NOTES: This was written for the mckayweir LJ community 2005 ficathon at murdocsangel's request.

Expansive

Radek was being expansive again. That was never good.

Rodney scowled at his computer screen and fought the urge to interrupt his colleague with every second that passed.

Usually, he would have said something - protested, corrected, disagreed, argued. Usually.

Sheppard had bet Rodney seven chocolate fudge ration bars that Zelenka wouldn't be able to get through his explanation without at least one interruption from Rodney.

Rodney ground his teeth.

Seven chocolate fudge ration bars were pure gold in Atlantis right now. With the expedition on rations due to the food shortage, people who'd held off from eating the more prized flavours of snacks were being rewarded with increased demand and bargaining power.

Exactly where Sheppard had got them from was a mystery that Rodney was going to squeeze out of Teyla or Ford. Assuming they knew, of course.

Assuming he got through Radek's presentation.

He knew why Radek was being expansive. It was a badly kept secret in the labs that Radek Zelenka had a slight thing for Elizabeth. Dr. Hodge said that if you replaced 'slight' with 'severe' and 'thing for' with 'crush on' then you had a better idea of the situation.

Rodney exhaled. Slowly. With extra slowness.

Beside him, Elizabeth shifted and gave him an odd glance, arching one brow in query. He tried to smile. It probably looked forced. She probably saw that. Actually, she was sure to have seen it. This was Elizabeth after all.

She gave him a probing look, then turned back to Radek when Rodney shrugged. Beyond her, Sheppard smirked.

And Rodney ground his teeth.

--

Okay, so there hadn't been that much that was wrong with his colleague's presentation. But there were little details that Radek could have elaborated on, things that weren't precisely correct, phrases that Rodney wouldn't have used. Okay, so they were small things, but attention to the details betokened an organised mind.

Or so Rodney told himself as he walked along the corridor.

Just before the corner, he heard voices and paused.

"...and I realise that it is much to take in all at once. So I thought that perhaps at dinner...?"

Rodney blinked and he nearly dropped his tablet in surprise. Was Zelenka asking Elizabeth on a date?

"Dinner will be fine, Radek. I'll probably get through my work around seven."

Radek? Since when has Elizabeth called Radek by his first name?

"Would you mind coming around to the lab? I can get your dinner from the mess hall and you would be able to see how it interfaces..."

"It would save time," she noted, thoughtfully. "Isn't there a rule about food in the labs?"

Radek made a noise of disgust. "McKay breaks it all the time - while haranguing others for bringing in snacks. There will be no-one around - it is the best time."

"Okay," there was a warm note to Elizabeth's voice. "I'll see you at seven, Dr. Zelenka."

"I look forward to it, Dr. Weir."

Rodney was horrified to realise that he could almost see Radek's pleased smile. And that he was standing in the corridor looking like an idiot as Elizabeth came around the corner and spotted him.

"Rodney?" She looked intently at him. "Is everything all right?"

"Oh, um, yes... I was just..." eavesdropping. He paused. "You know, I've just had a thought..." He trailed off, trying to think of what to say to fill in the gap.

Nothing came to him.

Elizabeth was looking at him expectantly, clearly waiting for him to expound on his thought. "Rodney?"

He snapped his fingers at her, pointing in the direction of the corridor past her. "Never mind," he said. "I'll just...head off this way."

And, feeling like forty-two kinds of an idiot, he followed in the direction from which Elizabeth had come - the direction Radek had gone - cursing himself silently.

--

"See?" Sheppard said brightly. "That wasn't so difficult, was it?"

For a man who'd just had to hand over seven ration bars, the Major was disgustingly pleased as he leaned on Rodney's desk.

Rodney locked the ration bars up in his drawer, tucking them up the back beneath the notepapers and the boxes of pens.

"Well, I'm never doing that again," Rodney told the other man, severely. "Not even for another seven ration bars."

"Just as well I don't have any more, then," said John, sticking his hands in his pockets with an air of nonchalance. "You did very well, Rodney. I'm proud of you."

"Ha-ha," he retorted.

Sheppard gave him the 'innocent' look that never boded well. "I am."

Rodney just glared and went back to his calculations while Sheppard stood and stretched. "You coming for lunch?"

"Is that a trick question?"

Rodney let himself be cheered up by lunch and pushing Sheppard's buttons, but the reminder of Radek's date with Elizabeth loomed when Elizabeth walked up and sat down at the table.

