With all of Rodney McKay's weight sending her crashing into the floor, forcing her back to make a very unhealthy CRUNCH! noise when it smushed her backpack beneath her (there went her freshly packed bag of crinkle cut potato chips), she had very little time to process what had just happened before his lips sloppily collided with hers and he started kissing the life out of her.
Her first thought was something along the lines of: "What the hell?"
Promptly followed by: "Wow, I forgot what a good kisser he is…"
And then came the ever popular oxygen-deprivation-through-kissing sentiment: "Yowza!"
Charlotte and Touchstone (Techie wasn't yet comfortable calling her by her first name; the character had a bit of growing to do before that particular honor was to be bestowed upon her) glanced at each other in confusion before they descended on Rodney, pulling at his shoulders and yanking him off their teammate.
Lennon just continued to lie on the gate room floor, eyes slightly glazed as she stared at the ceiling, doing her level best to struggle her way back through the haze of plot bunny induced lust that had just settled over her brain like so much London fog.
Rodney, meanwhile, came to his senses much before she did, and recoiled in horror, realizing what he'd just done.
"What the HELL is wrong with you, McKay?" Charlotte asked angrily, grabbing him by both shoulders and shaking him violently.
He couldn't answer. Partly because his lips were still busy processing all the sensory information that accompanied smooching his 'ship (and what a smooch!), and partly because his brain was just as lust addled as Lennon's was.
While Charlotte slapped Rodney around, Touchstone knelt next to Lennon and grabbed her hand, pulling her forcefully up off the floor. "Still with us, Fisk?"
Lennon blinked--it didn't escape Touchstone's notice that it was with one eyelid at a time--before a slightly cavewoman-esque growl came from her throat that sounded something like "Fine."
"You don't look fine," Charlotte said, releasing a still slightly muddled Rodney to turn and stare at her companion, "You look like you've been through an explosion."
"I always look this way!" Lennon defended, the last of her brain boggled side effects dissipating with the insult.
Rodney had turned six different shades of red during this exchange and Lennon wasn't faring much better as Elizabeth Weir made her way down the gate room steps to greet the Bunny Busters. "Welcome back."
In reply, Lennon grumbled, Touchstone quirked an eyebrow and Charlotte extended her hand to the expedition leader which was taken and shaken briefly.
"I take it they're already here then," Touchstone said without ceremony. "Doctor McKay's reaction wouldn't have been as...ahem 'vigorous' if they weren't."
"They? The bunnies, you mean?" Weir asked.
"No you dope, the Beatles, yes the bunnies," Lennon sniped, fully coming back to herself as she brushed her t-shirt off.
"Lenny," Charlotte said dangerously, her tone laced with a reprimand and a warning all in one. "Keep your tongue."
"I'm tryin'," Lennon defended, waving a hand at McKay, "But mister suck face over there nearly relieved me of it!"
At this, Rodney turned a most unbecoming shade of violet and Touchstone poked him in the chest to force him to take a breath.
He slapped her hand away viciously as he gasped and then started talking a mile a minute. "What took you so long? Where've you been? Who's she--" he pointed at Touchstone, "Why're the bunnies back? Why did I glomp you? What's going on? I thought you said this whole disaster was over with! We wiped out all the rabbits--now there's MORE! WHY?! I demand to know! NOW!"
"Rodney," Lennon said sweetly, turning to him to bat her eyes at him provocatively. "SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"That's odd," Charlotte said, watching at Lennon and Rodney continued to argue in voices so loud they could have conceivably caused permanent ear drum damage. "Kissing one minute, fighting the next..."
"Most irregular," Touchstone agreed, one eyebrow lifted slightly higher than the other.
"I don't think irregular even begins to cover it, Veruca,"
"Bunny effects?" Touchstone inquired. "I have heard that the Angora Strain can cause irrational behavior..."
"WE'RE NOT IRRATIONAL!" Both Lennon and McKay screeched in unison, turning on Touchstone angrily.
"He started it!" Lennon pointed accusingly, while Rodney echoed the sentiment with the same body language. "She did!"
"I did not, you did!" The turned to shout in each other's faces.
"No I didn't!"
"Yes you did!"
Weir was rubbing her forehead in despair and Charlotte had smacked a hand over her face. "Perhaps we should take this elsewhere, Doctor Weir?"
"I'd suggest a boxing ring," Touchstone said smartly. "They're sure to come to blows eventually...we could charge admission."
"Why don't we all adjourn to a conference room?" Weir asked, completely ignoring Touchstone's rare show of good humor.
---
Twenty minutes later found the three Bunny Busters, Doctors Weir and McKay along with Colonel Sheppard all in a conference room, going over what had happened since the first bunny had been spotted. McKay and Lennon weren't speaking to each other, their chairs turned slightly away from each other.
Things had gone from bad to worse at the conference table as Lennon and McKay's bickering went from old-married-couple to two-year-old-screaming-match and back again three times as the story of the bunny on planet MU0-84LL was told.
Lennon immediately declared that going to the planet to eradicate the source of the problem was, no doubt, their best course of action.
McKay, naturally, disagreed, stating that their first priority was the protection of the base.
And thusly began a whole new argument, leaving Charlotte to bash her head on the conference table in frustration.
"Tell him I don't care. We have a job to do and we're going to do it," Lennon stated, nose upturned and looking as haughty as she possibly could. "We're going to that planet."
