we wouldn't have to take airplanes anymore. Anyway, we headed straight for the organ room. It took about ten minutes to walk there, during which—amazingly—there were no hindrances.
We walked into the room, and—okay. The most impressed I have ever been was when I first walked into Atlantis, and, you know, the lights turned on by themselves, and then when it rose from the ocean, all that sunlight came in—it was really beautiful, although I don't usually go in for such subjective classifications as 'beautiful.' I liked the organ room even better. It was circular, and the pipes lined the walls. Light came in from a glass dome above us, made of stained glass like the windows in the control room. The keyboards—there were four—were in the center of the room. I went over to them, brushing the keys with my fingers. "Definitely not ivory," I murmured, hearing Teyla come up behind me.
"What is ivory?"
"Ever hear of an elephant?" I asked absently, still gazing at the keyboards—manuals, they're called, I think. I'm not exactly an expert, after all. About organs, that is—obviously, I'm an expert at many other things.
"They are…large animals with strange noses?" Teyla asked.
"Yeah. And tusks. They've got these big…" I gestured. "Anyway, some piano keys on Earth were coated with ivory—the stuff their tusks are made of."
"Do they kill the animals to make these keys?"
"Well—yeah…but they don't do it anymore. It's just old pianos now."
"These keys are not made of this ivory, though," Teyla said.
"No," I replied. This was glass, all different colors, and I just looked at it for a minute. If music looked like something, I thought, it would be colors—just colors. Like this.
"No accidental keys," I said, and before Teyla could ask, I continued, "The black keys on a keyboard—oh, wait, you've never seen a keyboard, have you? Well, I'll give you a music theory lesson later, okay? Suffice it to say, nobody's going to be playing this for caroling—maybe finding a starting note from it. Now, let me see…" I sat on the-also glassy—piano bench-type thing, and played with the keys for a few minutes, smiling in satisfaction as the sound came out clearly and easily. At least I didn't have to repair this Ancient machine! I pulled out my life signs detector, which, I'd determined ages ago, chimed on an A flat. After another minute of muttering and pressing of random notes on the keyboards, I found a C natural. "And that will have to do," I said aloud. Pulling a roll of masking tape out of my pocket, I tore a piece off and stuck it on that key, and then stood up. "Okay," I said, "we're done."
Teyla smiled. "That is a beautiful-sounding instrument, Rodney," she said. "Perhaps you should play it for the Christmas party."
I shook my head. "I can't even play piano anymore," I said. "That's an organ, and an alien organ. Ancient music theory is probably completely different from Earth's…I wouldn't have any idea where to begin."
"Well, perhaps you will learn to play it someday," she said, and waved her hand over the door thingy to let us out.
Nothing happened.
Teyla frowned, puzzled, and tried again. Still nothing.
I moaned and closed my eyes. "Always me," I cried.
....
DUN DUN DUN!!!! To be continued... after actual Christmas! But, of course, before fake-Atlantis-Christmas, because leaving Rodney stuck for a whole WEEK without food is just cruel. Poor thing.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
-Emilie