Fic: As Well as Valor
Apr. 10th, 2006 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneTitle: As Well as Valor
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard, (past) McKay/OMC
Length: ~2000 words
Summary: Blowjobs and politesse, a guide; or, a brief history of Rodney McKay.
A/N: Dedicated to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anna_luna and 20thcenturyvole, who drew these wonderful pictures and started this interesting discussion, respectively.
As Well as Valor
He used to sit with his head in his mother’s lap, and she would stroke his hair. “Always be polite and courteous,” she told him. “Then people will respect you and listen to what you have to say.” He liked the feeling of her warm fingers on his scalp, and her smell: perfume, the scent of honeysuckle.
Eventually, one or both of them would have to get up. His mother would go downstairs and Rodney would draw a book from the shelf. Curling in on himself, reading, he would hear the banging of pots and pans from the kitchen.
“Goddammit, Frank! How many times did I remind you about the milk? How many goddamn times?”
In primary school he was modest and quiet. He did all his work, quickly and efficiently, and then read with the book propped open on his lap, underneath his desk. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. He rarely raised his hand. He still remembered the look on his teacher’s face in grade one, when he had—he thought politely—corrected several false assumptions on her part when she was attempting to explain to another student why the sky was blue. She was a young woman with a bright smile and a bob of golden hair that shifted across the color spectrum when she stood in the light. Rodney wanted her to like him. He didn’t volunteer any additional information after that.
His grades were never anything spectacular.
When he built the nuclear bomb in grade six, part of the reason the CIA held him for so long was that nobody believed that he could have actually been the one to do it. He was a quiet, competent boy, mostly known (until recently, at least) for hanging around the music room at lunch and after school. Someone—or so his teachers, the principal, the CIA agents themselves all insisted—must have put him up to this; he must be covering for someone. It wasn’t until he softly but assuredly took them step-by-step through his process for creating the bomb that they began to believe him. It went on for hours. By the time they were through questioning him, his throat was raw; this was probably the most he had ever spoken at one time. He hated it: all those eyes on him, hanging on his every word, watching to see what he would do next.
Eventually, one of the agents laughed. “You’re obviously a smart kid,” he said, “why would you do something this dangerous?”
“It’s not dangerous,” Rodney explained. “It’s only a working model.”
“It’s a nuclear bomb,” said the other agent, still somewhat aghast.
Rodney bit back a sigh. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.
At university, someone kept hijacking his lab time.
Rodney would come by at his prescribed time, and find this other guy—handsome with tan skin and a friendly smile—still there, using the equipment that was supposed to be Rodney’s. The first couple of times, Rodney went to the library for a few hours, gave the interloper time to finish up, and then returned. But after a while, even if Rodney spent longer wandering, or hunkered down between the stacks, the other guy would still be there when he got back. Eventually, Rodney had to say something.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said—and he was. “But on the schedule it says—”
The guy turned around and smiled. He had a freckle on his lip, Rodney noticed—just left of center, along the line of the upper, arching, bow. “Just give me a few more minutes,” he said, lips and teeth. “Thanks, buddy.”
“All right,” Rodney said, and sat down on a stool to wait.
Idly, he glanced over at the other guy’s work. He immediately noticed several things that were wrong. For several minutes, he debated whether or not he should say something. He didn’t want to offend someone he didn’t even know, but maybe these errors were the reason the other guy’s experiments were taking so long—maybe, if he said something, Rodney could save them both a lot of time.
So, “Excuse me,” he said, and proceeded to lay out all the ways his fellow student’s procedure was faulty, his calculations incorrect. He finished off by offering several suggestions for ways to make the entire experiment more efficient and valuable.
He stared down at the lab table the entire time, afraid to look up and see annoyance or dislike on the other student’s face. But when he had finished speaking, and did glance up, he saw nothing besides a serious, contemplative expression. “What was your name again?” the other guy asked.
“Rodney,” said Rodney, blushing. “Rodney McKay.”
“I’m Mark,” said the other student, tan skin and freckles and the whitest smile he had ever seen. “Maybe,” Mark said, “we can help each other out.”
So Mark did Rodney the courtesy of letting him share his lab space during both of their assigned lab times. He also did Rodney the courtesy of letting Rodney suck his cock in one of the bathroom stalls just off the lab: running his fingers through Rodney’s hair as he fed him the shaft, gripping the back of his neck. And afterward, Rodney would smile and lick his cock clean, because that was the polite thing to do.
