Title: Lab Partners
Author: CptnSuz
Rating: K
Summary: Just imagine having to complete a college physics lab course with McKay as your lab partner. Yup, that's pretty much what this story is about.
Spoilerage: (minor) McKay & Mrs. Miller, (SG-1) 48 Hours & Redemption part 2 –if you squint
Beta Kudos To: Asdeed –for again reading whatever I send you!
Disclaimer: I make no claims of ownership on Stargate Atlantis or its characters. No infringements intended. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is purely coincidental and completely unintentional –but if there really is a blonde physicist named Karen McLean who had a lab partner like Rodney she had my deepest, most sincere condolences.
Karen McLean should probably have not have gotten her hopes up seeing 'Meredith McKay' listed as her lab partner. Physics was already trying its darnedest to lose its standing as her favorite subject and actually having a girl as a lab partner would have been incredibly against the odds.
Sure enough, the name 'Meredith McKay' taped to their lab station belonged to a pasty, chubby, bemulleted boy who stumbled into class five minutes late. Completely ignoring her he poked his tape name with a finger, then dropped his overstuffed backpack on the floor and plopped into the lab stool next to her. 'Fine, I can play haughty as well,' Karen thought, keeping her attention back on the TA stabbing at the board with chalk. 'I just hope his physics smarts are better than his fashion sense.'
'Oh for the love of God.' Now he was spinning himself around on the swiveling stool, which, of course, made a persistent squeaking that caused everyone to stare at them out of the corner of their eye. Karen buried her face in her arms crossed on the lab bench and peered out just enough to follow the lab instructions.
"Do you mind?" she snapped once they were set free to work on the week's experiment. The stool came an abrupt halt and he gaped at her like a fish. From another boy Karen might have felt complimented, she did try to coif her blond hair and have some style, but not this guy. "You're Meredith?" she asked, cautiously extending a hand.
"Rodney."
"It says 'Meredith' on the tape."
"I go by my middle name, which is Rodney," he declared, despite his voice cracking on his own name.
Karen extracted her hand from his overly enthusiastic handshake and wiped it against the bottom of her sweater to remove the sensation of touching his moist palm. "Are you even 18?"
"I'll be 16 in April!" Oh double eww, he was still a kid.
"Okay, Rodney. Let's say we get to work?"
It was frankly amazing that she hadn't torn out all her crimped golden locks in the first hour. Rodney systematically rotated between arguing and berating the diagrams in the lab handout, blatantly staring at her and fooling with the oscilloscope settings she had painstakingly set –by herself. "Look," she sighed, trying to delegate something to her worthless lab partner. "Could you just solder these wires together?"
Ten minutes later Karen's attention begrudgingly returned to Rodney, who had not yet accomplished the simple soldering job. "Ahem…"
"It. Won't. Melt."
Exasperated, she yanked the metal coil from his hand and gave it a quick bend. "That's because this is wire, not lead solder –idiot." She added for good measure. This was going to be the longest semester of lab ever. Karen had never been so happy for a physics class to be over when she turned in their, meaning her, final project.
Next term, Karen stalked into her lab class buried in her thermodynamics text.
"Hullo!"
Her froze in her tracks. Rodney grinned at her from the lab bench.
"I never really liked experimental stuff before –but you were such a terrific, and might I add beautiful, partner last semester that I decided to add a physics major to my already impressive program." 'Was he intending to sound that smug?' "And since our last names are so close, we can always be lab partners!"
Karen wanted to scream. She wanted to throw her books in the air and run from the room like a mad woman. Her nails dug semicircles into her thermo book. That would only confirm to her male classmates that women couldn't cut it in physics though –and small wonder if they all encountered a Rodney along the way.
AN: Sadly this was inspired by my own physics ineptitude -nothing makes you feel like a genius like trying to solder #10 wire. At least my lab partners (usually male, tsk tsk) aren't as bad as Rodney. All comments welcome (even if you are just deeply disturbed by the idea of a bemulleted McKay...)