It's Saturday! And I don't have to work! (Which is not to say, of course, that I have no work to do -- I *always* have work to do -- but I don't have anything due in the next 24 hours. Wait, that's a lie. I don't have anything *major* due in the next 24 hours. Whew.)

So, I feel like writing. What should I write?

Option A: Dress Left of Center, a.k.a. did you know how many USAF rules John is breaking with his hair alone?

1.3.2. Members will not:
1.3.2.1. Stand or walk with hands in pockets of any uniform combination, other than to insert or remove items.


Rodney counted once: when in field gear, an SG team member has no fewer than twenty-six pockets in which to store things he or she might need in the field. That's four in the field jackets (two out, two in), six in the BDU pants (two front, two back, and one on the outside of each knee), and a whopping sixteen in the tac vests (at least, Rodney has read in the field manual that there are sixteen, but he's only ever managed to find fourteen of them. It's a project for the next rainy day.)

Given that, it's amazing how quickly Rodney can run out of places to store things.

"Here, take this," he tells Sheppard, handing him four crumpled up PowerBar wrappers he unearthed from his double left inside upper zippered-not-velcroed pocket.

Sheppard does that teenage face he makes when Rodney asks him to do anything useful.

Option B: We Cannot Own the Sunlit Sky, a.k.a. Priest!John, but only sort of.

“We’re seeing each other.” Rodney blurts the words out before taking an instant to contemplate how completely bizarre they might sound. “But don’t say anything,” he adds hastily. “He -- he doesn’t want anyone to know. You know. Military.”

Whether Teyla quite buys it or not is a complete mystery, but Rodney doesn’t pause to gather any information that might be presented in her reaction. He shoulders past her and back into the hallways. Behind him he still hears the warm, “Hello, Teyla,” and the equally warm response, “Teacher.”

Rodney listens to the doors, hears them hush closed, and only then does he allow himself to sag against the wall, his heart racing unreasonably fast.

He’d like to tell himself that there’s no shame in visiting Chaplain John Sheppard, but Rodney’s pounding pulse and flushed cheeks say otherwise.

Option C: Another Ding Dong Ditch, a.k.a. the one where the team discovers John's little folly and brings it home with them, a.k.a. shameless kid!fic, a.k.a. my big bang story that's just not happening, dammit.

“Another ding dong ditch,” Elizabeth said wearily as the team strode into the gate room, already geared up. “We had an unscheduled dial-in, we got an address, and--”

“--We have absolutely no way,” interjected Rodney, knowing the end of the story, “of telling whether it’s for real or some kind of bait. Sometimes I rue the day that I came up with Ancient call display.” His gaze automatically flicked over to the small LCD screen, incongruously human, perched to one side of the DHD. Sure enough, it was flashing red with the words ‘Unknown Caller’, followed by an unfamiliar sequence of symbols.

“It’d be fine,” said John as he checked the safety on his P-90, “if you’d just built in a voicemail function too.”

“Or some other kind of automated message system,” Elizabeth added, mouth curling.

“Hi, you’ve reached the Lost City of Atlantis,” said John in a clinically pleasant voice. “Your call is important to us and we’ll get right back to you --”

“Just as soon as we figure out whether you want us dead or not,” Rodney added, frowning at the broken second buckle on his tac vest.

“-- so please leave a detailed message after the beep,” finished John.

“What’d the MALP say?” asked Ronon, patient as ever with their Earth in-jokes.

“Green, ambient temp of twenty-three degrees C,” said Rodney, giving up on the fractured plastic and knotting the ends of the nylon straps together, “a single life sign, twenty meters from the gate, but nothing visible on the camera’s telemetry. No EM fields nearby, so no suspicious technology. Could be a sharpshooter, though.”

