"Will you quit that?!" Sheppard hissed out for the umpteenth time. McKay stood on the co-pilot's seat and twisted it left and right with the same monotonous intensity as a mouse running on a wheel.
"Stop what?" McKay bantered back, making the chair swivel quicker, banging it as far as it could go to the left before rebounding back and swinging as far as it could go to the right. The motion seemed to feed itself like a vortex stuck at a 45 degree partial spin.
Back and forth, back and forth.
"I'll tie your ass down if you don't knock it off," the colonel warned.
The puddle jumper skimmed over the vast blue ocean of Atlantis. The dark grey water morphed into deep blue and finally brilliant aquamarine as the small ship closed in on land. Trees began taking on distinctive individual shapes and small huts started to pop into view.
"No you won't," Rodney challenged, making the chair swivel even faster, enjoying both the new found energy that seemed to course through his body and the bottomless well that it seemed to spring from. He focused most of his energy into irritating Sheppard.
"Try me," Sheppard warned with a dangerous tone.
"I am!" Rodney called the Colonel's bluff, dropping to his knees using his hands on the control board to increase his tempo, speeding up his arc of near perpetual motion. Left to right, left to right, left to right.
It was blindly, monotonously, mind numbingly...enjoyable! Rodney grinned ear to ear with a baby-toothed smile.
Sheppard ground his teeth and swore he'd never have children. The left to right motion was driving him insane, like the pendulum that was slowly going to slice him in half.
Oh, he would get even with Rodney for this.
At least the chair didn't squeak. Sheppard closed his eyes, thankful for small favors—and then it started—the squeaking. Left, squeak, right, squeak, left, squeak, right, squeak. It seemed to grow in volume with each partial revolution.
The high pitched noise apparently enthralled McKay's little ears and the scientist worked furiously, swinging the co-pilot's chair left and right at almost inhuman speeds, working the squeak to near brain piercing intensity.
Sheppard bit his cheek and kept his eyes straight head. Maybe if he ignored McKay, the pint-sized terror would simply disappear.
Left-squeak-right-squeak continued.
Sheppard silently wondered if the co-pilot chair was an ejection seat.
He never thought flying could be such hell. He could hardly wait to land.
[{O}]
Sheppard and McKay stood just on the outskirts of the Athosian settlement. Rodney stared at the dirt, pebbles and animal droppings that dotted the well-worn walking lane that bisected through the center of the village. He was sure he'd get a parasite of some sort, pin worms or worse, maybe tetanus even!
He was doomed. Einstein never had to deal with things such as this. Why did Rodney McKay?
He watched wearily as Halling spotted them and waved, making his way toward the duo.
Sheppard waved back and smiled, hoping that Halling had truly understood the information that had been relayed by the few troops camped on the edge of the settlement practicing maneuvers. Major Lorne was leading the day's maneuvers and had promised his colonel that he would contact Halling and offer only enough information to get them what they needed until they knew for certain what they were dealing with.
"Like we're going to find any decent clothing here," McKay muttered. "Hell, Walmart or Target would be a step above this drudgery."
"Jeez, McKay, grow up," Sheppard snapped, and then paused as he heard what he'd just said. "Oh, right."
"Eat me," McKay snarled
"Maybe I'll let Halling," the colonel chuckled.
McKay considered kicking the other man but refrained, wiggling his bare toes in the dirt.
"Not funny," McKay muttered.
"I think it is," Sheppard retorted, a sly musical lilting of hope in his voice.
"You shouldn't think," Rodney snapped.
"I'm not the one three feet tall, now am I?" the colonel observed.
"Not my fault," Rodney hissed back as Halling drew closer.
"Never is," the colonel replied.
Halling furrowed his brow as he approached the duo, noticing the awkward, stilted behavior of Sheppard and the child.
He addressed the colonel, but kept a friendly smile on his face, offering warm welcome to the strange child.
"Jinto, I fear, does not have clothing his size." Halling dipped his head in direction of the child.
McKay folded his arms over his chest, managing to keep a tight hold of his pants. He glared at Halling, doing his best to make his presence larger than his tiny frame.
"However, Kimon's brother, Graedal might have some articles that will be useful." Halling turned and headed back into the settlement. "Follow me."
