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Dr Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, stomped across the terrace through the downpour, cursing Reynolds for the stolen half hour it had taken to deliver a finely honed rant about thieving other people's ideas when you have none of your own. He could still feel the heat in his reddened skin, his hazardously raised blood pressure. That man was going to take years off his life, he just knew it.
He was too hot in his coat but the wind was icy, biting his exposed skin and insinuating the rain around his strategically tilted umbrella. Why? Why was he here working with a bunch of utter morons when he could have been learning about how spaceships worked in a nice toasty desert if only he hadn't been so very… him. The very cutting edge of physics! He was too good for this… except in all the ways he wasn’t. Because really, he was right at home in this, this detritus of wash-ups, this conglomeration of morons.
Ugh. Stop it. Not morons. What was it the sensitivity training had said about put-down words and the places they came from? Something about wanting to elevate ourselves because, because…
A huge gust of wind channeling between the buildings buffeted Rodney and ripped his umbrella inside out, tearing the fabric from the frame in the process.
"Oh, that's just… fine."
He shoved the useless thing in the nearest trash can, pulling up his collar and making a run for it through the frigid downpour. He may have a very important conference to go to in three hours time, he may not have packed yet, but he was going to get his favourite coffee if it killed him.
Which, given the luck he had (and his phenomenal ability to bring down calamity on himself), it just might.
When he entered the usually relaxed coffee shop he was assailed with a cacophony of unreasonable and obnoxious busyness to add to the deeply unpleasant sensation of the cold rain running down his back, and dribbling further still towards places unmentionable.
Some Open Day group or other be-backpacked pestilence had fallen on the place and Rodney would have turned right around only the rain was bouncing off the terrace outside now and dammit, he needed his coffee on a day like this. The queue reached almost to the door, but Rodney was not going back out into that squall. He was doomed to wait amid the guffawing of high spirited youngsters, voices echoing off the hard surfaces and blending with the hiss of the machines.
“Oh, this is fantastic,” he said huffily, shaking the wet off himself as best he could by the entrance.
He may possibly have inadvertently cast the odd droplet in the direction of the guy in front of him, some tousle-haired slacker in a leather jacket and faded jeans. Said gentleman swiped at his neck and then turned around, offering Rodney a slightly raised eyebrow.
Oh wonderful, the guy was unreasonably hot and Rodney was a soggy puddle of breathless middle aged mediocrity who had got the man's attention by dripping violently at him. This day was just getting better and better. Some days he really wished he'd had his big gay epiphany back when he was still young and pretty.
Mr Unfeasibly Pretty’s face went on a little journey that ended with his eyes crinkling. Adorably.
“Bad day?” he asked, with a smile that might have been sympathetic, might have been mocking.
Rodney was so bad with people it was laughable, really.
“Only in the sense that my genius is underappreciated, I could have been doing cutting edge work for the government had I been willing to accept a punishment posting to Siberia, my students are…" not morons, not morons, …"trying the very last of my patience, my colleagues are knowledge pilferers who never had an original idea in their lives, and my teaching schedule for next semester is gulag-worthy, plus I have to get on a plane in three hours for a conference to give a possibly career-enhancing keynote and I hate flying, I hate networking, I hate small-talk, I hate hotels and I utterly loathe the whole conference orientation process where you kind of Brownian motion your way into some sort of routine and everyone pretends it was all planned.”
Oh gods, why had he said all that? Why was he making an idiot (or was that a bad word too?) of himself with a total stranger?
The line shuffled a foot or so. Rodney realised there was just one very harassed looking barista behind the counter. Her somewhat familiar hair was purple and there was steel behind her smile. A pasty, lanky guy wearing an orange beanie appeared from a back room and she took him to one side and spoke to him tensely. He ambled over to the coffee machine as if embodying the spirit of chill and Rodney immediately wanted to kill him.
“Antarctica,” Devilishly Handsome said, turning back to him.
“Say what now?”
“It’s where they wanted to send me. My punishment posting,” the guy said, sounding unreasonably cheerful about it. “Coincidence, huh?”
“Oh, um, yes, that’s…”
He regarded the guy, sizing him up.
“You’re not a scientist, though, which leaves…” he snapped his fingers at the man, whose eyes followed them as if he was in some kind of a trance. “Military!” he pronounced triumphantly.
The guy quickly turned away, and Rodney was bad with people, yes, but even he knew he’d misstepped. Maybe that was the end of that conversation. Well, that was a shame, but he'd still been 90% more successful at small talk than usual, so he counted it as some sort of vague win.
They shuffled forward and Rodney glanced to the baristas. Purple Hair was doing an admiral job, moving with quiet, desperate efficiency, while Orange Beanie got slower and less interested by the second. Rodney tried to take his mind off the need to will them into speeding up their processes by examining the back of Hot Military Guy. He wasn’t thickly built like you might expect of a grunt, so officer, probably… what did they do down there? He thought about that one visit to McMurdo when he was with the SGC. Pilot, maybe.
