SGA crack!fic WIP

[permetaform]

Title: Puddle Jumping
Fandom: SGA (and a surprise fandom, you'll see.)
Pairing: eventual Sheppard/McKay
Spoilers: assume up to Grace Under Pressure, to be on the safe side
Summary: The Ancients made good use of the huge amount of ocean...

Author's Note: This is un-betaed.

---

"...which is blatantly idiotic because why would the transporters be waterproof and none of the other systems?" Rodney frowned.

"I don't know McKay, maybe the transporters sideline as washing machines."

John led the way, slightly distracted, when they rematerialized by the Northeast pier. Early on during one of their morning runs Ford had noticed a circular structure, looking like a Stargate tipped over, around a hole on the underwater shelf running around the edge of the pier. They'd radioed the tower and sent down a team but it remained inert and from what the linguists could make out it was a non-essential system mostly used for recreational purposes. John had hoped it's an Ancient hot-tub.

But what with the power problem and the Little-bitty Wraith problem and the storm problem and the Not-So-Little Wraith problem and the Ford problem and the *other* other Wraith problem that led to dry, flaky skin and red eye what needed more than Visine...what with all that, they really didn't have time to poke at recreational Ancient technology. (and John still had been miffed at Rodney's blowing up a solar system with him still in it. He would've been fine if Rodney'd figured out a way to remote control it; he liked explosions and the system was uninhabited anyway.)

And now they'd captured a Wraith Cruiser, which had Rodney making orgasm noises over the populsion systems, but the Cruiser had been transporting a new Queen, which meant John was stuck with doing interrogations again. The Wraith always got frustrated when they tried to read him.

he thinks
(she's made of hair and bone and little teeth
and things I cannot speak)

She had freckles and dark tangerine hair and horrible oral health. He named her Darla.

She hissed at him and clawed, once, at the shield. She stalked him with her eyes and questioned him back, but she didn't get any more information from him than the other way around.

He told her he liked nice eyes, Action movies, and funhouse mirrors.

he thinks
(there’s a lot of pretty, pretty ones
that want to get you high)

But you can only mentally cycle through Marilyn Manson's albums for so long and John needed a break. He debriefed with Dr. Weir then walked towards the labs. He heard Rodney even before he stepped through the doors, but what was more alarming was that he'd heard Zelenka through the doors too.

This is familiar, and he so did not need this right now, but he still tries because he has to.

He says, "McKay," loud and hard and sharp and in the way he'd spoken it only one time before and he watched as the Nobels in Rodney's eyes flared and frizzled like 5/6ths of a solar system. (John, absurdly, felt like it was done by remote this time. He stepped away from the sensation to look at it later.)

And then McKay looked resigned and sorta mullish, but mostly twitchy and wired on too much caffiene and physics so John said, "You should take a look at that second Stargate on the pier."

And Rodney said, "Stargate?"

And that was that.

Well, mostly. It involved a lot of, "Why didn't you tell me before?!", leading to evolutions of, "You were too busy during (insert catastrophe)", followed by "Well, yes, but--" and several variations of, "What did it look like, exactly?"

There was one protestational "What do you mean, a wetsuit?!", one accusational, "If I get sick it will be all your fault", and one demonstrational Rodney skinning into one slightly-too-tight wetsuit complaining all the way that, no, he did not bring swimming trunks because he hadn't planned on being stupid enough to swim for fun in foreign waters where who knows what microbial nasties might exist to kill him dead while John felt his face go a bit dopey 'cause, wow, Rodney has the shoulders of a linebacker and John really really liked college football. (He refused to look any lower than Rodney's shoulders. Somewhere, he knows why but he casually forgets this reason.)

John very carefully didn't mention he had ever, or had still, hoped it was a hot-tub.

Ronon trailed at their six, this part of Atlantis haven't been fully explored yet, in nothing more than a borrowed pair of boxers. (And possibly a half dozen knives because Ronon is resourceful like that.) Ronon had stared down the hand holding the wetsuit and said, "I don't think Atlantis is that cold," in a way that implied being able to swim among ice floes as well as having a better sense of style than anything in the Milky Way. John mentally cheered again ₁ at getting Ronon onto his team, (because mmm), and waved all of them towards the structure, the linguist and McKay already babbling.

It really did look sort of like a hot-tub, the wide lip of it never completely surfacing despite the waves, with a narrow ledge about two foot down from the top. It didn't have a bottom, the drop going endlessly into the ocean, but the sides had what looked like glass panels in the classic style of Atlantean architecture. The scientists had split off, McKay towards the far side of the circle, Devons towards a pillar off to the side that had etchings.