"You ready, Rodney?" Sheppard asked before taking a step forward.
"This sucks," Rodney pouted, reluctant to follow Halling. "I'm going to end up dressed like some medieval peasant."
"Well, at least you'll have the evil part right," Sheppard offered. He tried to control a heavy sigh and smiled reassuringly at Halling when the bigger man turned around, perplexed as to why the duo were not following him.
"Perhaps, the child would like to play with the other children in the forest?"
"Perhaps, the child," McKay gritted out sarcastically between clenched teeth, just loud enough for Sheppard to hear, "would like to shoot his ass full of lead."
Sheppard slipped his hand down to McKay's coat collar and gripped it tightly in warning. The colonel looked up and smiled at the Athosian. "He doesn't play well with others." Sheppard paused, "He has a tendency to make other kids cry."
Halling stared at the small bundle draped in Altantian clothing, sneering at him and looking like he was barely being held back by the colonel—he suddenly feared for his kneecaps. "Ahh, I can sense that," he admitted, studying the snarled features that glared back at him. He couldn't help but think he had seen the boy before. The child seemed hauntingly, almost disturbingly, familiar. Still, he would ponder the fact later-at the moment they had a favor to fulfill. "Come, then. This way." Halling turned once more and headed into the village.
"Come, then. This way," McKay snarled sarcastically mimicking Halling quietly.
"Knock it off, McKay," Sheppard whispered, tightening his grip and practically dragging the 'boy' with him.
"Will you let go!?" McKay mumbled pulling back and trying to twist free.
"You going to behave and follow?"
"Are you going to stop treating me like a child?"
"Are going to stop acting like one?" Sheppard shot back.
McKay folded his arms over his chest and nearly lost his drawers in doing so. He made a desperate lunge for them and saved himself the embarrassment of exposing his knees to the Athosians that really didn't seem to pay them any mind.
"Let's go, McKay," Sheppard spoke tiredly, not bothering to hide the sigh in his voice.
[{O}]
"Oh please." McKay dropped the shirt on the ground discarding it with a huff and up turned nose.
"Rodney," Sheppard warned in the tight, forced patience that he had heard parents use in numerous shopping stores and markets around the world. It didn't matter the language they spoke, or the exact words that were uttered, the body language and tone were the same. Parents were on edge and children were pushing the proverbial envelope. For the first time he found no humor in the situation and only empathy for the mother and father stuck with such impossible, bullheaded, stubborn, tantrum prone children.
He understood why grizzlies chased their young up trees and then ran like hell to get away from them.
"I've got delicate, sensitive skin! I can't wear that!" Rodney stomped his bare foot on the dirt floor and pointed a tiny finger, which became hidden under the material of the coat sleeve, at the discarded white shirt on the ground.
Sheppard looked to the old matriarch of the 'house' and pleaded with her silently to understand.
She smiled back and slowly shook her head as if chastising him for his failure in dealing with the petulant child. She had coarse, white hair and heavily lined, sun-wrinkled features, but her dark brown eyes were sharp and clear. "Perhaps you would like a stick?" She tilted her head to the far corner that held a small hollow reed.
Both Sheppard and McKay followed her direction and stared at the obvious tool of corporal discipline. Sheppard had never had an opinion about corporal punishment one way or another, but right now he was willing to dabble in a little experimentation of his own.
He stared down at McKay and quirked an interested eyebrow.
"You will not!" McKay stammered with a little less authority than he had used just moments earlier.
"You keep testing the waters," Sheppard explained, "then I might test a few of my own."
McKay glared back at the larger man with blazing blue eyes, hands on his hips. They stared at one another and finally Rodney dropped his arms. "Oh, fine!" He whipped the white shirt up off the dirt floor and shook it out. "I'll try it, but if I break out in a rash it's all your fault!" McKay shimmed out of his coat with a lot of help from Sheppard, while trying to keep his oversized pants up with one hand. "I'll probably get some sort of mange from this, chiggers, or something—going to be itching until all my skin peels off. I get no respect at all." McKay's voice became muffled as he and Sheppard slipped the white shirt with the V-neck tie string over his head, "I'm a genius, you know; I should be treated better than this—get away from me! I can do it!" McKay twisted away from Sheppard's helping hands and struggled to get the shirt over his super-sized head.