Mark also went down on Rodney a couple of times, but here all those teeth were a hindrance rather than a help, and it was wet and messy and Rodney didn’t like it very much. But a blowjob was a blowjob, and Rodney was too polite to say anything.
Rodney was too polite to say anything: up to a point. That was probably the most important thing he learned, at any of the many institutes of higher learning that he attended—that there was a point when the politeness cracked and crumbled and fell away. The first time, that point was Mark trying to take credit for his, Rodney’s, work.
When the head of the physics department first came by the lab to congratulate Mark on his exciting new results—the results Rodney had generated—to commend him and mention he was looking forward to the paper Mark was surely going to publish—based on Rodney’s ideas, his calculations, his time and effort—Rodney went pale and shaky and silent. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. But he stared at Mark’s bland, guileless expression, and inside his chest something built and built, his mind going hot with the memory of his carefully written notes, and Mark’s hands on his head, and connecting the wires on his working model of a nuclear bomb: perfectly safe, but in the wrong hands...
He took it to the dean. In his office, he was calm and polite until he realized that they were humoring him, not taking him seriously. Then there was shouting, and reams of evidence pouring forth from his lips. They brought Mark in for a repeat performance, and it was easy now: anger welling up, the words coming and coming, the best release Mark had ever given him, pulsing out of him until he was sucked dry.
“I’m sorry,” he told the dean and his secretary, once the whole matter had been cleared up, and Mark sent outside to await his punishment. “I don’t usually let my temper get the best of me; I don’t know what came over me.”
“That’s all right,” they told him—smiling, thank God, smiling—“these were unusually trying circumstances.”
Rodney smiled back. He was still smiling when he passed Mark outside in the hallway. Looking over his shoulder, an odd twitch: his lips twisting up into a smirk. “You’re an idiot,” he heard himself say, voice dripping disdain. “And also? You give lousy head.”
It was an aberration, his explosion in the dean’s office (not to mention his little aside afterward): the exception, not the rule. And yet...once he’d let himself go once, it became harder and harder not to boil over in the future. People were just so, so, so stupid, and there were so many of them, everywhere: price-checking packages of socks clearly labeled $5.95, jabbering away about their star sign when he mentioned astronomy, insisting he try some of their grapefruit sorbet when he was DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO CITRUS, HOW MANY GODDAMN TIMES DID HE HAVE TO SAY IT?
He tried excusing himself, taking deep breaths in dark, quiet rooms, but that was a waste of his valuable time, and why should he have to be inconvenienced—punished!—for other people’s incompetence? So rather than face the occasional explosion, he decided instead to let his ever-building frustration out in increments. Sighs became audible. Eyerolls visible. And his mouth opened more and more often, spilling what he needed it to to get him through the day. “Yes, thank you, I’ll keep that in mind next time I want to kill myself messily.” “Really? And how early did you get up this morning to arrive at this utterly absurd—not to mention wrong—conclusion?” “Oh, sure, you’re an unparalleled genius—truly, on the level of Marilyn vos Savant.”
On some level, Rodney still thought of himself as a polite person. He always said, “Please” and “Thank you” and “Excuse me.” (Unless he was in a real hurry, and he thought he could be forgiven in cases of life-or-death emergencies.) He didn’t cut in line. (Unless the people in front of him were being morons who couldn’t make up their tiny little minds, and there were only two pudding cups left.) He was Canadian.
But he no longer cared if everyone liked him. He couldn’t. Forget what his mother had once said (on the few occasions that he still tried to call, she was always much too busy yelling at his father or being yelled at to say much of anything to him at all): at some point he had to make a choice. Either people could like him, or they could respect him, listen to him. Not both.
Sometimes, awe was almost as good as love.
Before coming to the Pegasus Galaxy, Rodney had never before: fired a gun, run for his life, flown a spaceship, had a crossbow pointed at his chest, stepped in front of someone else who had a crossbow pointed at his chest, been shot, nearly died saving someone else’s life.
John had never sucked cock.
