"One of the nurses told me what you said."
The resting Air Force man jumped at the sudden and very loud statement. Um, huh. John Sheppard had a choice. In fact, he liked to think he had three possible options in making that choice: 1) deny that he'd said what he'd said, 2) pretend he hadn't heard what Rodney McKay had just said, an option that he currently favored, and, 3) admit that what the scientist had heard was true and take his punishment, like a man.
Actually, he really didn't have any choice at all. Things had been going so well between the two of them. Neither lying nor avoiding seemed prudent choices, and they would be extremely risky in light of his current most fervent hope, which was to get his friendship with McKay back on track, whole and permanent.
"Really?" Sheppard asked.
"What?" Rodney returned. The physicist's hearing was taking way longer to get back to normal than his own. Even though Carson said everything would be fine with their recovery, John was still worried about McKay's slower progress. McKay, for his part had, surprisingly, decided to take Carson at his word.
"I said really!" John yelled back.
"Oh! So you don't deny it?" Rodney questioned, still talking louder than he needed.
"That depends on what she said," Sheppard replied under his breath, looking around the infirmary for the possible culprit.
"What? And don't bother, she's not here right now."
"Who?" the colonel asked. At least that little piece of information helped him to exclude the two nurses present from his suspects list.
"Don't be coy." Rodney waited for a response. "So, you don't deny it?"
"What did she say I said?" John asked. The shouting was giving him a headache. No wonder Carson's presence had been scarce these last hours.
"Unbelievable," Rodney began, saying it louder than he'd probably planned. "Stuff about Canadian football, and Celine Dion! And Radek and me." He said the last part softly, as though not hearing himself say it would let him deny that he'd heard that it had been said.
"I was joking."
"What?"
Damn it. "I was joking!" John yelled. "I was just testing to see if you could hear! I was just trying to get a rise out of you!"
"Oh!"
"So, are we okay?"
"You know, she sells out four thousand seats every night in Las Vegas. You're telling me that four thousand people a night – for over four years – that these people basically have no taste?"
John held in the laugh. He should win an award for that. It was hard to imagine that with the criticism of Canadian football, and saying that Zelenka was a better scientist, that the point McKay chose to challenge first was the critique of Celine Dion.
Rodney McKay always found new ways to surprise.
"McKay! These people? They're in Vegas! For vacation! They could have chosen a Caribbean island, or Paris, or the Greek Isles, Machu Picchu, the Pyramids, the Alps, golfing at St. Andrews, Hawaii!"
"Banff," Rodney suggested wistfully, his eyes glazed over just a little.
"Yeah! But they chose Las Vegas!"
Rodney looked at John, carefully considering what the colonel had been saying. Within moments, the genius seemed to have come to his own conclusion.
"Ah. Well. Good point." And just like that, the discussion was over, and McKay went happily back to his notebook and his whale research.
The End.