One Time....Week 22: Shake!

[lilyfarfalla.livejournal.com]

Title: One time John overheard Rodney singing
Author: lilyfarfalla
Rating/Pairing: G/Gen (for this part, John/Rodney eventually...)
Warnings: None.
Summary: A catchy little ditty.
Notes: For esteefee, hope your head is better my dear! Also, this was meant to be the first in a kind of 5 times fic, but me falling asleep early (with the lights on, face-unwashed, blergh) and waking up late, I ran out of time! The rest is in my head, so hopefully I’ll write it out eventually/soon.


The first time it happened, the team was making some early overtures to the Tolabians, who had established a network of communication points across their planet that had proven to be undetectable by Wraith ships.

Teyla was leading some preliminary discussions about the state of the weather, when suddenly the room started shaking. John had a moment when he wondered whether these buildings were the kind you needed to leave in an earthquake, but the tremors ended as suddenly as they had begun. Not, however, before Rodney had a chance to crawl under the table and clutch onto John’s leg.

The Tolabian ambassadors were smiling and calling out for a measure of how many comets that one had been, when Rodney popped his head back up and said, “Wait, you can measure the magnitude of the quakes? What instruments do you use? Is a comet a unit of measurement or just a colloquial saying?” and he was off, following the science-y ambassador (John refused to learn the names of new people until they hadn’t shot at him for at least 24 hours) out of the room.

John blinked a little, but Teyla just gave him a small smile and picked up the conversation where it left off. The rest of negotiations went suspiciously well, though Rodney later told them that small earth tremors were considered a sign of good fortune to the Tolabians.

“Utter nonsense, of course, though I suppose it IS somewhat good fortune that it was a small quake and not a hugely destructive one. We’ll have to bring out Anderson’s team to do some geological testing. He’s still whining about missing the Volcano planet, not that that was the trip of a lifetime or anything.”

“Mmm,” said John, remembering the sweet thrill of riding a volcano with a spaceship.

Rodney rolled his eyes, and started quizzing Ronon on whether any of the planets he’d been to had earthquakes. The conversation petered out by the time they got closer to the gate, and Rodney was doing the thing where he managed to walk and poke at his tablet at the same time. John stepped a little closer to Rodney to be ready to catch him when his boot inevitably hit a rock and he went sprawling, which made it easier to hear that Rodney was softly singing a little tune under his breath.

“Shake shake shake,” he sang, barely audible. “Shake shake shake. Do do dooo do. Do do dooo do.”

John struggled to contain a laugh. Rodney McKay, ladies and gentlemen, he thought as they stepped through the wormhole.