stories from the supermarket
Jan. 11th, 2007 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonsheenI have decided that were I to write the Generic Fantasy Epic, that all of my characters in it will be named after types of cheese. It will involve the brave hero Edam, who must face off against the evil Parmesan Empire, alongside his elegant and noble-born girlfriend Brie de Melun and under the guidance of his mentor, the wise but fated to die in the first book Gouda. Along the way he will meet the quirky fan-favorites, the Jack siblings: Pepper and Colby, who probably own transportation of some sort. There will also be some random badass named Feta, just because. Our Brave Hero will also continually thwart the reoccurring enemy of Bleu D'Auvergne who is hellbent on capturing him before he can gain the aid of the technologically advanced but isolated Cheddar republic.
And it would totally outsell Eragon.
And it would totally outsell Eragon.
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Date: 2007-01-12 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-01-12 06:28 am (UTC)It is VERY convincing...who knew cheese could make for such compelling characters...
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Date: 2007-01-12 11:57 am (UTC)...now I want feta. :)
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Date: 2007-01-12 12:37 pm (UTC)btw, I would so read this.
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Date: 2007-01-14 05:05 am (UTC)PLEASE DO THIS
RIGHT AFTER YOU WRITE THAT OTHER THING I FREAKED OUT ABOUT
AND THE UNWACKY FFXII AU
this is pretty crappy, but it's only a draft!
Date: 2007-01-25 06:29 am (UTC)And now, McKay had stopped talking.
Now, it wasn't that John liked listening to the arrogant jackass babble on about every single thought that passed his mind. It could be annoying as hell, but it kept McKay focused, allowed his mind to work while his mouth spat out panic and nonsense and doubts to fill the space.
(John couldn't help but remember a line in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy whenever he thought of McKay, a fact that he would never share for many reasons, the first being the look of smug but stunned wonder that would obviously cross Rodney's face the moment he realized John really was just a big dork underneath it all. Still, sometimes, when Rodney was babbling, he couldn't help but remember Ford Prefect's hypothesis that humans need to keep talking so that their brains don't start working.)
The point was, the babbling was constant and steady and John had become... well, if not fond of it, used to it. It was comfortable. It was one of the first things on the list of What to Expect From Dr. Rodney McKay. It came right behind, "He will never miss a chance to tell you he's the smartest guy in the
roomgalaxy," but before, "He will mention his allergies within ten minutes of meeting you." (That had been a fun introduction. "I really have that gene, huh?" "Are you a moron? Yes, yes, of course you do, why do you think that--Is that a muffin? Can I have a piece? It doesn't have citrus in it, does it?") Rodney talked, and it was really the silence that was the first clue that something was wrong.That's all to say that it had been twenty minutes since they had packed Gaul and Abrams' bodies into the back of the 'jumper and started back towards Atlantis. Twenty minutes into the flight and he already couldn't stand the silence. He was worried, which was stupid, because this was McKay, and he had good reason to be upset, but it would all pass the way it always passed with McKay. He'd get a little more sober, a little more determined, but he wouldn't miss a moment of his work and he'd still save the day.
Which meant, as much as he hated to admit it, that most of this concern was about those feelings he had. Stupid, stomach-fluttering feelings that made him feel like a goddamn girl in junior high with a crush on the cute boy across the room.
It was stupid, of course, for a number of reasons. For one, McKay's interest in women was very clear. If he heard Samantha Carter's name one more time, he was probably going to stab himself with a pen, or, more likely, stab McKay instead. (He had seen Sam Carter, briefly, and while she was alright, she wasn't anything spectacular to look at.) Number two, Rodney was a member of his team. Mixing team dynamics and sex was never a good idea. Four was the whole military thing, although if they were stuck on Atlantis for the long run, that was less of a problem, and finally, McKay was fucking annoying.
Re: this is pretty crappy, but it's only a draft!
Date: 2007-01-25 06:30 am (UTC)And, fuck, there it was again. He need to get this whole feelings thing under control. It was getting damn annoying.