His diatribe wove on an on. The old woman sat on her stool and smiled patiently at Sheppard as the bigger man worked with fumbling hands, trying to assist the young rebellious child who continued to twist and turn in sedition to any perceived unnecessary and unwarranted help.
"I can do it myself!" McKay muttered, kicking out at Sheppard while simultaneously getting his head stuck in the armhole.
"I can see that," Sheppard placated, dropping his hands away and stepping back. He turned to the old woman. "We're going to need pants and something for his feet."
"And underthings as well?"
Sheppard paused and cocked his head to the side, unknowingly mimicking McKay's movement, whose head was still jammed tightly in the armhole of the shirt as he cocked it.
The small hut fell into silence.
"Someone put me out of my misery," McKay muttered.
Sheppard rubbed tiredly at his forehead and stared at Rodney, cursing Beckett and the others tucked safely away in Atlantis. "You and me both," the colonel muttered.
McKay's little white potbelly with its outy belly button was exposed to the cool air of the hut. Little ribs were highlighted under pale stretched skin and thin blue veins spidered across his abdomen and lower thorax. With each impatient breath, his little rib cage expanded and contracted, exposing the resilient yet painfully thin musculature of a young child.
"Um, underwear, yeah," Sheppard agreed nodding his head. He never thought about underwear. "Um, Rodney, are you a tighty-whitey kind of guy or a boxer type guy?"
"Oh please, just kill me now," McKay muttered dropping his shirt covered head onto his chest. The cuff of the white homespun sleeve flopped forward onto his covered nose.
"We'll take whatever you got." Sheppard forced a pleasant smile in the direction of the old lady.
"As long as it's clean," McKay shouted out, turning his head left and right trying to see through the thick hand woven material of the shirt.
"This really itches, you know," he whined once again, struggling to get his head out of the tight confines of the sleeve. He paused, his breath coming out in deeper, faster pants, building in frustration.
Sheppard watched with some curiosity as the tiny ribs and little pale veins became more pronounced. There wasn't a piece of hair on Mini-McKay's body.
"A little help here," McKay's perturbed voice demanded once again, stomping his foot in irritation.
"Oh right." Sheppard reached out and helped with the shirt.
[{O}]
Athosians looked up from their chores at the sudden scream of a single raised voice from within the hut. Some cringed at the high screech that pierced the afternoon. They shook their heads collectively when they heard the military leader of Atlantis once again try and reason with the young boy. The parents of the settlement knew there was no reasoning with a child of that age. It was mostly a game of give and take and choosing one's battles.
Colonel Sheppard might have been a mastermind at warfare but he was woefully outmaneuvered and out-vocalized by the terror that sulked and nipped at his heels with breath stealing volume.
"I draw the line at pink!" The childish shrill had an Athosian couple moving their quiet lunch a few huts down, foregoing their enjoyment of the sunny afternoon for shade and some barriers between themselves and the willful vocal child.
"Oh come on, McKay, they aren't pink." Sheppard held up the moccasins by their heels and peered at them critically. "They're more like a soft red."
"Soft red, my ass," Rodney spat out, sitting down in a huff with his arms folded obstinately over his white-shirted chest. The strings of the shirt flopped out of the tiny brown vest that matched the somewhat baggie pants that were tied around his bony hips.
He could already feel the prickly rash starting. He tilted a butt cheek up off the ground and itched at it irritably, making sure the Colonel saw his discomfort.
Sheppard refused to think about the underwear and promised Beckett and Ronon a thousand painful deaths for bestowing him with this chore. Apparently Athosians didn't have glow in the dark Buzz Lightyear tighty-whitey cotton jockey shorts, nor did they have blended cotton loose fitting boxers. Instead, they wore coarse 'woolen' type briefs that nearly brought tears to Sheppard's eyes when he saw them. He promised to allow Rodney to go commando if he deemed it necessary. Little McKay and, well, Littler McKay didn't and shouldn't be subjected to that type of coarse torture.
Hell, Sheppard could feel a rash coming on himself.