That it was his first time was—what was the polite way to phrase this?—readily apparent. Down on his knees, awkwardly gripping the base of Rodney’s dick and slurping messily at the head. And yet, Rodney thought, it was nothing like, ew, Mark. Mark and his calculating glances, his carefully constructed and ultimately meaningless phrases. “You’re an idiot,” John had told him, when he got out of the infirmary. “Only because you taught me to be,” Rodney had replied, and not given way gently when John had pressed his lips to Rodney’s, but kissed back fiercely, helping John make up his annoyingly indecisive mind, touching the top of his head and pushing him down to his knees.
So different: John’s eyes wide and open, staring up at Rodney with recognition and acceptance, not asking for anything at all. Except maybe a little learning, a little kindness, and that...that Rodney thought he might still know how to give.
So, “Shh,” he said. “Shh, it’s okay,” stroking the side of John’s face, caressing the tops of his ears. “Slow down, it’s good, you’re so good...”
And it was. He was.
John had taught him so many other things. Rodney could find the patience to teach him this.
Afterward, they lay together, on the bed. Rodney pulled the blankets more tightly around his chest, trying to keep out the cold. “Hey,” said John, sounding sleepy and well-fucked, “stop hogging the covers. It’s rude.”
Rodney snorted. “It’s my bed,” he said.
But he scooted closer, tucking his head against John’s shoulder so that the blankets covered them both, and John’s fingers could rove.
For courtesy wins women all as well as valor may.—Tennyson
*coughandmencough*
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard, (past) McKay/OMC
Length: ~2000 words
Summary: Blowjobs and politesse, a guide; or, a brief history of Rodney McKay.
A/N: Dedicated to
anna_luna and 20thcenturyvole, who drew these wonderful pictures and started this interesting discussion, respectively.As Well as Valor
He used to sit with his head in his mother’s lap, and she would stroke his hair. “Always be polite and courteous,” she told him. “Then people will respect you and listen to what you have to say.” He liked the feeling of her warm fingers on his scalp, and her smell: perfume, the scent of honeysuckle.
Eventually, one or both of them would have to get up. His mother would go downstairs and Rodney would draw a book from the shelf. Curling in on himself, reading, he would hear the banging of pots and pans from the kitchen.
“Goddammit, Frank! How many times did I remind you about the milk? How many goddamn times?”
In primary school he was modest and quiet. He did all his work, quickly and efficiently, and then read with the book propped open on his lap, underneath his desk. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. He rarely raised his hand. He still remembered the look on his teacher’s face in grade one, when he had—he thought politely—corrected several false assumptions on her part when she was attempting to explain to another student why the sky was blue. She was a young woman with a bright smile and a bob of golden hair that shifted across the color spectrum when she stood in the light. Rodney wanted her to like him. He didn’t volunteer any additional information after that.
His grades were never anything spectacular.
When he built the nuclear bomb in grade six, part of the reason the CIA held him for so long was that nobody believed that he could have actually been the one to do it. He was a quiet, competent boy, mostly known (until recently, at least) for hanging around the music room at lunch and after school. Someone—or so his teachers, the principal, the CIA agents themselves all insisted—must have put him up to this; he must be covering for someone. It wasn’t until he softly but assuredly took them step-by-step through his process for creating the bomb that they began to believe him. It went on for hours. By the time they were through questioning him, his throat was raw; this was probably the most he had ever spoken at one time. He hated it: all those eyes on him, hanging on his every word, watching to see what he would do next.
Eventually, one of the agents laughed. “You’re obviously a smart kid,” he said, “why would you do something this dangerous?”
“It’s not dangerous,” Rodney explained. “It’s only a working model.”
“It’s a nuclear bomb,” said the other agent, still somewhat aghast.
Rodney bit back a sigh. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.
At university, someone kept hijacking his lab time.
Rodney would come by at his prescribed time, and find this other guy—handsome with tan skin and a friendly smile—still there, using the equipment that was supposed to be Rodney’s. The first couple of times, Rodney went to the library for a few hours, gave the interloper time to finish up, and then returned. But after a while, even if Rodney spent longer wandering, or hunkered down between the stacks, the other guy would still be there when he got back. Eventually, Rodney had to say something.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said—and he was. “But on the schedule it says—”
The guy turned around and smiled. He had a freckle on his lip, Rodney noticed—just left of center, along the line of the upper, arching, bow. “Just give me a few more minutes,” he said, lips and teeth. “Thanks, buddy.”
“All right,” Rodney said, and sat down on a stool to wait.