"Rodney, John."

"Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth."

Sheppard let her put her meal down and start eating before he leaned towards her. "So," he said, "I hear you have a hot date with Zelenka."

Rodney paused in his meal and glared at Sheppard. He didn't think that the news would have made it through the city so fast.

Her hands paused over the containers of food. "A what?"

"Hot date." Sheppard settled back in his chair and smirked at Rodney.

Elizabeth gave Sheppard a look of warning. "It's a clarification meeting," she said. "He's going to talk about some issues that he didn't bring up in the briefing."

"Uh-huh." Sheppard looked like he wasn't believing a word of it and Rodney fought the urge to stab his team-mate with his fork.

"Major."

"I'm just saying--"

"Sheppard, there's no need to get hysterical about this," Rodney snapped as he set down his knife. "Radek just wanted to explain a few extra things to Elizabeth."

Sheppard maintained his scepticism. "Over dinner?"

He shoved the beans around in the little bowl. "It's a practical use of time."

"Thank you, Rodney."

"Of course, his principle theory about the power conversion has some key flaws in it from the start. I mean it's madness to simply assume that the energy waste rate is the same for the Ancient components as it is for Earth components. All the evidence we have points to a more streamlined consumption of energy with less wastage. But Radek never remembers that when he's working out the computations. He gets all excited about the possibilities and doesn't notice the small things."

There was a pause at the table.

Elizabeth and Sheppard exchanged glances.

"Which is where you come in?" Sheppard asked.

"Which is where I point out that he's forgotten that the energy waste on Atlantis is a fraction of what we find on Earth, and that he has to either revoke all the equations he set up or risk having everything exploding in his face."

"Well," Sheppard said with a glance at Elizabeth, "I'm sure that Elizabeth will be happy to remind Zelenka that he's forgotten the power waste equations tonight. Before he tries to impress her with his..." He paused significantly. "...power converters."

Elizabeth glared at him, while Rodney's hand tightened around his fork.

--

"Rodney?" Elizabeth caught him as he headed back to his labs.

He turned immediately. "Elizabeth. What can I do for you?"

She eyed him, paused, and then went ahead. "Are there really people...gossiping about this stuff? I mean...what Major Sheppard said about my..." her mouth twisted, "...'hot date' with Radek?"

He was about to snap at her, ask whether she'd actually been listening to anything lately. The city was full of gossip - right, wrong, juicy, boring - it didn't matter. People interested people. And Elizabeth came under a fair share of gossip as the expedition leader.

And there was no way that Rodney was going to tell her what people were saying about her and Sheppard. It was probably why Sheppard found this new rumour about Elizabeth and Zelenka so amusing: for once, the gossip linked Elizabeth with someone else.

Then again, it probably was news for her.

Rodney overheard most of the city's gossip from the people in his lab. Who would share the gossip with Elizabeth? Particularly the gossip about her.

"People always find stupid things to talk about," he said. When that didn't change her expression, he added, "Kate says it's human nature."

"So people are talking?"

"Well, yes. But they do that all the time. I'm talking now."

Her exasperation was obvious - even to him - and she turned away.

Unreasoning panic filled Rodney. "Wait!"

She turned back. "What?"

"I..." Once again, he didn't know what to say. "People talk," he said, "but nobody believes it."

Something slightly bitter crossed her expression. "They don't have to. Talking can be enough."

And she turned on her heel and walked away.

--

He refused Teyla's coaxing to come to dinner, knowing Sheppard had sent her to fetch him simply because he figured Rodney was less likely to knock her back than Sheppard or Ford.

Sheppard was correct, although his premise was inherently flawed. Just because Rodney was less likely to knock back Teyla's invitation for dinner didn't mean he would not knock back her invitation.

Teyla went to dinner without Rodney.

And Rodney carefully focused his concentration on his equations and didn't think about what Radek might or might not be doing with Elizabeth.

Okay, so Elizabeth wasn't an innocent young girl, and Radek wasn't anyone's idea of a Romeo (and that thought was more than a little disturbing), but really!

When excited about something, the Czech tended to fly off the handle in typical European style, becoming volatile and edgy, and occasionally slipping into his native tongue - so much fun for the scientists working with him. The call of 'translation please' cropped up in Radek's lab more than a few times a week. In the early days, it had turned up more than a few times a day.

