giddygeek | New fic: SGA

This actually grew from an idea I had for a Harlequin story at

sga_flashfic. When it was done, I decided it stretched the theme of the challenge way more than I was comfortable with, but it was still fun and I wanted to share. :)

Title: Fearless, Mindless Fancy
Fandom: SGA
Notes: This is my wildly a/u haunted house story, large chunks of the style shamelessly gacked from all kinds of people. *G* Thanks to

kaneko and

cimorene11 for very helpful read-throughs! 4300 words/28kb.

"Mine has been the highest rated show on this station two years running, Mr. Sheppard. My ratings don't need a boost," Rodney said, glaring.

Sheppard tipped his head down, looked up through long dark lashes, and said, "Well, true. From here...your ratings do look just fine." He smiled, earnest and innocent and blatantly faking it.

Rodney stared at him for a moment, then straightened his back and crossed his arms over his chest. Great. The man was a charlatan and a thoroughly ridiculous flirt. He turned to Elizabeth, doing his best to ignore the little smile on Sheppard's face. "See, Elizabeth, even the astral investigator agrees with me."

"I prefer ghostbuster, actually," Sheppard said. "And you're wrong, Dr. McKay. It's true, your ratings look good--but they'd look even better with me around."

"Do you hear this?" Rodney asked Elizabeth. "He thinks he's God's gift to television! I--"

"You might find that he is a gift to your show." Elizabeth leaned forward across her desk, looking sincerely concerned. "I know you don't want to hear it, Rodney, but your ratings have been stable for almost six months. In the meantime, Dr. Kavanagh's ratings have shown a steady rise. By next season, yours might not be our most popular program."

"Nothing wrong with second place," Rodney said, but his blood boiled at the very thought, and both Sheppard and Elizabeth just looked at him, knowing. "Okay, fine. I'll go to the haunted house. I'll do a special series on haunted houses. But I will go alone. I don't need the help of some, some talk show darling."

"So you're familiar with my work. I'm glad to hear it, Dr. McKay," Sheppard said. He was smiling down his hands, fingers twined and braced on his knee. He'd casually crossed his legs and slouched low in his seat the moment Rodney had started arguing against the asinine plan to have him guest on the show, in a very obvious attempt to show how little it all meant to him, with the advantageous side effect of drawing attention to his lean thighs and long-fingered hands, like he thought that was going to sway Rodney's opinion.

Rodney glared at him, frustrated, because if it was anything but ghosts, Sheppard's ploy might have worked. "I have watched your attempts to make facts and physics fit your agenda, Mr. Sheppard, yes. I keep my eye out for terrible science and misrepresentations of the truth. That's my job."

"It's more than just your job, it's your life. I get that, Dr. McKay. I'm not suggesting that you give that up in any way." Sheppard leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, the very picture of sincerity. "But I've watched your work, and I think I know why your ratings are stabilizing. You can't have a good show with just Scully."

Rodney shook his head, hardly even able to comprehend the man's gall, but he could see Elizabeth nodding from the corner of his eye. Sheppard could see her too. Sheppard could see that Rodney knew it was already over, that this meeting was just a formality because Elizabeth's decision was already made, and there was a moment, a brief second, where he looked genuinely apologetic--

But then he smiled and said, "You need Mulder, too."

~~~~~

The house was enormous, modern, and well-lit. "I am so creeped out right now," Rodney said, trailing sensor wires down the hall, carefully keeping them separate of the video wires. "My skin is crawling, I feel cold. I think, oh, I think I just felt the hand of death on my shoulder."

Sheppard smirked at him. "You mock, but in the two years since this house was constructed, no one has spent more than a week in it. The nights are bad here. The lights go out, the smell of blood comes in, and morning seems a long, long way off."

"'The smell of blood comes in,' oh, very nice, very atmospheric. Tell me something, Mr. Sheppard. Do you read these stories you tell in Sadly Non-Frightening Campfire Tales for Children, or are they your own creations?"

"It's a natural talent."

"Like your supposed ability to attract the supernatural?" Rodney asked. "That's my favorite part of your appearances, Mr. Sheppard. When the fawning talk show host says you attract the supernatural and smiles at the camera and the audience titters. It always highlights the seriousness of your work, I think."

"Yeah, it's something just like that," Sheppard drawled. "You're gonna find that I'm a man of many talents, Dr. McKay."

Rodney gave him a sharp look. Sheppard looked back, the very picture of wide-eyed, dewy innocence even as he leaned back against the wall, hips canted forward, all beard stubble and mussed hair and strong, lean build. It was like Rodney was seeing two of him, with the image he wanted to portray badly superimposed over the truth. It was hard to figure out how anyone could be fooled, until he took into account the natural human ability to be an idiot.

"I'm sure you are," he said, dryly, then went back to arranging his equipment, aware of Sheppard watching him the entire time.