Idly, he glanced over at the other guy’s work. He immediately noticed several things that were wrong. For several minutes, he debated whether or not he should say something. He didn’t want to offend someone he didn’t even know, but maybe these errors were the reason the other guy’s experiments were taking so long—maybe, if he said something, Rodney could save them both a lot of time.
So, “Excuse me,” he said, and proceeded to lay out all the ways his fellow student’s procedure was faulty, his calculations incorrect. He finished off by offering several suggestions for ways to make the entire experiment more efficient and valuable.
He stared down at the lab table the entire time, afraid to look up and see annoyance or dislike on the other student’s face. But when he had finished speaking, and did glance up, he saw nothing besides a serious, contemplative expression. “What was your name again?” the other guy asked.
“Rodney,” said Rodney, blushing. “Rodney McKay.”
“I’m Mark,” said the other student, tan skin and freckles and the whitest smile he had ever seen. “Maybe,” Mark said, “we can help each other out.”
So Mark did Rodney the courtesy of letting him share his lab space during both of their assigned lab times. He also did Rodney the courtesy of letting Rodney suck his cock in one of the bathroom stalls just off the lab: running his fingers through Rodney’s hair as he fed him the shaft, gripping the back of his neck. And afterward, Rodney would smile and lick his cock clean, because that was the polite thing to do.
Mark also went down on Rodney a couple of times, but here all those teeth were a hindrance rather than a help, and it was wet and messy and Rodney didn’t like it very much. But a blowjob was a blowjob, and Rodney was too polite to say anything.
Rodney was too polite to say anything: up to a point. That was probably the most important thing he learned, at any of the many institutes of higher learning that he attended—that there was a point when the politeness cracked and crumbled and fell away. The first time, that point was Mark trying to take credit for his, Rodney’s, work.
When the head of the physics department first came by the lab to congratulate Mark on his exciting new results—the results Rodney had generated—to commend him and mention he was looking forward to the paper Mark was surely going to publish—based on Rodney’s ideas, his calculations, his time and effort—Rodney went pale and shaky and silent. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. But he stared at Mark’s bland, guileless expression, and inside his chest something built and built, his mind going hot with the memory of his carefully written notes, and Mark’s hands on his head, and connecting the wires on his working model of a nuclear bomb: perfectly safe, but in the wrong hands...
He took it to the dean. In his office, he was calm and polite until he realized that they were humoring him, not taking him seriously. Then there was shouting, and reams of evidence pouring forth from his lips. They brought Mark in for a repeat performance, and it was easy now: anger welling up, the words coming and coming, the best release Mark had ever given him, pulsing out of him until he was sucked dry.
“I’m sorry,” he told the dean and his secretary, once the whole matter had been cleared up, and Mark sent outside to await his punishment. “I don’t usually let my temper get the best of me; I don’t know what came over me.”
“That’s all right,” they told him—smiling, thank God, smiling—“these were unusually trying circumstances.”
Rodney smiled back. He was still smiling when he passed Mark outside in the hallway. Looking over his shoulder, an odd twitch: his lips twisting up into a smirk. “You’re an idiot,” he heard himself say, voice dripping disdain. “And also? You give lousy head.”
It was an aberration, his explosion in the dean’s office (not to mention his little aside afterward): the exception, not the rule. And yet...once he’d let himself go once, it became harder and harder not to boil over in the future. People were just so, so, so stupid, and there were so many of them, everywhere: price-checking packages of socks clearly labeled $5.95, jabbering away about their star sign when he mentioned astronomy, insisting he try some of their grapefruit sorbet when he was DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO CITRUS, HOW MANY GODDAMN TIMES DID HE HAVE TO SAY IT?
He tried excusing himself, taking deep breaths in dark, quiet rooms, but that was a waste of his valuable time, and why should he have to be inconvenienced—punished!—for other people’s incompetence? So rather than face the occasional explosion, he decided instead to let his ever-building frustration out in increments. Sighs became audible. Eyerolls visible. And his mouth opened more and more often, spilling what he needed it to to get him through the day. “Yes, thank you, I’ll keep that in mind next time I want to kill myself messily.” “Really? And how early did you get up this morning to arrive at this utterly absurd—not to mention wrong—conclusion?” “Oh, sure, you’re an unparalleled genius—truly, on the level of Marilyn vos Savant.”