"So," he said conversationally, leaning back and watching Rodney try and fly the 'jumper in a straight line, "You seem to be getting the hang on it. Sort of."
McKay gave him a withering look. Clearly even he could tell that he still hadn't improved much.
"Well, compared to Beckett, at least," John amended, rubbing the side of his neck and glancing out the window again.
"Thanks so much for that stunning display of confidence, Major," McKay muttered. "I'm so glad you put my flying on par with that of the man who nearly blew you up in Antarctica."
"Well... he's gotten better."
Rodney made a "hmph" sound and returned his attention to the controls, but he seemed to have relaxed, marginally. The loss of tension in his shoulders eased John's a little as well. He rolled his neck and shifted in the co-pilot's seat. He wasn't used to sitting shotgun. At least for most of the flight over, he and Rodney had switched off, and when he wasn't watching Rodney fly (and, of course, smugly offering advice), he could talk to Gaul and Abrams. Now he was really starting to go a little stir-crazy.
He shifted again and cracked his knuckles. Ruffled his hair. Started to tap his fingers.
"Oh, for the love of--" McKay reached over and smacked John's drumming fingers. "If you think you can fidget your way out of your promise to let me fly the 'jumper, you are... well, probably right." He looked away from the window long enough to glare.
"I'm just bored, that's all," John insisted. "I'm not used to being the passenger."
"How very tragic," Rodney snapped.
"Hey! It's not my fault you're so busy concentrating on flying us straight that your damn mouth is actually shut for once."
They both knew that wasn't why McKay was concentrating, and he softened a little once John gave him the easy excuse.
"Fine," Rodney said, but the sting was gone. There was a short, awkward pause. John wondered if Rodney had ever had this problem before in his life, a total lack of something to prattle on about. "Did you name it?" he finally said.
"What?" John asked. He squinted at McKay. "What? Name what?"
"The wraith, you idiot!" An eye roll. "You ask for a conversation and you can't even follow it..."
"What are you talking about?"
"You have a habit of... naming them," Rodney said, gesturing vaguely, because even when he was flying he clearly couldn't resist talking with his hands.
"Oh," John said. "I was a little too busy running for my life to have a conversation with him."
"Huh," McKay said. More silence. Just as John was going to start fidgeting again, he added, "The dreadlocks and the neat little skirt of pelts... I was thinking maybe he was some sort of flowerchild wraith. You know, out here, on his own, communing with nature." He gave John a sidelong look. "They type I'm sure you hung out with in college. I doubt you were above a little recreational drug use. Probably explains what happened to all your brain cells. And your hair."
John reached for his hair self-consciously. "Still not above a little recreational drug use," he admitted off of McKay's smirk.
"I'm shocked, Major. Truly."
John allowed himself a tiny, self-indulgent smile. "Flower child, huh? Well, he did threaten to use my dead hands to fly the 'jumper. It does seem like a hippie Wraith would learn to use every part of the human to help conserve his environment."
McKay stiffened a little on the part about John's dead hands, but he'd relaxed again by the end of the thought, his usual smug-and-superior-but-vaguely-amused crooked grin back in place.
"Moonflower, then," McKay finally said, and John winced as soon as he heard the name.
Re: this is pretty crappy, but it's only a draft!
Date: 2007-01-25 06:31 am (UTC)Goddammit, and being in the same damn building as McKay for the past few months had made him actually want to calculate the exact odds. He hadn't recreationally generated statistics since... well, he did it a lot, actually. Huh. Maybe he was a bigger dork than even he thought.
"Do you have a problem with the name Moonflower, Major?" McKay asked, eyebrows raised. "Or has your need to stop Ford from naming various apparatuses in this galaxy extended to the rest of the expedition as well?"
"It's um... I just... um..." Crap. McKay was going to want an answer. "I have bad experiences with the name Moonflower, that's all." It was true enough, but also alarmingly vague, and while he could usually get away with something like that on Atlantis, he was currently stuck in a ship with McKay for the next fourteen hours. If anyone could grate an answer out of him, it was McKay, if only with the sheer force of his annoying niggling.