The moccasins were a different matter. Sheppard was putting his foot down, so to speak. They were running out of time.
"What type of inept idiot are you?" McKay spat back. "Even if they were red, I'm not wearing them!"
"Oh, yes you are," Sheppard ground out, pushing the light red (possibly pink if one looked directly at them) footwear into McKay's little chest. "They're the only ones your size!"
McKay pushed them back. "Oh no, I'm not."
"McKay," Sheppard sighed.
"Colonel," McKay answered back.
"Look it, just take them for now. When we get to Atlantis you can show 'em to Beckett and then lose them for all I care, but we can't go back without some type of shoe on your foot, or Weir and Beckett will have my ass."
"Like I care," was McKay's rebuttal.
"You will," Sheppard promised. The two stared at one another, neither side willing to give in.
"Listen," the colonel said finally, "we're wasting time—we've got to get back and see what Beckett and Biro found. Or do you want to spend all day here?"
McKay seemed to deflate a little at that and hunched further. With an air of resignation, he took the possibly red moccasins back and tried to wiggle one over his foot.
"The other foot, Rodney," Sheppard automatically corrected.
"I know that!" McKay spat back, taking the ill-fitting, faded, 'kind of' red moccasin off his right foot and wiggled it easily onto his left. It fit much better.
"I don't like Biro," McKay muttered.
Sheppard didn't say anything and watched somewhat disheartened as the normally sure-handed, nimble-fingered McKay fumbled and forced blunt fingers and pudgy hands to get equally unskilled feet into the footwear.
"She works with dead people," McKay muttered.
"I know," Sheppard agreed haphazardly, feeling his heart sink as he watched McKay struggle to get the second moccasin over his bare foot.
"I don't want her touching me," Rodney stammered, trying to clarify something that suddenly seemed difficult to get across. "She creeps me out. And you know I hate needles. I prefer Carson. he's...better." McKay's dirty foot finally popped into the moccasin. He paused and looked up at Sheppard with a hesitant, almost pleading look.
"I'll make sure it's Beckett from now on," Sheppard promised, thankful it was such an easy thing to do.
McKay nodded and then pushed himself to his feet. He stared down past his brown woven pants—which ended just at the top of his ankles—to his moccasins.
"Are you sure they're not pink?" McKay cocked his head left and right. "Men don't wear pink—no matter what TV says."
"They don't look pink from here," Sheppard answered. "I think they look like a really, really, light crimson." He headed for the door. "You ready?"
"Yeah, fine. Let's blow this popsicle stand and get back." McKay wiggled his toes in his new, light red moccasins and followed the Colonel out of the hut and into the late afternoon sun.
[{O}]
"I'm telling you, McKay, knock it off!"
Left, squeak, right, squeak, left, squeak right, squeak.
McKay stood on the co-pilot seat swiveling it with all the rabid tenacity of a pit bull shaking a meaty bone.
"Make me," McKay giggled, whipping the chair side to side, staring at his almost, not quite, but maybe if the lights were dimmer, reddish hued moccasins.
[{O}]
An hour and fifty minutes after leaving the infirmary, the duo returned. Sheppard walked into the infirmary with McKay tucked under his arm like a football.
"Let me down!" McKay's voice carried like a beeping smoke detector with low batteries.
"You going to behave?" Sheppard shot back with a hint of frustration.
"I'm always behaved," McKay retorted.
"Yeah, right," John dismissed, tightening his hold on the mini-scientist. "I'll let you go once I get closer to Dex."
"Oh, that's just not fair," McKay pouted from his position being touted like a pile of books under someone's arm. He kicked his legs ineffectually trying to get free (and, if lucky, hit the Colonel). Little pink moccasins flailed back and forth in a tireless attempt to connect with some part of the Colonel's anatomy.
"I'll be happy to watch him," Ronon's deep voice rumbled across the room.
"Sorry we're late," Sheppard offered as he let McKay swing down toward the floor feet first. The colonel kept a tight hold of Rodney's collarless white 'wool' shirt and vest.
"What, Carson not pay the electric bill?" Rodney snapped, staring at the darkened area of the infirmary. "Why's it so dark in here?"
