Author: miasnape
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG
Length: 3000+ words.
A/N: Written for the Stargate Atlantis Urban Legend Slash Challenge 2nd Edition.
Legend: 118 Cake inscriptions gone wrong.
"Ohh, she's going to snap me like kindling."
John looked up from the plate of mini-quiches and there was a red-faced guy in a dark blue shirt wringing his hands just a few feet to the right. He was jumpy and anxious, eyeing the crowded doorways with dismay in between glances at whatever was in the white bakery box that sat in the middle of the table of food.
Curious, John shuffled over to look at the contents of the box. He squinted at it, and then turned his head sideways, but the view stayed the same. A cake, thickly covered with dark, sugary chocolate frosting and decorated with a white-iced message in big, clear capital letters:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
RONON,
SON OF A BITCH!
"Huh!" John said. "Well, that's kind of an unusual birthday greeting."
The red-faced guy turned to him and grabbed his forearms, shaking them slightly.
"She's going to murder me! She asked me to do one thing, and that was it, order the cake, and I did, I was very specific! I even spelt his name to the girl three times just in case she was more idiotic that I'd already assumed!"
John looked down at the hands wrapped around his wrists, back at the cake, and then up to the crazy person now attached to him.
"You were very specific about his mom, too."
The crazy guy's grip tightened, his eyes wide and wild and very blue.
"No, no, no, you see I was doing a peer review when I phoned in the order, and I must have gotten distracted and yelled something insulting, because it was Kavanagh, and he's an imbecile, really, it's amazing they gave him his doctorate."
The guy let go and turned to look at the cake again, shoulders slumped.
"What kind of senseless moron puts the phrase 'son of a bitch' on a birthday cake? It must have been obvious that I was multitasking at the time!"
John stepped forward to consider the cake some more.
"Well," he offered," as insults go it looks like it tastes pretty nice."
The guy rested his hands on the table and bowed his head, apparently out of words now, at least in the face of the ones on the cake.
"And she did get his name right," John said, admiring the artistic curl of the cheerful exclamation point. It really rounded out the message; gave it a nice emphasis.
The crazy guy groaned, and span around to face him, hands waving about in front of him and knocking the collar of his shirt askew.
"You have to help me. Tell me you're a professional cake decorator and you have the tools somewhere on you to make this say something really flattering, or that you have the ability to bend the space-time continuum, or that you can convince Teyla and Ronon that 'son of a bitch' is actually a compliment in some regional dialect, something!"
John blinked, totally amused by this random stranger and his insane cake problem. Or, possibly, by this insane stranger with his random cake problem.
"Actually, I'm an interior designer," John told him. "I decorated Teyla's apartment. Cake decoration and manipulation of the fourth dimension aren't really on my résumé. Sorry."
The guy looked up at him, and John got the sense that he was actually being seen for the first time as a person and not a person-shaped blob.
"Oh. I don't actually know you." The guy shifted slightly. "Rodney. McKay. Doctor. Doctor McKay. That is--"
John grinned and held out his hand to shake McKay's.
"Doctor Rodney McKay, right. I'm John Sheppard."
McKay gripped his hand and shook it absently.
"Sheppard. Yes, well, nice to meet you and all, but do you have any idea how to help me fix this, because if Teyla sees this I'm going to be very dead and in several small pieces, and I'm trying to blank Ronon's possible reaction out of my head, because just the thought is traumatic enough."
John looked down at where McKay was still holding his hand, jostling it to the rhythm of his speech patterns.
"You, uh, you want to maybe..."
He wiggled his trapped fingers to get McKay's attention. McKay looked down too and then the red that had faded from his cheeks came rushing back. He pulled his hand back quickly and, after a moment's consideration, stuffed it in his pocket.
"Right, sorry."
They turned as one to look at the cake again. John licked his lips to keep from laughing. It was somehow funnier now that he knew the back-story.
"You could maybe try smudging it."