“Flyboy?” he mused, almost to himself.
The guy turned back, flashing him a grin, but there was something uncertain in it.
“You really are a genius.”
Again, Rodney had the feeling he was being teased, and his face heated.
“I actually am,” he said, lifting his chin.
The guy seemed amused by this. He leaned against the wooden barrier that separated the queuing area from the seating, his face kind of… twinkling. Meanwhile his body was screaming flexible, and instantly Rodney was having highly inappropriate thoughts. His face heated some more. The guy smirked. It was excruciating.
“Scientist?”
“Huh?”
“Are. You. A. Scientist?” the man said, nice and slow.
Oh, so much for Rodney being a genius.
“Astrophysicist.”
“Cool.”
Handsome Dude’s eye’s sparkled and Rodney noticed they were hazel, shot with gold, and they were holding his gaze a little longer than was strictly comfortable, although Rodney couldn’t fathom why. He distracted himself by checking on the baristas. Purple Hair was still flowing through the orders, her big blue eyes looking wide and a little wet. Orange Beanie was leaning against the counter failing to uni-task, let alone multi-task.
“Someone should stick some dynamite up that boy’s ass,” Rodney muttered.
“Nah,” hot military guy said. “Won’t work.”
“I’ll have you know I’m skilled in the art of terrifying people into doing their jobs,” Rodney protested. “Famous for it, in fact.”
“I’m sure you are,” he said, his face creeping gently towards a mock, “but it won’t work with him specifically, because he doesn’t care.”
“And you know that because…?”
“Because he’s wearing two hundred dollar shoes and a designer t-shirt that’s pretending to be off-the-peg, that’s why.”
Rodney scrutinised the clothing in question and immediately came to the conclusion that this was a soft science and outside his subject area, but the infuriatingly attractive flyboy might be right.
“This is outrageous!” a man from further up the queue bellowed. “You there! Can’t you see how long the queue is? Stop lounging around and start taking orders!”
The young man looked over at the red-faced customer with a supercilious sneer.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll call your manager!”
“She’s right there,” he said smugly.
“Alex, please,” the purple-haired woman said, tearing up.
“Bastard,” Rodney muttered, and his leather-clad companion nodded, his jaw muscle twitching.
“Oh right,” the red-faced asshole said, “can’t keep your own staff in line. What, is it your time of the month or something?”
The newest object of Rodney’s lust imperceptibly turned from liquid to solid right in front of his eyes, suddenly tense and alert.
Rodney felt his cheeks pinking, because the way this guy was acting hit a little close to home.
“Can you believe this guy?” he muttered.
Purple Hair looked at the man, her gaze titanium even through the tears.
“Sir, we are all doing the very best we are able. We’re unusually busy, we’re short staffed, and we’ll get to you as soon as we can.”
She didn’t stop juggling three different orders the whole time she spoke.
“Well let me show you how it’s done. Hey kid,” the guy said to useless Alex in his orange beanie. “Don’t make me come over there and show you the meaning of motivation.”
“You know what? Fuck this,” Alex said.
“And there he goes,” Rodney’s rakish-haired companion muttered, as Alex tore off his apron and left.
“Well, you called it,” Rodney conceded.
“This is your fault!” Mr Angry said to the poor beleaguered manager.
“No the fuck it isn’t,” Rodney surprised himself by saying. “And maybe you should take your aggression and your sexism and find somewhere else to be.”
Rodney did not do stuff like this. But maybe this guy's behaviour was hitting a little close to home and maybe the sensitivity training the university sent him on had poked at some uncomfortable home truths.
Only the asshole was now squaring up to Rodney, looming over him with menace. And oh dear, the guy was bigger up close, and yes, it turned out Rodney McKay, certified genius, really could get himself killed in a coffee shop.
“Who are you calling sexist?”
“Oh, I think everyone in this joint is calling you sexist,” his hot crush said amiably.
A chorus of affirmative murmurs rippled through the busy shop.
Well I guess that’s what the opposite of the bystander effect looks like.
Rodney wondered if it was simply a second person speaking up—was that really all it took?—or something about this guy in particular. He was certainly charming, and maybe a little used to being listened to.
The asshole turned a whole lot redder and stormed out of the shop. Rodney was gratified to see he didn't have an umbrella or hood and the rain was pounding down even harder now. The manager—Rodney was now close enough to see her name was Emma—showed little reaction other than to swipe at her eyes and carry on serving, maybe even a little more efficiently than before, her body imperceptibly more relaxed. The waiting customers were good humoured with her as they took their orders.
His leather-clad companion looked back at Rodney, his smile warm, and Rodney felt his cheeks pinking again. The guy stuck out his hand.
“John. Sheppard.”
Rodney took the offered hand, feeling a jolt of heat from the press of John’s fingers against his skin.
“Rodney. McKay. Doctor.”
“Pleased to meet ya, Rodney.”
