Disclaimer: I own no part of SGA. If I did..well..I wouldn't be writing this now would I?

A/N: A little something (3 chapters) inspired by the prompt, "The scientific method" for Unwavering: A McKay/Keller Community's prompt!battle.

The Scientist's Method - Chapter One

"I'm not entirely sure about this, Rodney."

"What's there to be sure about? It's not like she'll suspect anything. You do this sort of thing all the time."

"Thanks, Rodney."

"No problem. Now, you just have to…you know…do it."

"I'm not exactly eager to do it myself."

"I figured. So I came prepared."

"Col. Sheppard? What happened to you this time?"

Lt. Col. John Sheppard slowly removed the ice pack from against his forehead, wincing slightly as the change in pressure set his thread throbbing once more. Cool air blew against the open wound and he clenched his teeth to steel himself against the sharp sting.

"Sparring accident," he lied, quite literally, through his teeth. Rodney owed him big time.

Dr. Jennifer Keller probed the wound lightly, assessing the damage quickly; stitches would be unnecessary, but judging by the extent of the bruise rapidly blossoming across the colonel's forehead, a CT scan wasn't out of the question.

"With what?" Jennifer quirked an eyebrow at John as she efficiently began cleaning the small laceration. "Baseball bats?"

"Probably would have been safer," John muttered under his breath, wincing again as Jennifer applied butterfly bandages to close the wound.

She frowned, unsure if she'd heard him correctly, but decided to let the matter drop to focus on the more important issue of determining if Atlantis's head of military was suffering from a quite possibly testosterone-induced concussion.

Jennifer shone her penlight into Sheppard's eyes. Satisfied his pupils were responding normally and he could track the movement of her finger in front of his face, she waited for the colonel to change out of his clothing and into a pair of scrubs before leading him to the scanner.

"Is this really necessary, Doc?" John protested as she directed him onto the scanner bed. "It's just a bump and a scratch. I feel fine."

Frowning slightly at the control screen near the head of the scanner, she ceased typing for a moment and replied, "That's some bump, Colonel. Either Ronon's been working on some new moves or you let your guard down completely."

Wincing inwardly, his ego sufficiently bruised to match the eggplant shade of his forehead, John wondered yet again why he'd even agreed to get involved in this crazy scheme. But now that Jennifer had provided him with the perfect opening, he figured he had to follow through on the promise.

"Ronon?" Squirming slightly and very uncomfortable, John tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, "What makes you think I was sparring with Ronon? I could have been sparring with anyone."

"That's true," Jennifer replied absently. She finished keying in the figurations for the scanner and turned towards the bed and the prone colonel. "Now lie still for a few minutes, Colonel. This won't take too long, but I need you to move as little as possible."

Committed to seeing this damnable thing through to the end and wanting to get it over with, John refused to drop the line of inquiry. "Right, but why Ronon?"

"Talking is moving, Colonel."

Easily deterred, John Sheppard was not.

"Any one of the strapping young marines we've got roaming the base could have done this." He lifted a hand to point helpfully at the rather large contusion blossoming across his forehead and realized his mistake as soon as he heard the exasperated sigh.

"Oops." John quickly dropped his hand back down to his side and smiled what he hoped was a sweet, apologetic smile in response to the brow-furrowing frown Jennifer was sending his way.

Jennifer shook her head at his antics. In truth, they were no different from what he usually pulled when forced to submit to her battery of tests after a mission. Except, he normally wasn't this talkative. At least not with her.

"You're always sparring with Ronon, Colonel."

"That…" John was at a loss. "Is true."

Jennifer took advantage of his sudden moment of stillness and quiet to finish running the scan.

Five minutes later, scan complete and conclusive in its findings that John Sheppard was almost wholly unharmed, she helped the colonel resume an upright position on the scanner bed and was surprised when he refused to let go of her arm.

Concerned that he wasn't really as fine as both she and the scanner had determined, Jennifer stepped before him and lifted his head up with one hand. His eyes were forced to leave the spot they'd been dutifully studying on the floor to meet her intense scrutiny. He nearly laughed when he recognized that she probably thought there was still something wrong with his head. He did laugh when his head told him that, yes, there was definitely something wrong.

"Colonel?" Was spontaneous laughter a symptom of some neurological condition brought on by a blow to the head?