McKay shook his head violently.
"The letters are far too big. It would look awful, and she would know something was wrong, and I'm a terrible liar, so it will spill out and there we are back at me being dismembered."
John nodded sagely, pretending that it was all as serious as McKay seemed to be taking it.
"Pick off the letters and smooth the icing back over?"
McKay studied the cake again, before dismissing the idea.
"The icing they used to write it is too soft."
"Cut off the strip with the insult and kind of glue it together with the extra icing?"
McKay turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. "It would show – the edges are slightly smaller than the middle – but you are surprisingly good at this."
John smirked.
"I'm a designer. I design things. Including solutions to problems."
"To this particular problem?" McKay asked, incredulously.
John smirked some more.
"I work well under pressure," he said, something catching his eye over McKay's shoulder. "And speaking of pressure, you're about to be busted."
McKay froze, eyes wide.
"Teyla?"
John nodded, watching Teyla's hair – all he could see of her in the crowded room – come steadily closer to their position, shining under the lights. McKay reached over and flipped the bakery box lid shut, hissing at John out of the side of his mouth to, "Help me!"
John considered his options.
"If she kills you, I swear I'll make her buy a really hideous carpet or something," he promised. "Maybe something in plaid."
McKay snuck a peek over his shoulder and turned back to John, looking unamused and more than a little hunted.
"She's not going to kill me, she's going to rip my balls off and serve them as appetisers."
John winced.
"Ow. Also? Ew."
McKay's brow furrowed.
"You are not at all a comforting person. How about, instead of saving the world from ugly tartan furnishings, one room at a time, you protect me, from, you know..."
"Castration?" John offered.
"Yes, exactly!" McKay said excitedly, finger waving in John's general direction.
John nodded agreeably.
"The only problem you have there is that Teyla can kick my ass ten ways from Sunday."
"Surely only eight," Teyla said, and John watched with a great amount of humour as McKay pasted a really false smile on his face and edged entirely suspiciously in front of the cake in the box until the soft cotton of his shirt sleeve brushed against the hair on John's forearm.
"Teyla!"
Teyla raised an eyebrow at McKay and tilted her head to the side serenely.
"Rodney, I was not aware that you knew John."
Rodney blinked. "I don't. I mean, I didn't, before. Obviously I know him now – I was just talking to him."
"What were you discussing?" Teyla asked, tilting her head to the other side, and John realised that she was surreptitiously trying to see around them to what McKay was shielding.
McKay edged backwards nervously and stammered, "We, uh, we were talking about... About... We..."
John scratched his lower lip with his teeth to stop a smile escaping, because McKay had been right – he really sucked at lying.
"We were talking about plaid," John said, and McKay sagged against the edge of the table beside him and nodded vigorously.
"Yes, yes, plaid! Carpets. We were talking about plaid carpets."
Teyla turned to John for confirmation and John nodded, trying to look innocent.
"They're ugly," he expanded, and Teyla gave him a look – one of her unique, 'I'm Not Sure If You're Insane Or Just Extremely Slow-Witted' looks. John just smiled back at her, not willing to challenge either conclusion too much.
Teyla watched them both suspiciously for a few seconds more and then lowered her eyebrows.
"Are you enjoying the party, John?"
John thought about it. So far the party had consisted of a bottle of beer, a handful of chips, two puff pastry things, and talking to McKay about his accidentally insulting birthday cake.
"Yeah," he said, and meant it. "It's been fun. Thanks for the invite, by the way."
"It is thanks to you that the apartment was ready to host a party in time. Thank you again for putting so much hard work into it at such short notice."
John shrugged. It was his job.
Beside him, McKay was looking around, leaning to the side to see past groups of chatting people.
"It's actually pretty nice in here," he said, sounding almost insultingly surprised. "It's very... elegant, and whatnot. Very 'Teyla'."
Teyla met John's eyes and then smiled fondly in McKay's direction.