“So I’m going first,” said John, dividing a warning look among the team members. “Teyla, you get our six, Ronon, I want you on the right -- the MALP reads the life sign as coming in at about two o’clock. Hold your fire unless we’re fired upon. Rodney, be ready with the IDC in case we need to gate back in a hurry.” He raised his head up and nodded at the gate tech on duty.

Rodney got his handheld life signs detector out, tilting the display away from the reflection of the rippling event horizon so he’d be ready to read whatever it told him as soon as they got across the gate.

“Two o’clock, five meters,” Rodney spoke, stumbling down the first stone step on the other side. “And make a note, this planet’s not wheelchair accessible.”

“Rodney,” said John in warning, his voice taut, and Rodney looked up, prepared to duck or dive for the DHD, whichever seemed more prudent.

Their life sign was in visual range, ten meters and closing. It had honey blond hair sticking up from the crown of its head and it was wearing what was unmistakably an Atlantis expedition jacket. There was a piece of white paper pinned to one lapel, flapping in the wind, and Ronon was the one who got close enough to see for himself, kneeling in front of the child, making himself look as small and unthreatening as possible -- no trifling feat for someone like Ronon.

The child was oddly unafraid, though, only reaching out one hand to touch Ronon’s hair while Ronon captured the flag of the paper. “Huh,” said Ronon, looking at it.

“Colonel, isn’t that your jacket?” said Teyla, and sure enough -- it was indeed John’s long-absent black leather expedition jacket. “Did it not go missing many years ago?”

“Guess we know where it went,” said John, blinking.

Option D: My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada, a.k.a. John has a pretend girlfriend and it's funny.

They were in the mess, him and Teyla and Rodney and Lorne, and they were eating pudding, and they were talking about good stuff, normal stuff.

“--Because the mechanism jammed,” John had said, “so I kicked him in the balls and put my boot on his throat, right? And I’m all, ‘Seriously, this is starting to piss me off,’ and he finally dropped the damn gun.”

Lorne and Teyla laughed appreciatively while Rodney snaked a hand across to John’s tray and appropriated his pudding.

“Hey,” John said, half-heartedly.

“You were going too slow,” Rodney told John. “More eating, less talking.”

John rolled his eyes and caught Lorne’s sympathetic smirk.

“Georgie does the same thing to me, Shep,” Lorne said, shaking his head. “All the damn time.”

John tried to remember which of the new marines was named George, feeling a little distressed that his 2IC obviously was on close terms with someone John didn’t know offhand. Then Teyla spoke. “She is your betrothed, back on Earth?” she asked, smiling. “I remember you mentioning her before.”

“Yeah,” nods Lorne, a fond smile drifting over his features. “Once my tour here’s up, we’re getting hitched.”

Before the Daedalus, John thought dismally, nobody talked about weddings or relationships or what they planned to do back on Earth. He tried and failed to tamp down the stirrings of panic in his belly as he waited the inescapable question, tried to remind himself that Atlantis was *his* turf and he didn’t have to give way to this onslaught of newcomers, that nothing had to change just because Lorne had a fiancée and apparently liked to talk about her.

“You married, Shep?” asked Lorne, inevitably.

“Nah,” said John, forcing a smile.

“Girlfriend back home?” Lorne pursued.

“Not many girls would put up with what I do for a living,” hedged John, still smiling. He impulsively reached across the table and dipped his spoon into his pudding cup, dodging the well-aimed slap that Rodney tried to deliver.

“You got someone here, right?” Lorne prompted, with a ‘you-sly-dog’ kind of grin. “One of those uptight-looking scientist chicks?”

“Oh please, they have much better taste than that,” huffed Rodney distractedly, leaning forward and wrapping his arm around his pudding cup in a protective way, like a nerdy kid guarding against cheaters during an exam. “They’re all hand-picked by me, I’ll have you know. They’re not about to go slumming with the military.”

“Ashley,” John blurted, and three heads turned to look his way. “Ashley, she -- before Atlantis. We were together.”