"Well, good news is that it isn't dangerous. There's words of welcome and greetings all over this pillar, and I think it says something about travel," Devons called over.

"But that doesn't make sense, there's no DHD and this is far too small to be a working Stargate." McKay scowled in her direction but was too facinated to keep it up for long. He kneeled and touched the edge.

"Maybe--" and he stopped and frowned, "Colonel, come here and try to turn this on." John went to his knees and flirted with the hot-tub, but,

Nothing.

John frowned a bit, and moved to stand; but the moment his foot touched the edge the whole thing lit up and water rushed upward, straight for several meters into the sky like an unstable event horizon and then crashed back down, dragging the water from meters around in an undertow. He had a moment, before the sucking water made him loose his footing and pulled him in, to be glad that Devons was by the pillar with Ronon. There was a tug on his arm, maybe fingers circling his wrist? He would be sure, but he's too busy being in pain; he worries a bit, because John can recognize the screams and they aren't his because he's too busy choking on water.

He passes out.

..:0:o:0:o:0:..

"I do NOT believe this."

John's eyes open.

"This logically ABSURD."

He thinks all his limbs are. Intact? And why does Rodney sound louder than usual on Medium Rant? He looks around, and then notices that they're underwater still. His sight should be a bit blurry.

It's not.

Come to think of it, why is he still breathing?

He looks over at Rodney, who is swishing around angrily, the remains of his wet suit clinging to his arms like a demented rubber cape. McKay's tail is very bright, John thinks. He looks down, then looks away, and removes his own wetsuit.

Ronon caught up to McKay (Ronon?), and tugged the synthetic rubber away from him like a parent with a sulky child, bringing both ruined wetsuit and peeved scientist back towards John. McKay's tail is very bright...orange, John thinks, and white with black stripes and fins that lobed gently. It's easier to see it ₂ without the trails of obscuring fabric.

Ronon has a shark's tail. He swam up to John and said simply, "I followed you in."

And Rodney yelled, "Yours looks cool."

"And you're fine." John automatically shot back. And while John normally doesn't wear blue all that much, the black racing stripe down the sides of his tail makes up for it, and the bright yellow on the pointy fins allow him to pretend that they're just plastic flippers. Sort of ₃.

They stare at each other for a long moment; Rodney strangely stunned, Ronon simply waiting, and John thinking over and over in a loop, why couldn't it have been wings?

"Oh for crying out loud," Rodney huffed and swam back to the...transformation circle, yelling for a scanner and a radio and a Powerbar, not necessarily in that order.

By the time that John and Ronon surfaced as well, McKay was already deep into both Powerbar and scanner so John took Dr. Devons' radio, turned it on, and said, "Elizabeth, we have a problem."

He soundly hopes that no one has brought Disney DVDs, but he knows his luck is not that good.

(He knows, for instance, that Beckett can carry a tune.)


_{1 - John would call it "cheering". The actual sound is much higher than that, and contains mostly the letter "SQUEE".
2 - 3 -}


..:0:o:0:o:0:..

They are rolling down Atlantis hallways in humongous drops of water.



Rodney is babbling about creating surface tension which is keeping John suitably distracted from the fact that it looks like they're swimming in what basically looks like Hamster Balls. But it seems his hearing has gotten better because he picks out Cadman humming Part Of Your World under her breath as she passes them. Rodney's jaw worked, and his neck becomes tense and tight but he stays mostly unruffled until they squeeze their water balls out of the way of a group of tittering scientists. John catches his eye before Rodney opens his mouth.

"Just keep swimming, McKay. Just. Keep. Swimming."

It was a long day.

Devons mentioned that there appeared to be a form of land transport and John thought frantically, pleasepleaseplease?, and they popped out of the ring like bubbles from a child's toy.

John had good reason to be frantic though; after Rodney ascertained that there was nothing he could do on their side of the water, they'd gone exploring Atlantis' underside, woke up a cranky, water-bound, ascended Ancient with a tendancy to burn through things like reinforced alloy and, one would assume, skin.

It seemed unable to escape from the water ball though, and it was escorted to a holding cell decently far away from the Wraith Queen.

"Was it just me or did you get a feeling of, well, peace, while staring at the thing?" Rodney slowed down in a quieter portion of the halls. John stopped and grinned.

"McKay, did you want to make a new friend?"

"Oh god, I'm SO over Chaya!"

"Who said anything about Chaya?"

---

Author's Note The Second: =D Yes. Yes I did. I blame it entirely on ABC showing Finding Nemo over Thanksgiving.