~~~~~

They settled in the great room, which was suitably huge and ornate, the ceiling soaring nearly two storeys high. The walls were done in a thick, silver-grey paper and the windows were a heavy, patterned, painted glass. There wasn't any furniture but Rodney had brought two sleeping bags and was comfortable enough sitting cross-legged on the floor with his laptop, a thermos of coffee, a paper plate stacked high with peanut butter cookies, a copy of Modern Physics with Radek Zelenka's newest article, and a pair of thick red pens. If it hadn't been for Sheppard prowling around the edges of the room, it would have been an easy night.

"Can I have a cookie?" Sheppard asked as he poked into a corner, seemingly fascinated by the dust.

"No," Rodney said, and even though Sheppard was across the room, he pulled the plate closer.

"Zelenka's got some great theories, you know."

"That's why I bother," Rodney said, watching as Sheppard wandered into another corner and started poking at the dust there. He shook his head. "Didn't you bring a book, Mr. Sheppard? You weren't actually expecting a night of thrills and chills, were you?"

Sheppard smiled at him, then wandered away from the corner. He should have been wearing cowboy boots and a hat, Rodney thought, watching him move; he had the loose amble of the renegade lawman from any of a dozen old Westerns. "I am, actually. The night is still young," he said, and he had the soft-vowel drawl of an old Western, too. It should've seemed like an affectation and maybe it was, but it actually seemed natural, totally unlike his charming, innocent smiles. Like Sheppard had dropped some kind of guard for him. The thought made him look away, focusing on his laptop screen.

"Speaking of--" Sheppard said, just as Rodney said, "Huh!" The temperature gauges in the hallway that led to the great room were reading a drastic drop. Not all at once but creeping; it had been a steady 21 degrees Celcius the length of the hall, but foot by foot the sensor readings plummeted to just under 4 degrees.

Sheppard moved away from the door, dropping to his knees beside Rodney on the sleeping bags. "Cameras?" he whispered, and Rodney switched screens; the cameras showed nothing. "Audio? Turn the sound up."

The last of the temperature sensors hit 4 degrees, right outside the door, and something registered on the audio recorder. Sheppard leaned over Rodney's shoulder and turned up the volume till it was audible; a sound like a sigh, but hungry, need so clear that Rodney put a hand on his own stomach in sympathy.

And then there was a soft snapping sound, and silence over the audio recorders.

"Temperature's at 21," Rodney said. "70 degrees, if you're in need of a translation, Mr. Sheppard."

"Steady drop but an instantaneous rise. Interesting." Sheppard climbed to his feet and touched Rodney's shoulder; he looked up from the screen, startled. "Come on," Sheppard said. "Let's go check it out."

"We can check it out from right here by the cookies," Rodney said. "I've got more sensors out there than--"

"And none of your read-outs are as valuable as first-hand experience, Rodney." Sheppard touched his shoulder again, looking entirely too excited and eager. "C'mon. Grab your flashlight and let's go."

Rodney eyed him. "Why do I need it, the hall is as bright as--you know what, I'm not asking. Forget it." He sighed and set the laptop aside. "On the way out, you can tell me how you made that work," he said, climbing to his feet with a groan. "Did you mess with my sensors? I tried, but I couldn't keep my eyes on you the whole time!"

Sheppard laughed at him and held up a cookie Rodney hadn't even noticed him steal off the plate. "Maybe it's just one of my talents," he said smugly, and headed for the door.

~~~~~

They weren't three steps down the hall before Rodney felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. His eyes teared up at the next step; by the fifth, he couldn't hear anything but his heart pounding in his ears. "Sheppard--"

"Me too," Sheppard said, voice muffled and distant. "Do you hear it?"

Rodney felt it more than he heard it, the hungry sigh almost a physical force. Black, he thought, everywhere, and it won't go back. His head was light, weightless, and when the sigh went past him through him like a hard wind, he felt his body give up, and he crumpled to the ground.