"John is very good at what he does. It was only through luck and circumstances that I was able to employ his services at such short notice."
John smirked.
"Hey, a friend in need and all that. Maybe now you'll stop looking like you're having so much fun when you're beating the crap out of me with sticks."
Teyla's smile told him just how unlikely that was.
McKay's brow furrowed.
"You go to that new-age, hippy martial arts thing Teyla and Ronon run?"
John's hands went to his hips. "New-age, hippy martial arts?" he repeated, not sure whether the description was as hilarious as he was trying – and failing – not to find it. Even Teyla looked kind of amused underneath the stern demeanour.
"Rodney is of the opinion that the best exercise is that which you don't notice."
McKay shook his head.
"The best exercise is the stuff that doesn't actually happen."
John snorted. Yeah, he'd thought that before; usually when he woke up with his muscles screaming at him after running too far with Ronon, or bruises on his ass from when Teyla and her Bantos rods decided to very firmly demonstrate how he left himself open to some of her super-stealthy, fast-like-a-freak moves.
"Amount of food you eat, you should come with us some times, McKay."
The deep voice came from behind John, and when he looked around, Ronon, a shiny red party hat stuck incongruously on top of his hair, was looming over them looking at the table. Looking at the white bakery box behind McKay.
"Is that cake?" he asked, and leaned over without waiting for an answer, flipping the box open. John watched McKay go pale, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, his eyelashes fanning dark and thick and astonishingly long across his cheekbones and his shoulders hunching in as far as they would go.
All across the apartment music played and people talked and drank and ate and laughed... all across the apartment except for their little circle of four, standing silently around the cake. It was like that bend in the space-time continuum that McKay had wondered about earlier had actually come into being, focused around the buffet table.
"Happy Birthday, Ronon, Son of a Bitch!" Ronon read out loud, and McKay whimpered and opened his eyes reluctantly. Teyla was staring at the cake, her face blank. John just stood there, watching and waiting and trying very, very hard not to laugh. His stomach muscles were starting to hurt.
McKay looked like he was about to faint, his mouth flapping open and closed without sound.
Teyla kept looking at the cake.
Ronon...
Ronon snorted, and then started to laugh; a big, rich laugh that could only come from a man of his size. John sniggered once, involuntarily, before he bit his lip and managed to control himself again.
The people around them started to look over, but John was more focused on the fact that McKay still hadn't properly registered that Ronon wasn't about to rip him limb from limb, or whatever it was that he'd pictured in his obviously over-active imagination. Also, Teyla was still just staring at the cake, and John hadn't a clue whether she was going to smile or whether, possibly, McKay had actually been right to worry. He wondered if he should maybe warn McKay to stay away from big sticks.
"Rodney," Teyla said, sounding the syllables of his name out carefully. McKay's eyes jerked around to Teyla's face and he seemed to somehow squirm without actually moving. John bit his lip harder and felt the lines at the corners of his eyes deepen with the smile he couldn't hold back.
"Is there some reason that I am unaware of for this... unusual message?"
McKay's fingers were twisting at the hem of his shirt, making him look like a fidgety seven-year-old trapped in a grown man's body. It was unaccountably endearing and John smile changed to something softer. He wasn't quite sure why.
"It was an accident?" McKay offered.
Teyla raised an eyebrow. Ronon, still snorting, poked at the chocolate frosting with one large, brown finger and swiped at it indelicately with his tongue.
"S'good cake," he said to Teyla, who sighed up at the ceiling and then shook her head helplessly. Teyla's face was pretty expressive when she wanted it to be – John was pretty sure that this particular expression was saying, 'Why am I friends with these boys? My life would be much more sane if I hadn't met any of them.'
"It is Ronon's birthday cake," John said, grinning at Teyla. "I mean, if he likes it, isn't that kind of the point?"
McKay nodded enthusiastically, fingers untangling from his shirt to snap in the air between them.