"Tell her we can't just run off all willy-nilly without a plan--"
"He wasn't thinking in terms of plans when he glomped me in the gate room!"
"I didn't glomp her, I...I...I was just--"
"Under the effects of the Angora Strain," Touchstone said simply, glancing at her nails. "And in order to kill the strain in this universe, we've got to go to the source."
McKay tried to interrupt, but Touchstone stopped him. "And like it or not, that means going back to that planet. I'm sure," Touchstone turned to speak to Sheppard, "that your troops can keep things under control, now that they know what they're dealing with. A few stray bunnies here on base are nothing in comparison to the horde that've probably overtaken the planet."
"I hate to say it," Lennon began, eyebrows furrowing, "But she does have a point. We need to get to that planet and start clearing it out."
"As well as any other planets that the bunnies have managed to infiltrate," Charlotte added, pausing her head banging temporarily.
"But that could take...oh God, Charlotte, that could take years!" Lennon exclaimed, thumping her fist on the table. "We don't have that kind of time!"
"Especially with the way the bunny effects are intensifying," Touchstone put in, gesturing between Lennon and McKay. "It won't be long before those two are going at it like rabbits whether they want to or not."
McKay's eyes bugged out of his head and he sputtered. "That would never happen! We have more self control than that!"
"Oh really Mister Make-Out?" Lennon said scathingly with an air of snobbishness that Charlotte had never seen in her before.
"Oh that is IT!" He leapt up from his chair, pointing at Lennon angrily. "You've got some nerve!
Lennon mirrored his actions perfectly. "Don't even start! You practically attacked me and you have the gall to talk about self control?"
He took a step towards her, fists at his sides, fingers clenching and unclenching. "I certainly didn't hear you complaining!"
She followed suit. "YOU didn't give me access to enough oxygen for me to even attempt complaint!"
Another step forward. "Like you would've had time anyway. You were to busy shoving your tongue down my throat to try to complain!"
"Oh you are absolutely the most intolerable person I have ever met!"
"The feeling is mutual!"
"OH! I just...I can't stand you!" She exclaimed.
"DITTO!"
And without any warning whatsoever, they leapt at each other, desperately trying to tear each other's clothes off.
The other stunned occupants of the room took several milliseconds to process what was going on before all of them grabbed hold of one of the two lust driven people and pulled them away from each other.
"Okay, WHOA!" Charlotte pulled at Lennon some more until she had her about three feet away from McKay. The geek was still struggling to get at McKay, and vice versa.
"What the hell is going on?" Sheppard asked, pinning McKay's arms behind his back and trying to hold him in place.
"Angora Strain. Stage Two: Uncontrollable Sexual Tension." Touchstone got an elbow to the ribs as she subdued Lennon but she merely grunted slightly. "I didn't think it would happen this quickly."
"You mean to tell me you knew this would occur?" Weir asked.
"It's not been documented in every case, so I wasn't certain, but I suspected." Touchstone and Charlotte finally managed to cease Lennon's struggling. "I don't know what sped up the process, though. Usually it takes about three days for Stage Two to happen."
"What's stage three?" Sheppard inquired, holding on to Rodney, who had finally stopped fighting him, opting instead to breathe heavily and glare at Lennon.
Charlotte and Touchstone glanced at each other, worry in their eyes before speaking in unison. "Inseparability."
"Surely that can't have happened already, though...right?" Charlotte asked, swallowing thickly. "Stage Three takes even longer than Stage Two!"
"Whatever expeidiated the process between these two has clearly already skipped ahead a few paces...there's no telling how that would affect the speed between stages."
"Hold it, what's this inseperability thing about, anyways?" Sheppard regarded the two Bunny Busters, not liking the way they were looking between Lennon and McKay with such trepidation.
Charlotte grimaced. "It's like...an invisible tether between the two subjects. They can't be apart but for very short distances before The Madness starts to take over."
"And how many stages are there?"
"Three, that we know of," Touchstone answered. "Stage One is the desire to be together; Stage Two is the Uncontrollable Sexual Tension--and if the two are allowed enough skin on skin contact, it leads to Stage Three: The Inseperability."
"But...surely that can't have happened already," Lennon suddenly said, rather nervously. "I mean--"
"There's only one way to find out, now isn't there?" Charlotte nodded to Sheppard. "Take him outside...if he starts exhibiting any strange behavior--stranger than usual, that is--bring him right back." She reached into her pants pocket and withdrew a stopwatch, tossing it on the table. "And take note of the time. Give it five minutes...if nothing happens by then, we're still in the clear."
Still keeping a firm grip on the back of Rodney's shirt, Sheppard picked up the stopwatch and then dragged McKay outside into the corridor.
It took less than a minute for Lennon to start anxiously shifting from foot to foot, chewing her bottom lip until it was a bright shade of cherry red. Then her left eye started to twitch with surprising regularity--once every five point two seconds--and finally, when she hit the two minute mark, she...
Barked like a dog.
An answering howl out in the hallway, followed by Sheppard dragging McKay back inside was all the answer the other Bunny Busters needed.
"It's already started," Touchstone stated blandly. "They'll completely lose their minds if we don't keep them within five feet of each other. This puts quite a wrinkle in our plans to wipe out the bunny population on planet MU0-84LL."
Charlotte shook her head forlornly. "It looks like you're going to be coming with us, McKay."