Quickly sobering as he realized he was worrying the doctor for no reason, John quirked the corner of his mouth up and squeezed her arm lightly in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

"I'm fine, I promise. I just…" He was at a loss as to how to go about this. Subtlety in this arena was obviously not his strong suit. A lesser man would just give up. A lesser man would forfeit the cause and admit defeat. Lt. Col. John Sheppard was a better man than that.

"There was a point, you know?" He gazed hopefully into confused eyes; hoping she'd somehow understand what he wasn't saying.

"Noooo." Was there something she was missing here?

"To this." John waved his free hand around the general area of his head.

"Atlantis?" Thoroughly lost and confused, Jennifer felt she should be the one asking for a map to this conversation.

"What?" Now confused himself, John shook his head and blew out a heavy breath. "No. Just…how about we forget about this, okay?" Maybe Lt. Col. John Sheppard needed to reassess what kind of man he was.

Jennifer watched warily as John pushed himself off the bed, releasing her arm with a chagrined smile, and was ready to catch him in case this undeniably bizarre behaviour was, in fact, a consequence of his physical injury.

He slowly made his way back to the curtained area where he'd left his clothing lying haphazardly across an infirmary bed, mentally chastising himself for agreeing to such a ridiculous charade.

But it wasn't a charade – not really. At least not to the person who'd asked him to do it.

With a heavy sigh, he cast his eyes upwards, and turned back around. She was still standing where he'd left her; watching him with an expression that said she wouldn't be surprised to find out an alien entity had inhabited his body. Maybe she wasn't far off from the truth. John had yet to figure out exactly how he'd been talked into do this.

"I just have one question. Not because I really want to ask it. Believe me, I'd rather do anything else at the moment than be here asking this question. Perhaps even, geting bludgeoned upside the head again with a blunt object…again."

"Colonel?"

"Right, the question; or rather a scenario because it's not really a straightforward question. That would be too…straightforward." John finished lamely.

He cleared his throat, his eyes roaming the walls as he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

He watched Jennifer's eye flit downwards for a split second before returning to his face and the strangest thing happened; her brow lost its furrows and worried creases, her mouth went from hard and grim to soft and smiling, and her eyes lost that concerned cast and just glowed for about five seconds before she cleared her own throat and bent her head down, bangs falling forward to shield her from John's stare.

She toyed with the hem of her shirt – a nervous habit – before gathering herself and crossing her arms over her chest. She quirked an eyebrow at the colonel and said, "You've been spending too much time with Rodney."

Confused at the abrupt change in her demeanour, John could only stare, puzzled, and offered a disbelieving, "What?"

Jennifer gestured vaguely towards him with a hand before pulling it back to her chest and replying, "He does that a lot when he's uncomfortable or when he doesn't know what to say or how to say what he wants to say."

At his continued puzzled expression, she blew out a breath and roughly pushed her bangs off her forehead and out of her eyes.

"The flustered speech. The fidgeting. Classic Rodney. I was just remarking that you seem to have picked up a few of his more…endearing…habits." Suddenly embarrassed that she'd revealed as much to the Base Military Commander of Atlantis, Jennifer diverted her eyes from a face growing, much to her dismay, increasingly smug, and gently nudged him within the confines of the privacy curtain.

Leaving him to get dressed in privacy and in peace, she walked towards the scanner, eager to resume work and take her mind off of her serious lapse in judgment.

Col. Sheppard, she mouthed to herself. Groaning softly, she somehow managed to resist the urge to bang her head against the scanner's control panel. Of all people to say something like that to, you had to pick Col. Sheppard. Maybe there was a pill for whatever was wrong with her.

A rustle of fabric alerted her to John's now fully clothed presence. Deciding that two lapses in judgment did not make a right, she turned around with some final instructions to take it easy for a couple of days and to come back should he feel light-headed or nauseous.

She said the words; he nodded in response like a good patient. She dutifully refused to meet his gaze; his smirk just grew larger and more infuriating as a result.

"Col. Sheppard?" She called out to him. "What was the question?"

One hand on the doorway, his head turned to look at her, a knowing smile spread across John's face, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Don't worry about it. I got my answer anyway."

He sauntered out the doorway, leaving a thoroughly confused and bemused one Chief Medical Officer standing in the middle of her infirmary, staring after him unsure of whether to follow and demand an explanation or to just chalk it up to the blow to his head.

In the end, the demands of her job won out over the demands of her curiousity as Jennifer was called back to assess the health of a team just returned from off world. Perhaps later, when she actually had some time to herself, she'd investigate the odd behaviour of the colonel. Until then, she had responsibilities to attend to.

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