Rodney was staring at John like he’d grown a second or maybe even a third head. Teyla wore a little polite frown. Lorne, however, was visibly relieved.

“Together for a while?” he asked knowingly.

“Four -- years,” John submitted.

“She probably wasn’t crazy about you coming here, huh?” Lorne said, all sympathy now.

“It didn’t end on a great note,” John agreed, feeling Rodney’s continuing stare of shock. “So we split up.”

“And you’re not quite back in dating mode yet?” prompted Lorne, and John nodded affably.

“Not yet,” said John.

Then Teyla said something about a training session with Lorne’s team and everything shivered back into normal focus. John heaved a sigh of resignation as quietly as he could and made the necessary mental notes: Ashley, four years, broke up before Atlantis. With any luck, it wouldn’t come up again.


Option E: As Depicted in the Promotional Materials, a.k.a. team!fic where John and Rodney share a bed (but not in the cute set-up way), Ronon gets stoned, and I indulge my long-held conviction that farts are HILARIOUS.

The first sign came when Rodney had just settled into his seat beside Sheppard in the jumper: Ronon released a protracted sigh. From anyone else, it would hardly have been a noteworthy sound, but it was *Ronon*, and he was *sighing*, and so both Sheppard and Rodney immediately swiveled around in their seats, startled.

Ronon was sprawled on one of the benches at the back with the fingers of one hand plunged into the dreads over his forehead. Then he opened his eyes and asked of the group at large, “Do you ever just…notice *smells*?”

“Oh, thank god someone *else* said something,” Rodney blurted, hugely relieved.

“Hey, we all had that lentil stew during dinner with the ambassador. I hardly think that you two should start pointing fingers,” Sheppard griped, which meant he was so the culprit.

“I’m surprised you have any sense of smell at all after all the Aqua Velva you’ve inhaled in your lifetime,” Rodney returned quickly. “And I’ll have you know that it wasn’t me, anyway. I didn’t eat the lentil stuff.”

Sheppard cast an incredulous look his way (which on Sheppard looked remarkably like every other expression), compelling Rodney to elaborate. “It had orange zest in it!”

“The boreal forest-dwelling bronze-age alien culture uses orange zest in their cuisine?” Sheppard asked in a flat tone.

“It’s not unheard of,” Rodney said defensively.

“I think they were carrot slivers,” Ronon offered. “Sheppard, you mind flying this thing in a straight line for once?” And then Ronon giggled.

Rodney and Sheppard, who had been facing forward again, both turned back to face Ronon.

“Um, Ronon? Still on the ground,” Sheppard said.

“Smells like carrots in here,” Ronon answered languidly.

Option F: Domains of Dust, a.k.a. things are very bad when we have to rely on Rodney's survival skills

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” Rodney says, not at all in his usual voice but in a thick tone, like he’s talking around something clotted and clinging. He gets his fingers around Sheppard’s wrist, but it’s already too late: the last dregs of water are ticking to the forest floor and Sheppard’s watching with dull amusement as they fall from the thirsty plastic lip of the canteen. “What the hell did you do?” Rodney says, again not in the vicious snarl he might usually affect, but in a weary and unsurprised sigh.

“I don’t know,” says Sheppard, and his eyes go wide with one of his increasingly rare instants of lucidity. “Why did I do that?” He turns his body into Rodney’s chest, still tethered at the wrist, and his forehead drops to Rodney’s shoulder with a limp thud. “Rodney, why,” he says, but it’s obvious that the cold realization has already left Sheppard’s mind and he’s only thrashing in the residual anxiety and panic of its wake.

Option G: Of Course There's an Option G, I'm the Queen of Unfinished Fics!, a.k.a. the one I haven't even started writing yet. I've been browsing around sticksandsnark and now I feel like writing Rodney/Teyla, because -- cute!

[Poll #987773]

Because several of these are longish stories (in theory) I can't promise that I'll finish today, but I will definitely post whatever I manage to do today.