"Teyla needs sleep and Doctor…"
Ronon was cut short by McKay's sudden, "Hey! What the Hell is Carson doing sleeping?" Rodney stared up at Sheppard. "Someone wake him up! He's got work to do."
McKay started making a beeline toward the sleeping doctor, but was brought up short by Sheppard pulling him back by his collar.
"Knock that off!" McKay stamped his foot in frustration. The moccasin made a muffled ineffectual thud, the soft pink color defying any attempts at expressing serious intimidation.
"We really need a day care," Sheppard mumbled.
He turned his attention from McKay. "What's going on, Ronon?" The colonel kept a tight hold of McKay as the astrophysicist continued to wiggle and twist in an attempt to break away from Sheppard's hold.
"He has a headache."
Sheppard rolled his eyes. It had to be more to it than that.
"Oh good, Colonel, you're back." Biro walked into the darkened room, pushing her oversized, heavy rimmed glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. Sheppard couldn't fathom why people as intelligent as Biro and Zelenka couldn't find a simple pair of eyewear that fit properly. She paused and stared at Rodney and his footwear. "Are those pink?" she asked incredulously.
"No!" rang out simultaneously from two different sources.
Biro backed up a step at the vehemence.
"They're faded red," Rodney stated, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping his foot, just daring someone to challenge him.
"A light crimson," Sheppard confirmed. He quickly redirected, "What's wrong with Beckett?"
"He has a headache," Biro answered, eying the two before her questioningly.
"Told you," Ronon stated.
"So?" Sheppard asked, curling his lip in an annoyed snarl at Ronon before giving his full attention to Biro.
"It was bad," the pathologist simplified.
"How bad?" Sheppard couldn't understand the non-military.
"She knocked his ass out and he didn't complain, bad," Dex clarified.
Sheppard stared at Biro. "Oh," and then down at Beckett who slept curled on his side, "Damn." He turned his attention back to the pathologist. "Did you find anything?"
"Oh, yes, quite a bit," and then Biro delved into the world of enzymes, function tests, and what varying levels meant. She rattled on about the aged related changes found rampant in Teyla and the age related peculiarities of someone the assumed age of a four to five year old. She described the different patterns seen, the fluctuations in the different panels that were run and the changes that had occurred in both Teyla and Rodney.
Somewhere during the monologue, McKay worked his way free of Sheppard.
Biro continued on, explaining the necessity of serial testing to try and gauge which direction their bodies were heading.
Sheppard had a pretty good idea already, and it wasn't good.
Physically, Teyla was truly geriatric and Rodney was truly a child.
"There's a shocker," the colonel muttered when Biro took a breath after essentially repeating what he'd just thought. In the meantime, Sheppard kept his eyes on McKay. He watched as Rodney reached up and repeatedly poked Beckett in the shoulder with his unwrinkled, non-calloused index finger. Sheppard sighed, "I guess we just can't add water and hope he grows?" He looked pointedly at Biro, trying to ignore McKay as the terror managed to climb up onto the gurney Carson slept on and resorted to rocking Beckett's head back and forth on the pillow.
Biro stopped speaking and stared at the Colonel and then over at McKay, "I honestly don't think that would work, Colonel," she noted, delicately dismissing the idea.
Sheppard offered his patent faux smile and quietly figured Biro really needed to interact with more of the living.
Biro continued with their findings. Beckett's blood tests remained unchanged from his last physical only a few weeks ago. Imaging showed no significant changes that would result in a severe headache. According to the tests run, he was normal. That garnered raised eyebrows to the validity of the tests.
But, Beckett and Biro had found a plausible explanation for what had happened. When Biro mentioned this, Sheppard suddenly lost the glazed look. McKay stopped trying to peel one of Beckett's eyelids open to peer into the doctor's eye. Dex stood a little straighter, crossing his arms over his chest.
Apparently, Teyla, McKay and Beckett combined created the necessary genetic ingredients for potential disaster.
Sheppard sighed. Figures.
"Guess we're ready to see Weir," he told her.
[{O}]
A/N: I've been patient. REVIEWS! Truly, do you know what I am capable of if I do not receive them? I have guns, and knives and pointed sticks.