On some level, Rodney still thought of himself as a polite person. He always said, “Please” and “Thank you” and “Excuse me.” (Unless he was in a real hurry, and he thought he could be forgiven in cases of life-or-death emergencies.) He didn’t cut in line. (Unless the people in front of him were being morons who couldn’t make up their tiny little minds, and there were only two pudding cups left.) He was Canadian.
But he no longer cared if everyone liked him. He couldn’t. Forget what his mother had once said (on the few occasions that he still tried to call, she was always much too busy yelling at his father or being yelled at to say much of anything to him at all): at some point he had to make a choice. Either people could like him, or they could respect him, listen to him. Not both.
Sometimes, awe was almost as good as love.
Before coming to the Pegasus Galaxy, Rodney had never before: fired a gun, run for his life, flown a spaceship, had a crossbow pointed at his chest, stepped in front of someone else who had a crossbow pointed at his chest, been shot, nearly died saving someone else’s life.
John had never sucked cock.
That it was his first time was—what was the polite way to phrase this?—readily apparent. Down on his knees, awkwardly gripping the base of Rodney’s dick and slurping messily at the head. And yet, Rodney thought, it was nothing like, ew, Mark. Mark and his calculating glances, his carefully constructed and ultimately meaningless phrases. “You’re an idiot,” John had told him, when he got out of the infirmary. “Only because you taught me to be,” Rodney had replied, and not given way gently when John had pressed his lips to Rodney’s, but kissed back fiercely, helping John make up his annoyingly indecisive mind, touching the top of his head and pushing him down to his knees.
So different: John’s eyes wide and open, staring up at Rodney with recognition and acceptance, not asking for anything at all. Except maybe a little learning, a little kindness, and that...that Rodney thought he might still know how to give.
So, “Shh,” he said. “Shh, it’s okay,” stroking the side of John’s face, caressing the tops of his ears. “Slow down, it’s good, you’re so good...”
And it was. He was.
John had taught him so many other things. Rodney could find the patience to teach him this.
Afterward, they lay together, on the bed. Rodney pulled the blankets more tightly around his chest, trying to keep out the cold. “Hey,” said John, sounding sleepy and well-fucked, “stop hogging the covers. It’s rude.”
Rodney snorted. “It’s my bed,” he said.
But he scooted closer, tucking his head against John’s shoulder so that the blankets covered them both, and John’s fingers could rove.
For courtesy wins women all as well as valor may.—Tennyson
*coughandmencough*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:28 pm (UTC)Or the story where Rodney mocks John incessantly for having brought War and Peace with him to another galaxy (an actual print copy, no less), until John finds out that when they first stepped through the wormhole, Rodney had a very old and battered and beloved copy of Austen's collected works in his backpack?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:35 pm (UTC)I'm sure Rodney shares my opinion. He just wishes John would stop sniggering. And calling him Lizzy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:51 pm (UTC)*waits for you to write this*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:39 pm (UTC)Don't tease. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 06:52 pm (UTC)Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 07:22 pm (UTC)However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering society, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of his connexions and acquaintances, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
This truth, once thought on, however, inevitably gives rise to some awkward considerations. One is led to wonder just how universal this acknowledgement is, and for what value of truth it holds true; if indeed, one accepts the idea of an objective truth at all. The logic behind uttering such a statement at all, Lord McKay thought as he surveyed the ballroom, was truly lacking, and he for one was not willing to order his life around such a sadly irrational maxim, nor was he one to place his future security and happiness on the acquisition of a spouse alone. All his loud and lengthy protestations on the subject were not, however, enough to grant him relief from the hordes of doting mamas and proud papas who were determined to secure the only son of a duke for one of their hordes of giggling, insipid and Miss-ish daughters.
The latest attempt by the Dowager Countess of Weir to thrust her youngest daughter upon his attention had led to him seeking the comparative safety of the refreshments room. From here, he could look on at those engaged in dancing a quadrille in the ballroom with equanimity and security, certain that his view of the room would provide him with enough advance warning to make good his escape to another, should he see Lady Weir begin to approach him. The thoughts of being once more confronted with the formidable dowager made him shudder slightly.