"Yes, exactly! It's Ronon's birthday!"
Ronon was still poking at the cake, and McKay shooed his hands away before he could damage more than one corner.
"There are things called forks and plates, you Neanderthal."
"You just said it was my birthday," Ronon pointed out, looming head and shoulders over McKay.
"That was when it stopped me from dieing ignominiously in front of an audience. Now you're stopping me from having an unmolested piece of cake – which I bought, by the way. From a very stupid woman in a very expensive bakery. This cake caused me an undue amount of emotional trauma; I should get to eat some of it at the very least."
"You gotta take a picture of it first, before you cut it up," John said.
"Do you honestly believe that any of us are going to forget this little gem? I'll probably be hearing jokes about it when I'm a Nobel Prize winner."
John shrugged.
"Won't hurt to have photographic evidence."
McKay's glare told him that it could – it really, really could. John ignored it, and so did Teyla. She disappeared into the crowds and came back with a digital camera, and the next five minutes were filled with flashes and chocolate birthday cake insults and Ronon gripping McKay around the shoulders to hold him, grumpy-faced and red-cheeked, within picture-taking range.
John leaned against the back of Teyla's couch – elegant, sturdy, made entirely from organic fabrics, and very familiar from when he'd bought it last weekend and organised it's placement in this very spot – and watched the whole scene unfold, occasionally heckling when he felt it was called for.
McKay joined him there when Ronon finally freed him, two cake-loaded paper plates in his hands.
"Since you were almost helpful back there, I brought you some cake," he said, holding out one plate towards John. John looked at the icing on it, and smirked.
"I think that one was meant for you."
McKay turned his hand and looked, and then twisted around to glare at Ronon, who grinned and shoved a hunk of chocolaty confection into his mouth with his fingers. The top of McKay's slice of cake bore the inscription 'bitch!' from edge to edge, cheerful exclamation point and all. Sheppard took the piece that had most of the word 'day' on it, still grinning.
"Thanks."
He'd been right earlier, he decided when he took his first bite. For an insult, it tasted pretty damned good. Beside him, McKay moaned dramatically around his forkful, wet, pink tongue coming out to get every trace of the frosting off the white plastic fork.
"Worth the trauma?" he asked, and McKay moaned again in answer. John raised his eyebrows and smiled a private smile to himself.
"Glad to hear it."
John ate another forkful of cake and studied McKay closely.
"You ever think about taking Ronon up on his offer and coming to the hippy martial-arts classes some time?" he asked, and McKay snorted, mouth still full of cake.
"Why on earth would I subject myself to that?"
John looked at McKay sideways, eyelashes partly lowered, a corner of his mouth curled up.
"I dunno. I was just thinking it might be kind of nice to maybe have another one of those unique conversations we had earlier again some time. Maybe when you're not afraid for your life."
McKay blinked at him, and then swallowed.
"Those circumstances exclude any time when Ronon or Teyla are in charge of my physical well-being," he said. He looked a bit confused, and a bit wary, a lot hopeful, and John let the other side of his mouth curl up into a full smile that he knew was blatantly flirtatious.
"Well, then maybe we should have dinner sometime," he said, turning his body closer to McKay. "Just the two of us. No danger of anyone plotting revenge for the birthday cake of doom."
"Really?"
McKay's eyes were wide and guileless, and John was still surprised by how blue they were. After a few seconds, he grinned at John, silly and happy, lips slanted up at the right.
"I. Yes, that--That sounds very... Yes."
"Great," John said, and smiled back some more, not really caring that it had probably gone from flirty to dorky. He dug his fork into his cake and let his arm brush against Rodney's like a kid with his first crush. Beside him, Rodney ate some more of his own cake, eyes flicking over to John every few seconds, skin hot under the cloth of his sleeve. John shoved some cake into his mouth and chewed, contented and a little bit giddy.
Life, he thought, ignoring the part of him that was groaning indignantly; life was sweet.
The End.