~~~~~

Sheppard's hand slid from the hollow of his throat to his chest, light pressure, trailing fingers. "Rodney?" he asked, voice tight, tense, and Rodney opened his eyes. Sheppard was hovering over him, the hand on Rodney's chest flattened, pressing more heavily. His other hand was cradling Rodney's neck.

Rodney took a deep breath, just to make sure that he could--it had nothing to do with bringing Sheppard's hand into firmer contact with his body--and said, "Give me a cookie."

Sheppard blinked at him, then sat back on his heels. Rodney immediately missed the warmth of his hands, though the temperature in the hallway seemed to be stable. "I'm not giving you a cookie just for regaining consciousness, Rodney."

"No, no, for my blood sugar." Rodney put his hand up and Sheppard blinked at him again, but produced a slightly crumbled cookie from the pocket of his windbreaker.

"That's the first time I've ever seen anyone blame their blood sugar for a haunting," Sheppard said, shaking his head.

"I have a condition," Rodney said defensively. "My blood sugar gets low and I pass out and hit the ground, that's all. Help me up. If I don't get off the floor, my back will never recover."

"Oh, so, was I feeling your low blood sugar too just now?" Sheppard said, arching an eyebrow. He stood and put a hand out, helped Rodney climb to his feet. "I like you, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of bond."

"Yes. Well." Rodney brushed imaginary dust off his arms and coughed, uncomfortable with how the teasing light in Sheppard's eyes affected him. "As you've never claimed telepathy as one of your talents, I'm, ah, sure that wasn't it. But just in case, have a cookie."

Sheppard laughed a little, shaking his head. "That was the last one I had. You wanna go back so I can grab more and you can lie down for a minute?"

Rodney looked up and down the hall. It wasn't that far to the corner, maybe 15 feet, but they'd barely gotten out of the great room. "No," he said, picking up his flashlight. "Come on."

"Okay, but if I faint, you're getting me cookies."

"If you pass out, I will," Rodney said, and marched down the hall.

~~~~~

The hall ended in a T. "That way leads to the front of the house," Sheppard said, pointing right.

"It does not, we turned right to get to the great room."

"No, we didn't--"

"We turned right," Rodney said, "so turning left now would bring us--wait, do you smell that?"

Sheppard was frowning. "I guess we're going that way," he said, turning down the corridor to the right, clearly following his nose.

"You'd walk into a burning building for the hell of it, wouldn't you," Rodney said.

"No, I only walk into burning buildings for good reasons," Sheppard said, smiling over his shoulder. "The smell is getting stronger. Are you coming?"

Rodney looked back over his shoulder. Weird smells, or the echoing, empty great room? It wasn't as easy a choice as it should have been. Mostly, he was tempted to go back and let Sheppard wander wherever his fearless, mindless fancy took him, but sticking with Sheppard was probably the only way to keep him honest. "We're not relying just on your accounts," he said grimly. "'The smell of blood comes in.' Hah."

"This isn't blood," Sheppard said. "It smells like an ocean."

Rodney sniffed. Sheppard was right, it wasn't blood. It was salt and water and minerals and animal life and decay, but it was more than that too. "Not any ocean I've ever visited," he said.

Sheppard just looked at him, smile fading. "It smells familiar to me."

~~~~~

At the end of that hallway, they found the source of the smell: the cellar. Sheppard opened the door and flicked the lights on, then hesitated. He looked at Rodney, who shook his head. "I know how this movie ends," Rodney said. "We hit those stairs and we're dead before we reach the bottom."

"I thought you said there's no such thing as ghosts," Sheppard said.

"There isn't. But if it smells so strongly of water up here, it means the stairs are probably slippery. We could fall and break our necks!"

"Right," Sheppard said, but he closed the door. He'd left the light on, Rodney noticed. It seemed like a good idea to him, too. Maybe the light would help dry the place out, or something. Never mind the low wattage of the bulb, the size of the space, and the degree of wet that permeated the air. "Where to, then?"

"Well, and this is just a suggestion, but oh, say, back down the hall?" Rodney shook his head. "The house is big, but it's not Manhattan, Mr. Sheppard, we only have so many choices--"

The lights went out around them. Rodney instinctively took a step closer to Sheppard, who reached out and grabbed his arm.

"Don't freak out, it's nothing," Sheppard whispered. "I'm not really getting a sense of--for all I know, it's just a power outage."

Rodney flicked on his flashlight, although they didn't really need its light to see by because, "Oh yeah? Then why is the cellar light still on?"