The story of how she had succeeded in marrying off her eldest daughter, Lady Eliza, to the most confirmed, retrenched and wealthiest bachelor in all London was legendary among the Ton; and that it had not been accomplished before negotiating a marriage settlement that would surely have been considered generous for a by-blow of royalty, let alone for the daughter of an earl of relatively new creation and small political influence. The story had previously amused Lord McKay enough to make him smirk, and privately confirm his personal opinion of Lady Weir as a harridan of the worst proportions; that, however, had been before the realisation had dawned upon him, once he stepped through the door of the Weir mansion that evening, that he was surely the next most eligible bachelor on her list.
For a man who prided himself upon his intelligence, and the fact that his degree at Oxford had been gained through actual work, and not because of his lineage, as was the usual case with the sons of noblemen, this was a grievous error of judgement indeed. With each passing moment of the party, and with every glimpse of a dark head topped by a blue turban, McKay regretted his attendance at the ball more and more. He turned to contemplation of the admirably well-stocked refreshment table, inwardly debating whether he was more annoyed with his own inability to see what this invitation had signified, or with Lady Weir’s attempts to end his happy and eminently comfortable bachelor state.
“I’d recommend the beef,” said someone standing not too far away. McKay looked over at the man who had addressed him. He was tall, dark and rangy, and sat sprawled in a chair in an attitude of casual nonchalance. There was an expression of vague amusement on his face, which, coupled with the careful disorder of his hair, the brilliant shine of his Hessian boots, and the drawl in his speech, would have at once made McKay identify him as a member of the Devonshire Set. His dress, however – the formal blue of a naval officer – gave the lie to that, as did the impression of carefully controlled energy and watchfulness which his lordship could sense in the man’s demeanour.
Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 07:23 pm (UTC)“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to one another. Commodore John Sheppard, late of HMS Invincible.”
“We have not been introduced to one another,” McKay snapped, “And allow me to assure you that I take not the least pleasure in it.” He turned his back on the man and his presumptions, and reached out to take a glass of wine from the table.
“Why, I do believe you must be Lord McKay,” Sheppard continued.
“Whatever would give you that idea?” McKay said without turning around.
“Because one of the last things I heard from my mother before she went in search of friends and gossip, apart from “Pray, John, do try not to give offence to any more of our acquaintances” was a heartfelt plea to “avoid Miss Smythe and Lady Caroline Lamb, for they are neither of them any better than they ought to be; and avoid that son of the Duke of Atalanta while you are about it. A more pompous, arrogant, unpleasant young man I have rarely met, and I am quite certain that it was he who ate all of the ices at my last supper party.”” Sheppard somehow managed to produce a pitch-perfect imitation of an elderly woman, clipping his vowels and filling his words with motherly irritation.
McKay’s mouth quirked sideways at that, in something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “Your information is impeccable, then. I am Rodney McKay.” He turned and jerked a small bow in Sheppard’s direction.
“Impeccable? So there is perhaps some truth in the tale of the ices?”
“I disavow all knowledge,” his lordship replied. “Although as a disinterested and entirely impartial observer, I will say that you might wish to inform you mother to instruct your cook not to add quite so much fruit juice to your sorbets in future.
Commodore Sheppard’s face broke into a slow grin. Snippets of half-forgotten information from natural history lessons as a child filtered through Lord McKay’s brain at the sight of that, the knowledge his tutor had imparted to him of how certain predators enticed their prey towards them with bright smiles and brighter teeth.
“Do you know,” said the commodore lazily, “I rather thought from what mother said I would like you.” McKay found himself smiling back, and taking half a step forward. He was rather certain that his tutor had been correct; he was even more certain, at this juncture, that he did not care.
"Loathe as I usually am to counsel a man to listen to the words of his mother in any respect," McKay said, tugging slightly at the fine linen folds of his cravat, "I am sure in this case that your impressions are correct, for I have long been assured that I am nothing other than an entirely amiable and intelligent gentleman."
"Indeed," said Sheppard, "By whom?"
Before his lordship could dignify such an impertinent question with the most obvious of answers (by many of his wide and esteemed acquaintance), he was startled into silence by the arrival of Lady Weir, whom he had not seen approach him.
She greeted both men - Lord McKay with the broad smile earned by the fact that he was the son of a duke and the possessor of some clear fifteen thousand a year, Sheppard with the slightly more restrained one due to the youngest son of an improvident earl. "Lord McKay, I declare that I have not seen you dance all night! A signal shame with such a shortage of young men here. Can I not urge you to stand up with my youngest daughter, Marianne? Her card is still quite free for the country dances, and I am sure you would find them most refreshing after standing still for so long."
Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 07:24 pm (UTC)"Lord McKay and I have a prior arrangement," Sheppard interrupted, with a smile that managed to be at once very charming and very vague. "I am afraid we're already very late to Brooks-"
"Boodle's" McKay said firmly.
"- White's," the other man continued, ignoring him. "If you'll excuse us." Then he steered McKay by the elbow away from a slightly stunned countess, through the anteroom and out of the house. It was a matter of a few minutes work for them to retrieve McKay's carriage - Sheppard having arrived with his mother in the family barouche - and for the driver to head off in the direction of the club."
"You realise," McKay said after a few minutes, an expression that was something between genuine amusement and true curiosity on his face, "That I have now offended the Countess and her daughter most grievously."
"I am sure," said Sheppard, settling back against the comfortable padding of the seat, "That for the sake of your father's purse, they can be persuaded to forgive you."
See why this is a bad idea and should not be encouraged? For it is SILLY IN THE EXTREME.
Re: Most WONDERFUL pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 07:36 pm (UTC)*bats eyelashes at you*
Re: Most WONDERFUL pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 07:43 pm (UTC)And on that cheery note, I think I should take myself off to Tesco's so I can buy groceries. Whoo.
Re: Most WONDERFUL pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 07:48 pm (UTC)Is this supposed to get us to discourage you in anyway shape or form? Cause you're going about it alllllll wrong.
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Date: 2006-04-10 08:52 pm (UTC)Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-11 11:03 am (UTC)Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 10:09 pm (UTC)Seriously. Your babies, my uterus--you name the date. Or maybe I should just ship you some chocolate chip cookies...
Anyways, you are officially my hero, and I will love you forever. That is all. [/fangirling]
Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-11 11:03 am (UTC)Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-10 11:34 pm (UTC)On the contrary, this should *definitely* be encouraged. I would love to see where you go w/this. Great story.
And sorry to butt in, but I couldn't resist commenting.
Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-11 11:07 am (UTC)Hee. Sex, possibly. Piano playing, probably. Refined and polished snark which includes an improbable number of references to the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Byron, definitely.
Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-11 12:12 am (UTC)But just in case: More!
(Also, I swear at one point I had this reaction:
John, in the navy? But British ships don't fly! Unless--insert suspicious frown--he is actually Peter Pan.)
Re: Most horrible pastiche in the history of pastiches!
Date: 2006-04-11 11:48 am (UTC)And the navy would be the closest John could get to flying at this point in history, I'm afraid.
(Though he always wanted to fly as a very small boy, and would frequently demand of his tutor why he could not. This would only produce a sigh from the long-suffering Mr Hammond, who would be obliged to explain once more that God had so ordered His estates that the air was left to the birds, and the land to be the dominion of man.
John had always found this explanation inadequate; and after his second attempt at flight by jumping from one of the oaks which had spread out over his family's lands since before the Restoration, so did Lady Sheppard.
"John," she said to her youngest son, settling him into her lap and smoothing down his tousled curls, "You will learn before you are very much older that there are some things in this world that are out of our reach, for which we should not grasp. I know how much you would like to fly, but Mr Hammond is quite correct when he says that it is impossible for any man. If you try, you will only fall."
He listened to her advice as much as he ever did to anything his parents said to him: that is, he outwardly disdained to follow it, while secretly carrying it around with him in that inner place which very few people got to see. He carried it with him through two years at Harrow, through his refusal to return and begin the studies which would see him ordained, through his obstinate desire to enlist as a midshipman in His Majesty's Navy.
Even once John was made post-captain, he would think of her words occasionally, whenever he swarmed his way up the rigging, ignoring the protest of his first lieutenant. He could sit up there for hours at a time, he thought, savouring the comforting pitch and creak of wood around him, the crash and thunder of the waves as his crew pushed his ship on ever faster, spray flying around them, the way the rigging cradled him away from the blue sea and up towards bluest sky.
Up there, he always knew just how close he was to falling; but he would tilt his face to the sky and risk it anyway.)
Though Peter Pan works too *g*
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Date: 2006-04-11 01:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-11 11:53 am (UTC)