John held Rodney’s gaze in a way that might possibly be interpreted as flirtatious.
Surely not.
“What can I get you gentlemen?”
“Oh, um, let me buy you a coffee?” Rodney said to John, bravely.
John’s smile widened and oh god he looked so pretty it did weird things to Rodney’s insides.
“These are on the house,” Emma said quietly.
“Absolutely not,” Rodney said. “tempting as it is, I don't hand out cookies to queer allies, so I'd rather not be rewarded for basic decency. So take my cash, please.”
Oh god, oh god. What was his mouth even doing today? He'd outed himself to possibly the hottest guy he'd met in a long time. Which, well, was brave of him really, and maybe what all this personal growth bullshit he'd been doing was about.
He looked across at John, who was giving him a look that was definitely not dissenting or disapproving and could almost have been… fond? So risking outing himself hadn’t been a disaster, then.
"Make mine a caramel latte,” John said. “Oh and add in some whipped cream and syrup," he added with a wink.
Rodney opened his mouth.
“Special blend, double strength,” Emma said for him with a smile.
“Oh. Yes, thank you. And I’ll have two of those brownies and two cheese scones since it’s getting close to lunchtime. That is if you…?” he looked at John.
“Sounds good to me,” John said, beaming at him brightly enough it made Rodney feel a little lightheaded.
Emma just gave them both a grin and completed the order.
The only seats were bar stools at a counter in the window, and a large group of youngsters were standing nearby, pushing them into a corner where they were tragically forced to sit close enough for their thighs to press together.
They looked out at the rain, which was getting kind of biblical, sipping their coffees and munching their (delicious!) scones in a surprisingly comfortable silence, while the warmth of John’s body seeped into Rodney and made itself at home.
“So, you came out of the military, and came to study?” Rodney guessed eventually, as he mournfully looked at his empty plate.
Please don’t let him be an English major, Jeannie would be unbearable.
“PhD, aeronautical engineering.”
“Oh that’s, um,” Rodney just stopped himself from saying hot. “That’s a great department. I hope it’s, um, better, than, um, what went before.”
John went quiet, fiddling with a sugar sachet someone had left on the counter, running the contents from one end to the other and back again.
“I fucked up,” he said at last. “Badly. Hence, Antarctica or discharge. I’m a screw-up."
Something inside Rodney unclenched with those words.
"Thank god you're not as perfect as you look," he said before he could think better of it.
John very nearly spat out a mouthful of coffee, and there was that eye-crinkle, the look of amusement.
"So who’s your supervisor?” Rodney barrelled on before John could dwell on his inept flirting.
They talked shop amiably, until Rodney noticed that John was leaning into him more and more. Or maybe he was leaning into John. Some gravitational pull was at work, for sure, and for all Rodney couldn’t understand how someone like this could possibly be interested in someone like him, the data was indisputable.
And Rodney didn’t want to break the spell. Because this might just be a one-time deal, an overture for a hookup, and that would be delicious, John would be delicious, even a tiny moment of him, but Rodney was greedy, and wanted so much more than that, and besides which he was getting on a plane in three—oh god no two—hours time and for all he knew, by the time he got home five days hence, whatever this was would have evaporated like sea mist in sunshine.
He sighed heavily, looking at his watch. He had too many things to do and couldn’t linger in this pleasant little fantasy any longer.
John grabbed his hand.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Because I have to go, and I’m getting on a plane in two hours, and this has been… this has been nice.”
John’s face fell.
“You’re not coming back?”
“Of course I’m coming back. I’ll be back by Sunday. But—”
“Then let me take you on a date. Dinner and a movie.”
“I’m deathly allergic to citrus!” Rodney blurted.
“Noted. That wasn’t a no.”
John’s eyes twinkled at him.
“Of course it’s not a no.”
He realised John still had a hold of his hand. His heart was genuinely fluttering and Rodney was certain he wasn’t the sort of person to suffer from heart-fluttering but here he was.
“Let’s swap numbers then,” John said, pulling out a battered Nokia and relaying his to Rodney.
Rodney immediately missed the warmth of John’s hand. He was feeling a little giddy.
Then John looked at his watch.
“Oh crap, I’m so late for a meeting with my supervisor,” he said, standing hastily. “I’ll see you Sunday, yeah?”
And then he was walking away, and Rodney was feeling strangely bereft. He watched John cross to the door, wave to Emma, pull his jacket up over his head, grab the door handle, and hesitate.
Shrugging his coat back onto his shoulders he crossed back hurriedly to Rodney, stopped to press a brief, shy kiss on Rodney’s stunned lips, and then he was gone, rushing out into the rain-drenched Monday, the deluge lashing the jacket he held above his head as he dashed across the terrace.
When he reached the cover of the library entrance across the way, he turned back and looked towards where Rodney was still sitting, open mouthed.
The rain blurred Rodney’s view of him, but his broad grin was impossible to miss. Rodney found, quite unexpectedly, his own face beaming back at John.