Miko brought him dinner - at least, he presumed it was Miko, because there wasn't anyone else likely to venture into his lab to leave a meal steaming on one of the side benches with all the things he liked. Dr. Hodge had pithy things to say about the way he treated the girl, but Rodney figured that the girl stayed around so he couldn't be that bad, could he?

Sheppard looked in at nine, but Rodney waved him away with a scowl.

"All right then, Grumpy," retorted the Major, without losing one iota of his jauntiness. "See you tomorrow!"

Rodney almost hoped not.

He kept working over his equations, scribbling down theories and ideas, scratching through the reports provided by his research assistants and scowling at their conclusions.

He was writing scathing comments on a report when a footstep at the door made him look up.

"Am I interrupting anything?" Elizabeth asked.

"Nothing more interesting than Brenkova's incorrect conclusions about the four items he studied last week. You know, there are days when I wonder if any of these people studied logical thinking at all."

She leaned against the desk, regarding him with something like a smile on her face. "I can believe that."

Rodney grimaced and went back to skimming Brenkova's report. The silence alerted him to the fact that she was hovering around his lab, and he usually hated people hovering. Oddly enough, Elizabeth didn't bother him. Radek claimed it was because she had a soothing air about her-- But he was determined not to think of Radek right now; a determination that was all the more difficult because it was the logical topic of conversation at this minute.

He wasn't one to bow down to the dictates of social interactions, but finally, he asked, "So, did the explanations help?"

Her blank look would have been funny under any other set of circumstances. "Explanations? Oh. Yes. They helped."

Rodney nodded as though he was actually listening.

"Of course," she added, "they probably would have helped more if you'd been there to add in the data that Radek wasn't able to tell me."

He paused. Stared. Met a pair of honest green eyes staring back at him. "Really?"

"Yes."

He'd never really noticed it before, but Elizabeth had a lovely smile. Of course, he knew she did, he'd just never known that she did.

He knew now. It made him feel a little tingly. Which was silly. But he did feel a bit tingly. Maybe the onset of anaphylactic shock? No, he hadn't had anything except a power bar to eat for...oh...nearly ten hours. Oh, wait, dinner. Which Miko had possibly brought him. And Miko knew his allergies; he'd made sure she did.

So, maybe he should go see Carson?

Well, maybe after Elizabeth left.

Unaware of his brief internal turmoil, Elizabeth continued.

"I'm too used to listening to your explanations," she said with a wry twist of her lips. "I kept having to go back and ask questions. You go into a lot more...detail than he does."

"Yes, well, a lot of it's unnecessary."

"But I'm used to it."

"Oh." He didn't know what to say to that. "So, do you understand the concepts now?"

She smiled, somewhat ruefully. "I think so."

"So you don't need me to explain them to you over breakfast?"

Rodney wasn't sure where that came from, and, judging by the startled look on her face, she certainly hadn't expected it. But the question stood, and after a moment she shook her head.

"No. I think I've had enough explanations for the day." Rodney felt oddly bereft. "However, if you're up tomorrow morning, I'd be happy to have breakfast with you without the technical explanations."

He stared at her, and there was a moment when she looked slightly embarrassed. Quickly, before she could change her mind, he agreed, "Uh, okay. Okay, yeah, that works. Say, eight-thirty?"

"It's a date," she said. Then paused, a slight flush touching her cheeks.

Tickled by both her use of the term and her slip of the tongue, Rodney waved a hand at her. The world was all right again. "Never mind, Elizabeth. We're both reasonable adults. We know what you mean. Go to bed."

Elizabeth gave him a pointed look. He wasn't sure if it was for the 'reasonable adults' comment or the dismissal. "You too, Rodney."

"In a little while," he promised.

But he hummed his way through the next two sets of reports before deciding that, yes, he could do with an early night for once. And, after all, it wasn't even midnight. Plenty of time to get some sleep and be fresh for his breakfast not-date with Elizabeth.

And as he turned off the lights in the lab, Rodney smugly reflected that next time, Radek could be as expansive as he liked.

- fin -

NOTES: The request was for Weir/Zelenka that turned Weir/McKay in the end, but I couldn't quite manage the shippy aspect, so we have Radek with a huuuuuge crush on Liz and Rodney all grumpy-and-jealous without actually being jealous.