Sheppard took a deep breath, his eyes focused on Rodney's in the semi-darkness. Neither of them looked at the door to the cellar, which was outlined by a much brighter yellow glow than could be accounted for with one single 60 watt bulb. "Well, it's nothing dangerous," he said. "It's just a blackout, what harm can a blackout do to us?"

Rodney narrowed his eyes and angled his flashlight to get a better look at Sheppard's face. "Lots more than you're letting on, right?" he said grimly.

"Hell yeah," Sheppard said, and used his grip on Rodney's arm to tow him back down the hall.

~~~~~

"Leave the equipment, we'll get it all in the morning," Sheppard said. He was frowning at the doorway and he'd lost a lot of the drawl. His hand kept coming up to about chest level, like he expected to find something there and couldn't quite remember that he wouldn't.

"I'll leave it all so I can record the fact that the minute you leave the house, weird stuff stops happening," Rodney said, "but the laptop is coming with me, and so are the cookies."

"I told you I have talents," Sheppard said. "But it's normally not this bad. This feels like something else."

"Oh, you mean, you didn't plan it all? I'm shocked, Mr. Sheppard. What wasn't your idea, the lights or my low blood sugar?"

"Just grab your stuff, Rodney, and let's--"

Too late. The great room was filling with a dense blackness, like a shadow but not, like dark water but not, like smoke and gel and slime and oil and hunger but not like any of those things at all. "Fuck," Rodney said, and dropped the cookies.

"I'd suggest we run, but I don't think we want to touch that," Sheppard said. "Break a window."

"Well, I would, but then all the water would get in," Rodney said. The huge stained glass windows seemed to be holding back an ocean, light rippling at the tops like sun through the water, darkness at the bottom that was entirely different from night. Rodney thought he saw things swimming in it, but they were things of impossible sizes and shapes, so he had to be mistaken. He hoped--except oh, God, who was he trying to kid? "We're going to die, and I haven't even--I spent so much time on the damned television show, I didn't publish half of what--"

"Rodney," Sheppard said. "Shut up and think! There has to be a way out of this. What if we--"

"No. No. There isn't," Rodney said, shaking his head, staring at the windows with wide-eyed terror. For a moment, something stared back, and that seemed to shock his brain into processing. "We're--well, wait a minute. Give me your pocketknife. Oh, don't look at me like that, of course you have one." Sheppard did, he plucked it from his back pocket and tossed it, and Rodney knelt down and unrolled the sleeping bags.

"This is all the protection we've got," he said, and sliced the bottom of the first one neatly, right above the zipper. "Whatever it is, it's filling the room from the bottom up. We climb into the sleeping bags and run like hell for the front door and hope that's enough."

"And if the door is underwater?"

"Then we drown," Rodney said, "because I'm opening it, I don't care. I'm not letting that eat me."

Sheppard stared at him for a moment, then stared at the blackness, which was creeping slowly closer, bringing a chill with it, and the smell of dead things in stale water, and the sharp tingle of electricity. "Good plan," he said, and Rodney tossed him a sleeping bag, then ripped a hole in the bottom of the second one. He slithered into it, head out the top, feet out the bottom, holding it as tightly around him as possible, then hesitated. The laptop.

"Leave it," Sheppard said, and Rodney ducked, grabbed it, and shoved it down the front of his pants. It made breathing difficult but it was worth it, he decided, and he settled the sleeping bag around himself again. Sheppard was staring at him but Sheppard was clearly no scientist, and Rodney couldn't expect him to understand. He sniffed, and Sheppard shook his head.

"I agreed to think about taking this job because I thought you were annoying, arrogant, and too smart for your own good--but interesting," he said. "And then I met you and I thought you were annoying, arrogant, too smart, interesting, and strangely hot. But along the way, I somehow missed that you're insane."

"And I thought you were a charlatan and a flirt but I somehow missed that you were also stupid," Rodney said. "I think we're even! Can we go now?"

"We'll talk about this later," Sheppard said, and it sounded like a grim promise. "I think we'll talk about a lot of things later, Rodney. But okay. Ready. Count of three. One, two--" and they both broke early, shuffling out the door as fast as they could go, the darkness closing in around them.

