Title: Cranky
Rating : Teen
Spoilers: None
Disclaimers: Don't own them, wish I did. :-)
A/N: Thanks to Kate98 for the wonderful beta.
They had been walking for over three hours when Major Sheppard finally snapped. Three hours of listening to McKay. "Major, we are not all military men, some of us exercise our brains more than our bodies and cannot keep up," and "Hypoglycemic here, need to eat."
Honestly, Ford thought Sheppard should have snapped sooner, a lesser man would have. Ford was generally able to tune out McKay because he wasn't in charge, he didn't have to listen. Major Sheppard was a good commander, he listened to all of McKay's complaints because he didn't want to be not listening the time the complaint was actually real.
Generally, Ford got the impression that the Major actually enjoyed the snarky banter between himself and Dr. McKay, and Ford thought that sometimes the Major even baited McKay on purpose. Whether the Major wanted everyone to know or not, he was a smart man and a smart man would not make a comment to McKay about his attitude or personal habits without expecting one of McKay's scathing comebacks.
The reverse was true was well, Ford noticed that McKay would complain and snark more when Sheppard was around, as if to see how Sheppard responded. Almost like a child testing how far they could push their parent before the parent snapped. Ford had been on missions with McKay where Sheppard wasn't there and McKay had definitely complained less.
Most of the time when McKay got into one of these long winded rants Major Sheppard would either (a) make a few appeasing noises and do something to mollify Dr. McKay or (b) make a snarky comment back at McKay, while he kept doing whatever it was McKay was snarking about.
Today was different though. Today the Major seemed tenser then usual, a little less tolerant, and he definitely did not want to play with McKay, as evidenced by letting three "flyboy" and "military" cracks go by without response. One would think someone of McKay's intelligence would have picked up on this and shut up for once, but no, McKay just kept pushing.
It was after 20 minutes straight of "Major, you will have no one to blame but yourself if you have to carry my body back to the gate after I pass out from low blood sugar," when Major Sheppard stopped abruptly and turned around and headed towards McKay. The best word Ford could think of to describe the look on Major Sheppard's face was menacing, but that didn't really encompass all of the emotions he saw there.
Ford didn't know what to expect but he most defiantly did not expect what happened. Then again, Major Sheppard had done a lot of unexpected things since taking military command of Atlantis. However, watching Major Sheppard pull a power bar out of his jacket, unwrap it, pin Dr. McKay against the nearest tree, and shove the power bar into McKay's mouth, without saying a single word certainly took the cake. He had to admit, it was a rather effective way of silencing the Doctor while fixing the problem. From the silent sputtering, and gasping McKay was doing, Ford could tell he hadn't expected this reaction either. At the same time Ford could almost see the incident being indexed in the "Major Sheppard Reaction" file that Ford was sure was in McKay's brain somewhere.
Major Sheppard walked back to the front of the group without saying a word and started hiking towards the gate. Dr. McKay finally got back his speaking ability and started up again "Oh good job, trying to choke me now, you weren't satisfied with starving and dehydrating me to death? . . . ."
Major Sheppard just kept walking, with a almost peaceful look on his face. As with McKay, Ford could almost see the Major mentally index the incident in the "Rodney McKay" file in his head for future reference.
Now how was he going to describe this on his Mission report?