"How can you have bad experiences with a name?" McKay said, almost snidely. "What, did you date a girl named Moonflower who hated your precious hair?"
Damn, two hair cracks? That was a lot, even for McKay.
"Moonflower loved my hair," John said, and it wasn't petulant, nope, not at all.
McKay's eyes widened, and John quickly realized that, in his quick defense of his hair, he had let something crucial slip by. Wow. He must have been pretty damn distracted.
"You did date a girl named Moonflower?" Rodney nearly wheezed. "Oh my GOD. That's low, even for you!"
"What the hell do you mean by that?" John asked. "Jesus, Rodney. She was a nice girl. And I didn't just date her, I was--" He cut himself off quickly. "I was... very fond of her." The ending was weak and Rodney was suspicious and clearly this whole plan was going to hell faster than he's anticipated. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn't usually this off his game.
"Don't tell me you were engaged to a girl named Moonflower!" McKay looked stuck somewhere between disbelief, disgust, and unadulterated hilarity. John was becoming more offended by the conversation every minute. Sure, Moonflower had been... well, kind of a flake... and crazy... and had no future and no plans and no income and couldn't see the larger picture... but she was nice. Different than most of the girls he met while traveling from base to base growing up, and definitely different from the type of girl his parents would have wanted him to date. She was probably living a quiet suburban life, happily caring for a couple of kids, and she didn't deserve bullshit from some arrogant prick scientist who was, yes, brilliant, and yes, oddly endearing, and yes, oftentimes amusing, and yes, loyal, and yes, saved his life from time to time, and yes, sometimes smirked with just the far corner of his mouth turned up in a way that was actually kind of hot, but...
Um. Right. She just didn't deserve that kind of treatment.
Re: this is pretty crappy, but it's only a draft!
Date: 2007-01-25 06:32 am (UTC)"Excuse me?" McKay's eyes were wide. "You were married? To a woman?"
John felt his cheeks color, and it took McKay a second to realize what he'd said, before his own colored as well.
"That is--I mean--What I meant--" He stuttered helplessly, the controls lax in his hand.
"McKay! We're going the wrong way!" John snapped, reaching over and correcting their course, happy to have something to distract them. What the hell was he even thinking, bringing this up? Like McKay didn't already have enough dirt on him. Like talking about crazy hippie ex-wives was a good way to make people think you were stoic and in command and not batshit crazy.
"How did you marry a girl named Moonflower?" McKay asked, having given up on the controls all together, letting John steer from across the console. "Did she drug you? Did she use her crazy hippie drugs on you? Oh god, I bet you took them willingly and woke up from the haze four years later with five kids and pot growing in the back of the commune you now lived on and you joined the Air Force in an effort to escape..."
John couldn't believe that, half an hour again, he had missed this babbling.
"She didn't drug me!" John said, loudly enough to cut off McKay's rant. "It was my idea, okay? We were eighteen and it was June and I was going to the Academy in the fall and... we just did it, okay? Her uncle was a notary who knew some people and we were going to do it and keep it a secret. It became clear after a few months that it wasn't going to work out, so we had the marriage annulled. I went off to school and she stayed behind and that was that."
McKay was still staring at him, eyebrows nearly level with his hairline. The center console was starting to dig into John's side.
"Moonflower?" McKay managed to squeak.
"Her birth name was actually Raven," John said, giving a shrug, or the best approximation he could manage while stretched out of his seat. "She legally changed it when she was sixteen because she thought it was a dark name with a negative effect on her aura."
Now McKay looked like he was going to pass out.
"If you're going to gape, can we at least switch so that I'm not flying from two seats away?" John asked.
"Um, yes. Of course. Sure." Rodney was still staring as they switched positions and kept it up until someone in the other jumper asked them a stupid question about where they were in regards to Atlantis and he was off on a rant that segued into a conversation about goldfish crackers that lasted them nearly the entire rest of the trip home.
Re: this is pretty crappy, but it's only a draft!
Date: 2007-01-25 06:41 am (UTC)Also: the BEST WRAITH NAME EVER.
Oh, Moonflower. We hardly knew ye.