"We're going to die," Rodney chanted, but they made it to the doorway. Sheppard shoved him through and Rodney tried to move faster, aware of coldness seeping around his shoes and a feeling of, oh, God, it felt like something intelligent was watching him, but it was a strange intelligence, not connected to a nervous system or senses as he understood them, not capable of thought as he understood that either, capable only of hunger--and he was the nearest food source. "We're going to die, we're going to die," and they were at the end of the hall, the darkness stretching higher now, almost at his chest, inches below the top of the sleeping bag. He went left, left, his chant becoming "Don't argue with me, Sheppard--" and the darkness was even higher. "Oh, God, we're going to die."

"Shut up, McKay," Sheppard said, and they had reached the front door, and Rodney didn't know what was outside of it but the darkness was moving; it could lap at his face any moment and he'd be lost, he'd be gone, so he wrenched open the door and leapt through it--

And on the other side, it was dawn. Rodney stumbled down the steps of the porch, momentum propelling him halfway down the walk before he turned and looked for Sheppard, who was stumbling after him and then into him, not expecting him to stop. They tumbled to the ground in a slippery tangle of limbs and nylon shells.

"Oof," Rodney said, as the laptop dug into the tender flesh of his stomach. He looked over Sheppard's shoulder through the open front door, and the hallway was empty. The lights were on; the whole house was blazing with them. There was no water anywhere at all, and the air smelled like grass and earth. Their two cars were parked in the driveway, and the sun was rising exactly as it should.

Sheppard shifted his weight, looked behind him. "Unbelievable," he said, looking back at Rodney. "Unbelievable. What the hell was that?"

"I'm a genius," Rodney said. "We never would've made it without the sleeping bags! Did you feel that?"

"I felt it," Sheppard said. "I don't ever want to feel it again. Forget your equipment, the house can have it all!"

"I'd felt it before," Rodney said. "How did I feel that before? I'm going back for those wires the minute--ok, I'll go back at noon. With a team of people. And a HAZMAT suit. And--"

"You're staying out of there," Sheppard said, and then his mouth was closing over Rodney's, hard. He had stubble, and he needed to brush his teeth, and Rodney opened his mouth, not caring. He was a charlatan and a flirt and he was a pseudo-scientist at best, talents be damned, and none of that mattered either, because he'd walk into a burning house for the right reasons and he'd run through--death? a monster? a hallucination?--wrapped in a sleeping bag if he thought that Rodney thought it might work, and his body over Rodney's felt better than anything else had, ever.

"Elizabeth said it was your idea!" Rodney said, when Sheppard broke the kiss to gasp for air, tucking his face in the crook of Rodney's neck.

"No, she didn't, you just assumed. But it was her idea, I just said I'd meet you and think about it, and then I didn't need to think any more," Sheppard said, dropping another kiss on Rodney's mouth, slicking his tongue over Rodney's lower lip in a way that felt indecent. Sheppard nipped at him, then groaned. "Oh, god, please tell me you like sucking dick," he muttered, "I didn't need to think about it at all, because I wanted this and I knew I could have it. You wanted it too, right?"

"Since I saw you on Oprah," Rodney said, fighting to get out of the sleeping bag, trying to get closer, closer.

"I was way better on Ellen," Sheppard said, struggling to his knees. The slippery nylon exteriors of the bags made it almost impossible and he grunted in frustration and moved to the side, wriggling free only to freeze. "Hey--we're on the front lawn!"

"What, you want to take this back inside?" With Sheppard off him, it was easier to get loose, plus he could get rid of the laptop, which was going to leave a permanent rectangular dent-shape in his stomach. He looked up from setting it aside to find Sheppard staring at him, eyes gleaming bright, and said, "No. Do you have the memory of a goldfish or something?"

"That's a myth, about goldfish memories," Sheppard said. "And the house is supposed to be okay during the daytime."

Rodney looked back over his shoulder and shuddered. "That house is never okay for us. But mine is. And I have a bed. Which the house doesn't."

"Right," Sheppard said, and he was on his feet, sleeping bags in his arms. "Get in your car. Christ, why did we even bother with the haunted house thing in the middle? We should've gone right to bed after the meeting."

"Make a note of that for next time," Rodney said grimly.

"Next time is aliens," Sheppard said. "Elizabeth laid it all out for me. How much trouble can we get in to with aliens?"

Rodney stared at him, aghast, then shoved him towards his car. "Oh great, now you've doomed us," he said. "Just go before a UFO lands on the lawn!" Sheppard shoved him back, pushing him against his car and kissing him, hard, before heading for his own vehicle. Rodney dropped his keys twice before he got them in the ignition, got the car started and pulled out of the driveway with Sheppard on his tail--

And he watched in his rearview mirror as the front door of the house slammed closed behind them.

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